Playlist

Preface

We have been out of town all week, and I took no notes regarding music that came up. Rather than skip a week of blog I proffer this essay I wrote last year as part of an ongoing and probably never ending conversation with my long-time collaborator Neal Kosály-Meyer about John Cage. - kee

Text

OBJECT ALOUD

The object consists of four sheets of paper, two staples, a small sticker, and some black ink. The sheets each measure 18 inches by 12 inches. They are stacked, folded, and creased at the midpoints of their respective long sides, forming a booklet of sixteen pages, 9 inches by 12 inches. The staples are inserted along the line of the crease so that the points of each staple are folded together on the inside. The midpoints of each staple are about 2 and 7/8 inches from their respective paper edges, and thus approximately 6 and 1/4 inches apart from each other.

The paper sheets are of neither the same stock nor color. The sheet that forms the outside of the booklet is of heavier stock than the other three, and is a different color of cream, possessing a slight greenish tinge. The three inner sheets are of lighter stock and color.

The first of the sixteen pages, being formed of one side of one half of the heavier, greenish-tinged cream sheet, has printing on it. Three rectangles are drawn thereon, one inside the other. The outside rectangle is drawn with a thicker line than the two inside rectangles and its dimensions are 6 and 7/8 inches by 9 1/2 inches, almost centered upon the page, matching short sides to short sides and long sides to long sides, but skewed ever so slightly toward the stapled edge and also, if the stapled edge is on the left, toward the top. The two inner rectangles are drawn with thinner lines, the middle rectangle’s lines paralleling those of the outer by about 1/32 of an inch, and the innermost’s paralleling those of the middle by about 1/16 of an inch.

With the booklet in view, staples on the left, an ornate emblem is seen, 3 and 3/8 inches from left to right at its center and 7/8 inches from top to bottom at its center, positioned about 2 and 1/8 inches from the top of the page and 4 and 7/16 inches from the left side. Within this emblem is printed an enclosure of solid black ink, within which solid black enclosure the letters EDITION PETERS appear as though stenciled. Immediately below the emblem No. 6777a is printed.

About 1 and 3/4 inches below the emblem, in capital letters 1 and 9/16 inches tall, occupying nearly the entire width inside the innermost rectangle, JOHN CAGE is printed in ornate letters, outlined on their right sides by thin lines so that they appear to stand out from the page. Centered horizontally 1 and 5/16 inches below these letters 4' 33" is printed in numerals 9/16 of an inch tall, and an inch and a half below these numerals, in a smaller font, (Original Version in Proportional Notation).

The inside page of the cover is blank. Opposite this, on the first page of the lighter-stocked paper, two paragraphs are presented concerning the history of the object, and of its various published versions. The paragraphs are attributed to Irwin Kremen of Durham, North Carolina. Below that, 1 and 3/8 inches from the bottom edge, is a copyright notice.

On the next page, toward the bottom, at about the position of the lower staple, and aligned on the left 1 and 7/8 inches from the edge of the page, there are three lines of text in a hand-inked type font, the last being in the style of a signature: 

4'33"

FOR ANY INSTRUMENT OR COMBINATION OF INSTRUMENTS

JohnCage

On the next page, in a similar vertical position to those three lines but only 1 and 1/8 inches from the staple fold is printed FOR IRWIN KREMEN in the hand-inked type font.

On the left side of the next page, were the page turned as the pages of a book are turned, is printed 1 PAGE =7 INCHES =56", while on the right page are two straight, vertical lines, parallel with the long edge of the page, each 10 inches long. The two lines are 1 inch and 4 and 3/4 inches, respectively, from the crease. The top of each line is 5/8 inches from the top of the page. Above the left line appears 60” (the underline is in the original). The left edge of the number is aligned with the left line. At the bottom of the right line, printed so as to be properly up-side up were the page rotated 90 degrees clockwise, is 30", aligned on the left (as so rotated) with the end of the right line.

On the next page another vertical line appears, very like the leftmost line described above, but 1 and 5/8 inches from the left edge of the page, complete with its own 60” in hand-inked type font. The next page is blank. This is the middle of the booklet, and here the folded over points of the two staples can be seen.

On the next page another vertical line is found, similar this time to the first right-most line referenced above. It is 5 and 1/2 inches from the left side of the page. At its bottom, rather than 30”, appears 2'33". On the right page, 7/8 inches to the right of the staple fold, appears a line identical otherwise to the first left-most line, complete with 60” in hand-inked type font.

Another vertical line is printed on the left of the next page, like unto the first right-most line, complete with its own unique inscription, 1'40", at the bottom. However, at the top of the line, ending about 1/4 of an inch from the top end of that line, appears additional printing in hand-inked type font: 8-52; N.Y.C. The right page is blank.

Two rectangles are printed on the next page, corresponding to the outer and middle rectangles that appear on the cover. Toward the top of the inside of these rectangles is another emblem, essentially identical to the emblem on the cover. Immediately below this new emblem appears JOHN CAGE, in a significantly smaller and less ornate font than on the cover. Below this, still within the two rectangles, appear two columns of left-aligned type, in a smaller font yet. At the top of the left-most column is seen (continued) followed by, each on its own line, lists of words and phrases, in alphabetical order, starting with MUSIC FOR PIANO 69-84 and ending with WORKS FOR PIANO, PREPARED PIANO AND TOY PIANO. At the bottom right, just outside the outermost rectangle, and almost touching it, 11/06. The right page, being once again of the greenish-tinged heavier stock, is blank.

Two more columns of listed words and phrases are found on the back cover, topped with the same emblem as hereinbefore noted, and JOHN CAGE as on the previous page. However, unlike on the front cover, there are no rectangles. The first column begins 101 and the last column ends (continued inside). To the right of the last column, aligned with the bottom of the last line of text, is a printed bar-code. On the bottom left of the page the afore-mentioned small sticker is affixed. Another bar-code is printed on the sticker.

Now we know, or we presume to know, or we simply presume, several things about the object. First, it is intended to be a musical score. That's what Peters is in the business of. We regard John Cage as, among other things, a composer of music. The object is referred to as a score in the paragraphs attributed to Irwin Kremen and by general repute among those possessed of even a cursory acquaintance with John Cage's compositions. In fact, this may be his most widely known musical composition, having become as good as epithetic: "John Cage, who wrote the silent piece." Although the object itself is inexplicit on this point, there is no useful reason to dispute or comment further upon the fact, hereinafter regarded as stipulated between us, that the object is a musical score.

The bulk of musical scores, whether published by Peters or by other music publishers, are, to a significant level of detail, self-explanatory to those who happen to read music, at least as to those European works written during the last several centuries and as to those works culturally adjacent thereto. This one, clearly, is not. We find in it no discernable hint of any aspect of traditional Western music notation at a granularity finer than "page". We accept, reluctantly, that in such explanations as proportional notation, 1 PAGE =7 INCHES =56”, and 1’40", etc., the various single and double hash marks are understood to refer to minutes and seconds of clock time, rather than to minutes and seconds of arc, or feet and inches, or any other such specialized notations.

Among those with some knowledge of John Cage's practice in regard to the use of proportional notation it is understood that the “proportions” in question are proportions of measured clock time as scaled to measured distances on pages, and that the vertical lines indicate start and stop times of those durations. In this case the six vertical lines are understood to represent three durations - the first, third, and fifth such lines, all labeled 60", counted as they are encountered in the usual Western order of left-to-right reading, represent start times (60" being equivalent to 00"), while the second, fourth, and sixth such lines, each with its unique clock time indication, are the stop times. The measured linear distance between each sequential pair of lines is proportional to the duration of clock time indicated, as scaled by the explanation 1 PAGE =7 INCHES =56", i.e. each page is considered to have so many pertinent inches of linear distance, and so many inches of linear distance left to right is equal to so many seconds of clock time. However, the complications arising from reading such precise distances by eye, not to mention the impertinent page margins, make this problematic, so we’ll take his word for it.

That's it really. All other aspects of how we might interpret this musical score are left to us and/or, heaven forfend, tradition.

The score presents three durations of time. Those durations are all the explicit content it has. I am free to treat them in whatever way I wish. I can treat them as ordeals, geometrical expanses, sample sizes, flavors, empty containers, or zones of peril. If I consider them to be empty containers, for example, I might fill them, upend them, or fill and then upend them. I might use them as a mendicant would their hat. I might wear them as hats. I could bang on them. I could deposit them in the municipal recycle bins.

I might seek help and ask what others have done or thought. There has been no shortage of explanations, but here are some of the loudest.

First, “silence” is what it is about.

OK fine, I get it. But any proper Cage enthusiast will promptly follow this up with the story about Cage in an anechoic chamber realizing that there is no such thing as silence. Great.

Second, “Zen” is what it is about.

Now, as Zen has been propounded informally to me, to really “get it” in any meaningful sense would require a wholesale personal spiritual re-configuration. I, in my current, unwashed, spiritual state, am incapable, unworthy. I must jettison my old self and remake it utterly in the guise of another me that isn't me. I can't experience it, properly, as me, now, but I might be able to, someday, if I weren't me. Fuck that.

Third, “environmental and audience sounds” are what it is about.

Now this works for me fine as a description of someone else's experience of a performance. But, as a performer, I abjure any desire to persuade another person toward pre-articulable inner experiences, be it this or another, and more to the point, this solution treats the score as little more than a friendly suggestion to take a moment and listen to the pretty birds. I’m sorry, but the score doesn’t seem friendly to me at all.

For me, the most salient residue of the musical score object at hand is its thunderclap emptiness, loud and clear. It is an emptiness of such immanence as would wither upon explanation, become a wisp more ephemeral than a debunked rumor of a “’-jum!” in a breeze that may have blown by.

 To be honest. I want nothing. I desire no correct solution, no authoritative explanation. The utterness of this score object’s emptiness demands that I accept it as unmediated emptiness itself, naked and raw.

In February of 2016 Karen Eisenbrey posted in her band-name blog “Square Pig in a Round Hole” her comments upon Nothing Sounds Good in the following terms: “. . . 2) even absence is music; 3) everything on the menu is what I don't want; 4) I prefer the void.” I’ll buy that.

There is no silence here.

There is no ambient sound here.

There is no Zen here.

Here emptiness is emptiness alone with me. I and it and nothing less.

Keith Eisenbrey, July 17, 2022, Seattle

Playlist

Recorded

June 28, 2016
Low Down Blues - Sissle's Sizzling Syncopaters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

What could be imitated, but not re-invented? Referenced, but not owned?

Louis Armstrong

Come Back Sweet Papa - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

One gets the impression that Louis, with varying degrees of success, was doing everything he could to teach his band how to keep up with him. Sweet Papa isn't coming back.

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Sacher, Anne-Sophie Mutter

A text book in how to unpack a tonality. Grooving on those ostinati, each chunk of their respective chunk chunk chunks facing in a new direction.

Trio - Cage - Seattle Percussion Collective [Greg Campbell, Denali Williams, Dale Speicher]

wind up toys
blank face percussive envelopes
measure our remove

Blue Serge - Duke Ellington [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

A movie-star affect, the way it turns its face aside at every of its last moments.

You Go To My Head - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The lyrics veer toward being nothing but a list of words that rhyme, in particularly rhythmed places within the meter. Veer so far as to be nearly without meaning except to the extent that their rhyme is their reason. But the resulting near vacation of the expressive space allows colonization, gentrification, by Sarah's oh so deliberate pacing of tones.

not mc, but rather me, some decades past

June 29, 2016
The Mighty Casey - William Schuman - Juilliard Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

It has some nice moments, and telling touches: the greek rhubarb choruses, and any of the instrumental interludes after the game gets going, are my personal favorites. Otherwise it would be pretty much a train wreck were it not for how it almost allows access to the sense of cosmic time shift that provides much of the aesthetic awe of baseball in the wild: that heady range of magnitudes between the scales of seasons, games, innings, ups, pitches, and the moments of shattering air.

Chamber Music for 13 Players - Arthur Berger - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Gunther Schuller [from Music of Arthur Berger]

The pirate games that pitches play when our backs are turned.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 27, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 912 160627 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We celebrate the 32nd Bannediversary on the porch of the Tintinabulary.

Playlist

Recorded

May 29, 2016
Long Gone - Sissle's Sizzling Syncopaters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Slippery with legato, sempre portamentissimo. Beats are slid onto, slid off from, wide and ample.

I Found a New Baby - Ethel Waters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Ethel Waters

Hearing the room, the space around the sounds.

String Quartet - Ruth Crawford Seeger - Schönberg Ensemble

The distances among the voices are precisely drawn as they answer from each other and from us: light and time, an open land. We hear foreshortened images of instrumental voices across and behind each other, not pulsing but throbbing slow like breathing.

Violin Concerto - Schönberg - State Academic Orchestra of the USSR, Alexander Lazarev, Liane Isakadze

We follow through rooms behind our host. The space is not friendly to the gracious rounding of phrases. Speech is muttered, incomplete, fragmentary - hints not statements. Remembering where you came from won't help, grimly slant.

Nowhere - Charlie Barnet [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

There is a thread of cowpoke rhythm (think Grofé) that runs through the whole of it, rehearing itself as a part of each new thing that comes in - and oh do they come in those new things - until it rehears itself abstractly, as the resultant hocket of independent voices.

I'm Scared - Sarah Vaughan, John Kirby and his Orchestra [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Affectual non-sequitur: the way Sarah's voice comes in at the opening, like the soloist's entry in a late Mozart Concerto.

Frank Martin - best crinkles ever

May 31, 2016
Violin Concerto - Martin - Symphony Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, Frank Martin, Wolfgang Schneiderhan

It opens with the orchestra cycling through several concertos full of possibilities. The melodies are long, but motionless, exactly and ever just here, like monk-chant. They don't move us, rather they carve us out where we sit.

Drown In My Own Tears - Ray Charles [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Transparency. Full and overfull, but absolutely plain, clear. Nothing is obscure.

Atlas Eclipticalis - Cage - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Jame Levine

Performed as a Romantic tone-poem of the immense isolation of the stars, and of the forest dwellers peeping out and up in fear and dread. One could regard the notion of program music to be any music that maps an aspect of the extramusical realms into the musical, so this is really not so far off.

June 1, 2016
Standing In The Shadows of Love - The Four Tops [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Boxes in sequence. Bits if what it is are in them. Structurally decorated, circling the predicament.

Trans (Studioaufnahme) - Stockhausen - Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbracken, Hans Zender

Vertical bands of pitchstuff and hollowness. He's never shy of the obvious gesture, witness the opening band accumulating from the top, inversely echoed by the closing band that evaporates from the bottom.

Book of Rules - The Heptones [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

There are sustained tones here and there, doled out with circumspection.

Simple Gifts - Kia Sams - Prospect Choir

A dynamite little arrangement for children's and adult's choirs, clever and straightforward at once.

Begin The Begin - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

Thick vegetation on a hot day.

Riding On The Train- Ashtray [from Rescued Records]

The walls are close.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
May 30, 3016
Gradus 290 160530 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

Preface

"A note as a sound has suchness. But the note all-alone has no self. Only when it is in the world (as such) of music, it disappears as it participates into "higher" musical units, such as musical phrases. When is a note a sound? When it is an utterance?" - Robert Morris [from "the detail of the pattern is movement", Open Space 19-20 - fall 2015/spring 2016]

Texts

April 23, 2016
Night Blooming Voices -  LaDonna Smith, Wally Shoup, Davey Williams, Jim Willett, Trish McCarl

As I came of age in music, during the '70s and '80s, the DIY medium of choice was the cassette tape. I understand they are even making something of a hip niche-market come-back. Imagine that!

Someone seems to be playing a massive musical saw, capable of deep swooping sounds whose vibrations are so slow one could nearly count them. Everybody else is squeaking balloons, or one massive room-sized balloon. Later they agree to a sound proposal, pulling toward it all together in order then to twist off from each other in multi-bodied fountain arcs. This would kill as the soundtrack to a slow-motion film of people smooching, steering just between horrifying and hilarious. It weaves and finds, weightless. Spoon stirs in a glass, or a marble rolled around? At just the right moment - Stand back! She's gonna BLOW! Banshriek's holiday, roll the coaster. (I would love to see this acted out). Second soundtrack idea: an addled single-tracking-shot through the brains and thoughts of coffee shop denizens. Fluid seeping into subgenres of Gesamtkunstwerk.

April 25, 2016
One8 - Cage - Michael Bach

A compositional discipline for the performer. Pitch, dynamics, color aplenty, but only as placeholders to fill durations. Big dots or long bars in an empty field. The score is to be followed, like instructions, rather than responded to, as a stimulus. The unit of measure is the bow draw. The silences are pushed forward, but they end up uniform, the negative of sounds for which there is no particular reason to be. Or, It attempts to put sounds into a piece of music that are not the sorts of sounds that could be in a piece of music, for in order to be those sorts of sounds they would need reasons, intentions, activators and activations, all of which have been proscribed. The whole is an aural episode without signal of beginning middle or end, every location is the same location. What sort of virtual space is that? The formless and void?

April 26, 2016
Down Around Her Ankles - Pomegranate

As is that which follows, this is another of the rescued records. A practiced clean drum beat, over which the guitar and vocal pull away separately. What I suppose is the bridge relaxes the intensity a bit, functioning a little like a tonal move to the subdominant. The vocal rhythmic play is held to the drum beat by a tight elastic grip, like an industrial strength rubber band, or strong magnetic force.

Love Me Till The Sun Shines - Fantasy Four

Unfancy. A classic drum bass guitar vocal sound.

Wartime Prayers - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

For as much production value as persists or is insisted upon here, it never makes this a polished song, and certainly not a strong poem, instead it places the song's vulnerability into a pronouncedly glaring light.

audio found in the silent 8mm home movies of the Ring Family - Christopher DeLaurenti

Recorded media are notations, intentionally or not. A signal is a notation, however the signal arrives or from whence it derives. As it is derived here, it is an artifact of revelation, the sound of a found signal (re)transcribed mechanically. From hidden to uncovered, like bugs under a rock. I'm not sure how much Christopher edited the material, but I hope the answer is "very little" or "none at all".

Patrick O'Keefe at Seattle Composers' Salon on January 8, 2016 - Patrick O'Keefe

Patrick offered 3 short piano bagatelles. Studies in multiples of musics, circling warily, or playfully, keeping each other's eyes on the other's eyes. I like these even better upon re-audition.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 25, 2016
Gradus 289 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Of subsets within, and transformations of subsets within by re-iteration within transformed subsets within.

April 28, 2016
The Drink I Didn't Have Last Night Is The Drink I Shoulda Had - Your Mother Should Know (as St. Rage) - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We recorded drum, acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals, and lead guitar tracks.

Playlist

Recorded

March 8, 2016
Rondo in D Major K. 485 - Mozart - Mitsuka Uchida

Ms. Uchida plays this so beautifully one could almost be convinced the piece was written for modern grand piano. Her touch is light, as though measured to the milligram. What gives the game away is the sheen, the lack of local presence in the tone. There is no hint of a fortepiano's clavicinian twang to draw us close.

String Quartet in F Major Op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

There are so many ideas to play out that they are continually turning sharply to the side. Finding oneself back at a prior idea is like suddenly coming upon a room one had left some time ago by another door. How did I get back here?

Prelude in C-sharp minor Op. 45 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot [on 11/4/1949]

Eyes fixed dead ahead, inexorable in a focused, lyrical way.

Symphony in D minor (#4) Op. 120 - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner

A set of modest-sized orchestra pieces, thematically linked, masquerading as a symphony. This is one of those pieces that really shouldn't work as well as it so fabulously does. JEG and crew give a spirited performance.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 7, 2016
Banned Telepath 45 Seattle 160307
Banned Telepath 45 Somerville 160307
Banned Rehearsal 906 160307 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, and Neal Kosály-Meyer, in Seattle; and Aaron Keyt, in Somerville

March 10, 2016

Stadium Theater, Jerseyville, IL

Something of Mine - Vocal, Tambourine, and Acoustic Guitar Tracks - Your Mother Should Know (as St. Rage), Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer

Unfortunately there were technical difficulties with the guitar tracks, so we'll need to do those over.

Jerseyville Illinois - demo - Your Mother Should Know, Neal Kosály-Meyer, guitar and vocals

As I was starting to break down the recording equipment Neal informs us that he has a new song. I hastily put everything back and end up with a splendid acoustic demo, celebrating the very nearly random city of Jerseyville, Illinois.

An Exchange - Part the Last

Several months ago Neal and I exchanged emails about Cage. The previous installment can be found in my post of November 7, 2015. Here I choose to bring it to a close. The part of the Bard is played by me, Neal is the Wizard.

Bardic non-sequitur

What if . . .

The variety we perceive is real?

And more, that such coherence as we find is entirely of our own construction?

God creates, consciousness invents what God has always been creating.

The bard awaits the wizard’s response.

Wizard, after long distraction, after having re-read that whole thread, attempts response.

What if . . .

The variety we perceive is real?    If the variety we perceive is real, then our organs of perception must be instruments suited to their tasks.   Must admit, not certain about the origins of this what if, as I don't recall ever stating that variety is an illusion, nor do I think Cage ever said or implied anything like that.    Returning to the "child who says I love you" exchange above, what is real is that as subjects we alternate between separateness and union with our world and also with its separable components.   To thicken the plot, we probably tend to get stuck in one or the other swing of that pendulum.   The General Neurosis might be described as human beings getting stuck in separateness.   Perhaps the mystic ideal of eschewing separateness and achieving some permanent unitive state is equally neurotic.   Feels to me that letting the pendulum swing, and remembering the other end of the swing even when we're at the opposite pole--that would be optimal.

And more, that such coherence as we find is entirely of our own construction?    

Presumably "our" means "human beings' "?    That presumes a fundamental separation between us and everything else that I don't accept, or rather, again, that constitutes the General Neurosis, that thing out of which I would like to find a way.   To accept this "what if " would seem to entail seeing that separation as normal (i.e. NOT pathological, i.e., NOT the General Neurosis).   So it's a very hard "what if" for me to accept, and very hard for me to see a way that I could accept it without enormous sadness and resignation.   It feels less like accepting the situation as normal, and more like accepting that there is no way out of a terrible cage.

God creates, consciousness invents what God has always been creating.     

Curious as to how you would define the distinction between creation and invention here.   Feels to me like your formulation would imply that God and consciousness are one and the same.   I am trying of late to figure out what a non-hierarchical theology would be--an anarchical theology.   The notion of consciousness as something that is not the exclusive privilege of humans feels like a crucial part of that figuring.   So--accepting that our consciousness feels mostly like a different thing than that experienced by the non-human beings, what if that feeling is simply a pole of the pendulum's swing, and that on the other pole that differentness dissolves, though re-differentiating once more on the next swing.    Is consciousness the same thing as creating--primal creating--as listening is primal composition?    The doors of perception seem hereby to be transmuted into the doors of invention:   is this the cleansing Blake foretold, allowing us to see all things as they are, infinite?

The bard awaits the wizard’s response.

wizard out.

Playlist

Live

My journal notes from Salon

March 4, 2016
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle (guest host: James (Jim) Holt)

Jeremiah Lawson - Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Major (acoustic guitar)

Part of what an instrument is is the relation between the size of its box and the intricacy of its articulatory potential.

Nicole Truesdell - Western States Pictorial and Crossing Parallel Lines (piano and toy piano)

Within the hesitations (between phrases, between lines, between instruments) a lively voice plays hide and seek.

Sean Osborn - selection from Four Moods for Two Bass Clarinets

Delightful play on how many of anything we might count that there are, drifting at last into the realm of the unnumbered.

Neil Welch and Marcin Pączkowski

Saxojalopies galumphing downhill at high speed, parts flying in all directions. Eloquent craziness.

Altogether another fabulous night at Seattle Composers' Salon, every piece a delight.

Recorded

February 28, 2016
Good For Northin' Joe - Lena Horne [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Lena takes great care with the progress of her vowels, active to the end.

The Frim Fram Sauce - Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, with Billy Butterfield, George Koenig, Bill Stegmeyer, Jack Greenberg, Artie Drelinger, Milton Chatz, Joe Bushkin, Danny Perri, Harman 'Trigger' Alpert, Cozy Cole [from Louis Armstrong and Guest Stars]

Almost in stripper tempo, the lyrics are an excuse for a couple of vocal show-offs.

Let Your Daddy Ride - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948-1954]

All the sound is stuck tight to a chunky driving beat, like rust on an old spike.

I Wanna Play House With You - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

He leans his voice out over the top of the beat, the shoulders of it are out in front, pushed from below.

The Wanderer - Dion [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

There is hardly a bit of sound in this mix that wouldn't be perfectly clear on a cheap transistor radio.

? and The Mysterians

96 Tears - ? and the Mysterians [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

? rides his voice from high in the back of the mouth, rolling up over the top.

Trans (Uraufführung) - Stockhausen - Sinfonie-Orchester des Südwestfunks, Ernest Bour

Choirs of instruments gnawing at the core, avoiding the Loom Monster and the Stompers - all the hazards of a gnawer's life. Something huge spins beneath the surface. Now briefly we are outside, where the spinning can't be felt (but still the Monster looms). The gnawing is getting somewhere.

At the end there are episodes of silence in the score and applause (and boobirds?) erupt into it, followed by shushushushing. As these episodes recur the shushing and the applause and boobirds play a social (or anti) coercion game with each other. I love how suddenly the music is in a room with people, people with attitudes.

Didjeridervish - 1976 - Stuart Dempster [from In the Great Abbey of Clement VI]

Stu is the larynx, the abbey is the giant's mouth, a sounding organ.

Elephant Talk - King Crimson [from Discipline]

Prog Rock, the music that arose when the musicians started hanging with the guys in the booth.

Three Rhapsodies - Elaine Barkin - Sue-Ellen Hershmann-Tcherepnin, Susan Gall, Ian Greitzer [from Open Space 16]

A wire sculpture, huge as an ocean liner, in which we the life-raft wander, weightless, narrowly lit.

March 1, 2016
Three2 - Cage - Greg Campbell, Dale Speicher, Denali Williams [from Seattle Percussion Collective]

A score is a lens of/for people's proclivities, a wedge prying open a space for use.

Sonic Brilliance 13 - [February 1996 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Kia M]

In the 90's we had small children, and Sonic Brilliance was their improv session before the adults did their thing.

Your 3 Minute Mardi Gras - Christopher DeLaurenti

There is more than an undercurrent of violence in this sound. Breathless staccato jabbing.

Stormy - The Invisible Eyes [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

The surface has been scraped, roughened, smeared - just so.

Steps - Joan Tower - Melvin Chen [from Milton Babbitt: a Composers' Memorial]

Restless birds roost and rise across the marsh. The camera pans slowly.

Amy - Amy Denio [recording of her presentation at Seattle Composers' Salon of January 2016]

Her pieces: Three Times Seventeen Equals Fifty One and Recipe for Disaster. Complete with the introduction and questions. Even more fun the second time around.

March 3, 2016
Se tu fuggi, io non resto - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

We are not the speaker who does not rest, we are the attempt to flee.

Ich bin in mir vergnügt BWV 204 - J.S. Bach - Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Helmut Rilling

The artificiality of the operatic model (recitatives and arias, etc.) is a firm bind, subtle pushes against its constraints tell more than they would in a less conventional style. Some truly fancy singing.

Keyboard Sonata in A Major Wq. 54.6 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Plain Jane configurations spoiled, almost perverted,  in interesting ways. The parts of sequences diverge subtly.

Quartet in F Major Op. 17 #2 Hob. III:26 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

Insurrection slipping unseen between the gaps.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 28, 2016
Autoheterophony 160228 We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder - Keith Eisenbrey

Fourth in this series, exploring the songs I learned in church as a kid.

February 29, 2016
Gradus 285 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

November 9, 2015
Homesickness Blues - Nora Bayes [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Orchestrated and arranged, done-up all proper, but not so tightly bolted together that it doesn't allow lots of give.

Marche Triomphale du Centenaire de Napoleon I - Louis Vierne - Auburn Symphony Orchestra,

Albert Dieudonné

Stewart Kershaw, David Di Fiore

I kept thinking of the scene in Abel Gance's Napoleon where Napoleon (Albert Dieudonné) visits, at midnight, the assembly room where the great figures of the revolution argued. Their ghosts appear one after the other bidding Napoleon to take up the mantel of the revolution for them - the spectral-heroic.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra - Copland - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Lorin Hollander

Lorin Hollander

This is among my favorite recordings of Copland, right up there with Bernstein's Billy The Kid. What takes it over the top is Lorin Hollander's unhinged swing, as though Robert Johnson's poly-tempi had been wound up way too tight. The piano could shatter at any moment.

Bacchus et Ariane - Albert Roussel - Orchestre National de France, Georges Pretre

Program music has become illustration, in the sense that the style of the music is more important to the sense of what is happening than the story - you buy this book for the pictures, not the words.

November 10, 2015
Variations for Piano, op. 27 - Webern - Peter Serkin

A blank, a void of perception, every tune an attempt to enlighten, but the void is always just to the side, inaudible.

Suite 8 - Artie Shaw [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Movie credit music, after which we find ourselves in a hoppin' joint for the first scene.

Dodo's Bounce - Dodo Marmarosa [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The piano solo has a swing that's like steady eighths swerving wide in a fast turn, just this side of disaster.

Music of Changes - Cage - Herbert Henck

Herbert Henck

Narrow focus, nose to the page, a feat of concentration. The relations among what is within the immediate juxtapositional neighborhood of gesture are so complex as to make larger frame structures extremely problematic - hard to see the jungle as an organism when we can only see three or four leaves at a time. Large structures, if there are any, become objects of statistical perception. Come in anywhere. Leave any time. Or: stick it out, hang in there, participate in its feat-ness. Aside: writing music that only an expert could play, one assures oneself of being limited to only those sounds that an expert would play. One can not unlearn how to play piano. There will be no sound that doesn't project precisely, because expertise can make one incapable of anything less (and reinforces the notion that anything other than precise is less, rather than simply other.)

(I'll Remember) In the Still of the Nite - The Five Satins [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Floating a tune around a circulating pattern.

Crying - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

An object lesson in vocal production - he can float that high falsetto D out there perfectly in tune, but the last A, being pushed in full voice, is way out of whack.

November 12, 2015
Revolver - The Beatles

If I had to pick a favorite Beatles album this would probably be it. It isn't that my favorite songs are on it (they're not), but that the songs are so varied, that they don't do each other any harm moving from one to the next, and that it doesn't try to be anything other than a bunch of songs. I love that the last sung word is "beginning."

Hunky Dory - David Bowie

Tries on every hat he can find. Some of them are genuinely icky-creepy. Ever the arch-projectionist, he veers just away from the pastiche-play of Billy Joel and into something more like a critical memoir. He doesn't just 'do' Cat Stevens, for instance, his performance is a commentary from within the persona.

Darlin' Corey - Shorty Ralph Reynolds [from Art Rosenbaum's The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

Fancy banjo time, after which he explains his tuning. Art asks him if there are any other songs that use that tuning. Apparently not. That tuning and that tune are one and the same.

Prince of Darkness (Sinner, Sinner) - Bow Wow Wow

Spawn of Thriller.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 8, 2015
Trio 151108 - Keith Eisenbrey

Back to the trio project after several busy weekends, this comprises three tracks on a suspended plow disk, two gears from a tractor clutch (hanging from a two-by-four A-frame), and a tenor banjo.

Banned Telepath 40 Somerville 151108 - Aaron Keyt

November 9, 2015
Banned Telepath 40 Seattle 151109 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 898 151109 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Tambourines across the continent! Shake it!

Playlist

Live

October 20, 2015
Jonathan Biss
UW World Series - President's Piano Series - Meany Hall, Seattle

Sonata in C minor, K. 457 - Mozart
Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19 - Schönberg
Sonata in F Major, K.533/494 - Mozart
Kreisleriana, Op. 16 - Schumann
Waldszenen: Abschied (encore) - Schumann

It would have been nice if he had played the Schönberg twice, there is so much there and it goes by so quickly. But also it exists within such a radically different projected social image than Mozart that it takes a while for the ear to adjust itself. It's like the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen's character finds himself unexpectedly, and with growing horror, closeted with Christopher Walken confessing to self-destructive fantasies.

My feelings about the evening were mostly positive (lovely singing tone, delicate shadings of phrases, etc.) my major gripe being that the fast tempi were, to my ear, simply too fast for the music's internal articulation to come through. This was most apparent in the Schumann, who perhaps doesn't do himself any favors with his sehr rasch and noch schneller. However, there is potent contrapuntal detail in the quick figurations that simply doesn't make it to the back of Meany when played too fast. A quibble I suppose, but it seems a shame that only the pianist himself is close enough to pick up on all those marvelous twists and turns.

Recorded

October 22, 2015
Sonata for Viola and Piano - Ivan Sokolov - Karen Bentley Pollick, Ivan Sokolov

As though a long lost sonata by Franck had been discovered, though eventually it nods toward the modernism of Debussy.

Warren Burt

the shape of the voice I: Milton Babbitt - Warren Burt [from Milton Babbitt, a composer's memorial]

We turn pages of textured modulations

I am not sure
the sound having stopped

and having sat after
for some time

when
I should

or should want
to regard this

as being

(ever)

finished

On a personal note, I had the good fortune to meet Warren Burt many years ago when he visited Bard College in the early '80s. I remember him passing out the (single page) score of a piece that could be played even post-apocolyptically - not certain there would be instruments left or any technology with which to construct them, it is scored for rocks (banged together). An experimental stalwart and a fascinating thinker.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 19, 2015
Gradus 277 151019 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I started thinking about the musical metaphor of the vertical, the up-down-ness of pitch, and how embedded this concept is in our language, how "high and low on the pitch spectrum" could be mistaken for a qualitative primitive, irreducible. But I was noticing in my hearing of these assorted E-naturals and C-sharps that I was also hearing vestiges of a different, tonally-functional vertical sorting. Any E seemed, somehow, to be higher than any C-sharp, and both tended down toward an implied A-natural root. In other words, in tonal perception, the root of a chord is always at the bottom of some metaphoric, but palpable, pile of notes, regardless of its particular actual spot along the spectrum.

Exchange

Last week's post included my comments on listening to a recording of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis. Neal Kosály-Meyer responded by email, and I offer here our exchange, I will give Neal the last word, but do plan on responding soon - so further installments are likely:

Me and Neal near the start of our disagreement about Cage

K: 
Atlas Eclipticalis - Cage - The Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra,with The Hartt Contemporary Players and The Arditti Quartet, Melvin Strauss

30 minutes of the most lovely of nearly-overs, of almost-dones, of penultimatisms, spent in contemplation of my constitutional inability to hear sounds as themselves, empty of meaning. To hear a sound as itself I would need to not be aware that it was made by a human being, or that it was laden with social freight. Such a position seems deeply misanthropic, murderous. Would music be best for Cage if none were there to hear it?

N: 

Would music be best for Cage if none were there to hear it?

            No, since for Cage hearing is the essential or even supreme musical act.   So more like, that music would be best which involved only listening.   He always said his favorite piece was the silent piece.

Such a position seems deeply misanthropic, murderous.

            

           “This project will seem fearsome to many, but on examination it gives no cause for alarm.   Hearing sounds which are just sounds immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, and the emotions of human beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature. Does not a mountain unintentionally evoke in us a sense of wonder?  otters along a stream a sense of mirth?  night in the woods a sense of fear?  Do not rain falling and mists rising up suggest the love binding heaven and earth?  Is not decaying flesh loathsome?  Does not the death of someone we love bring sorrow?  And is there a greater hero than the least plant that grows?  What is more angry than the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder?  These responses to nature are mine and will not necessarily correspond with another’s. Emotion takes place in the person who has it.  And sounds, when allowed to be themselves, do not require that those who hear them do so unfeelingly.  The opposite is what is meant by response ability.”  JC Experimental Music, 1957

To hear a sound as itself I would need to not be aware that it was made by a human being, or that it was laden with social freight.

            If we hold listening to be the highest and subtlest musical act, “hearing a sound as itself” is an ideal, a koan, a counsel to let go of ideas and feelings about that sound and return to listening, then again and again letting go of the ideas and feelings that come to return again to listening and that sound itself whose heart we will never exactly reach, though in the course of the quest to reach it we may at some point find our ears to be now in excellent condition.

spent in contemplation of my constitutional inability to hear sounds as themselves, empty of meaning.

 

           See above—as in meditation no one’s heart or mind will shut up, ever.   Letting go of thought and feeling to return to stillness, darkness, silence, the deeper mystery, always being pulled back by thought feeling cough sneeze itch ache fatigue anxiety, all that is not the still dark silent deep we seek—that’s how this works.  And there is no empty, of anything.

30 minutes of the most lovely of nearly-overs, of almost-dones, of penultimatisms,

            Sounds like my idea of a good time.

I expect we'll continue to have this particular discussion on into the future.   Thanks as always for the stimulus to thought about what it is exactly that I am and we are doing.

K:

yeah yeah, chapter and verse, amen.

The problem is that I don't have a way to understand the notion of "the sounds as themselves" that has any particular meaning. If he means "sounds as an emanation of nature", well that's a completely different thing to my mind, but the media complex of concert music trappings he chose to work in pretty much overwhelms any hope of that. And any sound made by a human person, or even any sound I experience has having been made (conceived, designed, produced, reproduced, or banged out in situ) by a human person, becomes an utterance, a token of social exchange, more or less transparent, more or less charged, ineluctably connecting us together, actively communicating us.  For me, it is the hearing of sounds "as utterance" that sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, the empathic heart to understanding. If emptying the sound of it's utterance-hood is the ideal, then that would necessarily sever then connection between utteror and utteree, literally dehumanizing the token of exchange, leading back to murder.

Don't get me wrong here, I enjoyed the recording immensely, but as an utterance, as many things more than sounds "as themselves".

see you Monday!

N:

yeah yeah, chapter and verse, amen.

               I still pray for you, brother.

The problem is that I don't have a way to understand the notion of "the sounds as themselves" that has any particular meaning.

           Except that it seems that you DO have a notion that has a quite particular meaning:   that of being amputated or severed from that which you don't wish it to be amputated or severed from, or of being the instrument or victim of murder.

If he means "sounds as an emanation of nature", well that's a completely different thing to my mind,

             It feels more direct to me to think of the sound AS nature, or as just being itself, rather than being an emanation, messenger or intermediary.   As when Beckett said that Finnegans Wake is not about a thing, it is the thing.

but the media complex of concert music trappings he chose to work in pretty much overwhelms any hope of that.

             Using the trappings of concert music certainly thickens the plot, especially back in the day when musicians and conductors would ignorantly or intentionally sabotage pieces like Atlas.   Nowadays recordings like this one or the SEM Ensemble's seem to me to offer a different and refreshing thing that a set-in-its-ways beast like a symphony orchestra can do.   Hearing orchestras do repertoire like this well actually gives me hope for music and I guess for humanity.

And any sound made by a human person, or even any sound I experience has having been made (conceived, designed, produced, reproduced, or banged out in situ) by a human person, becomes an utterance, a token of social exchange, more or less transparent, more or less charged, ineluctably connecting us together, actively communicating us.

                Hearing Cage played well always feels me to me intensely human and intensely uttersome, generally requiring significant engagement, attention to fine detail, a respect for the composer and what he has made.   I guess I find it more exciting when what is being uttered is a sound formed and contemplated in as much detailed glory and mystery as is possible to form and contemplate, and often mysterious as utterance, just as often serendipitously connecting to the rest of the piece in a theatre or a phrase or an arc that can be as extraordinarily compelling as if it had been the result an intended design, and often the more enjoyable because I know there was no such intention.

For me, it is the hearing of sounds "as utterance" that sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, the empathic heart to understanding.

           As indicated, I don't think sounds cannot utter if we're actually listening to them.   There is perhaps an implicit metaphysic in Cage that utterance, consciousness, feeling, thought are not exclusively human qualities or attributes, but are generally present in all things.   At least that's the way I like to imagine the universe, not privileging thought feeling and design as being things that only humans do, but as being inherent properties of all manifestations of matter and energy.   Can't be proved or demonstrated one way or the other, obviously.   Imagining it that way, for me, makes the universe more fun, friendly and less lonely, I guess.   Cage's music played well usually makes it feel more likely to me that this is in fact the way things are.

If emptying the sound of it's utterance-hood is the ideal, then that would necessarily sever then connection between utteror and utteree, literally dehumanizing the token of exchange, leading back to murder.

              I would argue that privileging thought, feeling, design etc as exclusively human, and narrowly defining "utterance" to conform with that is the more amputating and murderous act, and the sort of thing that defines what Freud called the General Neurosis, that which makes us, as Nietzsche would have it, the "Sick Animal."    I don't need all music to be like Cage's, but I definitely need Cage's music among those I hear and contemplate--for me it opens kinds of doors and windows OUT of the sickness that hardly anybody else's does.

            I'd add that all of this very much validates and confirms the work I've taken on with Gradus.    Among lots of things, that project is very much about taking that Cagean sound-in-itself notion and carrying it into a way of playing which is not dependent on the strictly composed ways that JC employed.    Your continued enthusiasm for Gradus means even more to me given the frustrations you still have with Cage, since it  feels like I'm managing to transmit what's most important to me about him in a way that you can receive without as much ambivalence as you experience with Cage's own compositions.   Must be doin my job.

             P.S.   Felt I needed to add that my final response (to your bit beginning "If emptying the sound of its utterance-hood . . .")  was not meant to be as harsh or contrarian as it may read.   That came out because it hit me that the imagery of amputation and murder were reminding me of something on point, which was Norman Brown's close reading of Freud, Life Against Death, especially the sections in which he traces the early developmental crises and their culmination in the Oedipal phase.  Brown emphasizes that these are not simply "normal" developmental phases however universal, but tragic and traumatic experiences that each of us has gone through, and that the final result, the mature human ego, is in fact something which is profoundly amputated or castrated from that which it would be better not to have been amputated or castrated from.    Freud's heartbreaking insight is that we are as a species burdened with an awful and constitutional illness out of which it is difficult to see the way out.   Brown sees more hope than Freud, partly through a re-thinking of psychoanalysis at a social level rather than just individual, but also in ways that artists might envision different, healthier ways of being human.

Playlist

Live

October 16, 2015

Highline Tavern, Seattle

Red Ribbon

Ephrata

Prom Queen

Salad Boys

Oddly, it seems Red Ribbon's Bandcamp page is down at the moment, but I'll put the link up there anyway. It has been too long since we've heard Emma Danner and crew, and in the interim they have grown solid at the core. Her vocals are not as pushed as they were those first few shows, allowing her voice to revel in quirkiness, floating blissfully in the wash of the five-piece instrumental flangethrash.

they had darling stickers

Ephrata is a four piece, advertising themselves as "Seattle's best all girl and all guy shoegaze dream pop band." I'll buy that. What is remarkable is that their go-to vocal sound is four-part harmony, and the happy combination of two girl voices and two guy voices has a classical balance that works well for them. And they look so wholesome! What a nice family!

Prom Queen is a "cinematic 60's rock band from Seattle", in costume and wig. In front of some solid drumming (nice looking gold sparkle set!) the dynamic between bluesy guitar and female vocalist had something of a Mickey and Sylvia flavor to it, but all done in stripper tempo and with a don't-you-dare-come-fucking-hither attitude. A heady brew, to be sure.

Prom Queen eye roll

Salad Boys are on tour from New Zealand, of all places. Two skinny tall prancing guys up front on guitar and bass, and one apparently nearly asleep drummer in the back who, when playing, is all in and steady as a rock. At first blush the vocalist reminded me a little of the Rod Stewart of Maggie May, but veered off into more REM territory, possibly due to the density of sound provided by electric-twelve string. (I want one). We enjoyed it thoroughly, but we had to take off before their last two songs in order to catch our bus home. And now I need to take a nap.

Recorded

October 11, 2015

Wozzeck - Berg - Paris National Orchestra, Pierre Boulez

It measures: place in time, place on compass, place on social hierarchy. Wozzeck is unmoored in all. The orchestra is not an accompaniment as in Mozart, nor an enveloping world within which the singers live, but is more like a malign antagonist - jeering, heckling, commenting on the action to itself. It's like sitting next to a rudely loud person at a movie, or as though the heckler characters in Ludwig Tieck's Der gestiefelte Kater had been transformed into a music, a doppelganger of the play.

October 13, 2015

Music for Small Orchestra - Ruth Crawford Seeger - Schönberg Ensemble

One might imagine her puzzling out how the pitches in Le Sacre du printemps work around each other, and ignoring everything else. 

Ionisation - Varèse - New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez

Something uncivil is occurring, just around the corner.

Romeo and Juliet Suite #1 - Prokofiev - Seattle Symhony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Of a piece with Disney animation of the time: something creepy masquerading as an anachronism.

Anitra's Dance - Donald Lambert [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A series of masks.

Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra - Neville Mariner

Peapod racing. Very fast. Very tiny.

Kreuzspiel - Stockhausen - London Sinfonietta

Ceremoniously theatrical. The tunes wander as though blindfolded.

Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

Atlas Eclipticalis - Cage - The Wesleyan Symphony Orchestra,with The Hartt Contemporary Players and The Arditti Quartet, Melvin Strauss

30 minutes of the most lovely of nearly-overs, of almost-dones, of penultimatisms, spent in contemplation of my constitutional inability to hear sounds as themselves, empty of meaning. To hear a sound as itself I would need to not be aware that it was made by a human being, or that it was laden with social freight. Such a position seems deeply misanthropic, murderous. Would music be best for Cage if none were there to hear it?

One More Heartache - Marvin Gaye [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Indian Reservation - Paul Revere and the Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

Social consciousness (of a sort) as a TV theme song.

October 15, 2015

Space Oddity - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Birth.

The Once Over Twice - X [from Wild Gift]

The sound is packed under pressure, squeezed tight from both sides.

Papa Don't Preach - Madonna [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

That's B.A.D. - Moe Tucker [from I Feel So Far Away: Anthology 1974 - 1998]

agitprop.

Banned Sectional 24 KEE NWM - January 1996 - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Two grappling avatars furiously constructing a drummer. As it thins out Neal's tenor sax blurts create ghost echoes both before and after (it was recorded on cassette tape and loud sounds will leak both up and down the layers of spiral in storage). This is an effect that, I think would be impossible to duplicate live - echoing an event that has not yet occurred.

Downtime - Benjamin Boretz [from Open Space 20]

There is a favorite moment of mine in the middle of Shostakovich's Symphony #1 where the piece comes to an emphatic and unambiguous end. Thud. There is a short pause and the pianist suddenly bangs a big chord, knocking the remainder of the symphony down a staircase where, eventually, it does end. There is something of the kind at work here as well, though the effect (if effect it is) repeats itself thematically, drilling into deeper rock each time, but which is nevertheless completely other than S's satiric-comic model, since it occurs not in quotidian time, but in spirit or soul time, kairos rather than chronos.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 10, 2015

Maple Leaf 151010 - Keith Eisenbrey

We had a bit of a blow and a drench, so I recorded a few minutes of it. Of course things mostly settled down as soon as my recorder was set up, but I did get some nice white noise and an occasional rattle from our decrepit wind chime.

October 12, 2015

Attic 151012 -  Keith Eisenbrey, with Karen Eisenbrey assisting

Karen and I are, at long last, going to have our attic insulated. This necessitates hauling all the stuff that we were storing up there back down into the house. I aimed the microphone up toward the attic access and did my best to refrain from profanity.

Banned Telepath 38 Seattle 151012

Banned Telepath 38 Somerville 151012

Banned Rehearsal 896 151012 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, and Neal Kosály-Meyer (in Seattle); and Aaron Keyt (in Somerville)

Among other joys, Aaron and I play a cross-continental piano trio (I had two keyboards at hand).

October 13, 2015

Trio 151013 - Keith Eisenbrey

Toy piano, german concert zither, and electric bass.