Twittering Machines

sorry for the crappy picture but the original shrinkwrap is very reflective

Laura Gibson
if you come to greet me

Laura is from the small, and I can’t help but imagine, creepy in a David Lynch way town of Coquille in beautiful Coos County Oregon. She currently resides in…Portland (where else?). This is that guitar and more importantly ukulele playing singer songwriter I sent a pic of a while back. Her phrasing and timing, like the LP title, is rather quirky. A little off. Like Karen Dalton only sweeter. With piano, trumpet and vibraphone from Cory Gray, violin, viola, musical saw!, mandolin, banjo and lap steel from Peter Broderick, cello and celeste by Heather Broderick, drums/percussion and vocals Adam Selzer, Wayne Miller on bass, Marika Hughs cello and Al James vocals.

And I’m a big sucker for the free do-dads you get from some record companies in this case Graveface Records - here we get a “Color By Number”, poster for daturah, a candy eyeball and little rubber skeleton. So cool.

 
Fred Frith & Henry Kaiser
With Friends Like These
&
Who Needs Enemies

A dynamic duo for sure. I originally picked up Enemies intrigued by the two Skip James covers (“Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” & “Special Rider Blues” ) and was very pleasantly surprised by the as straight as it gets from these guys performance. Doing some googling, I found its logically titled predecessor and while it’s more on their noise/effects side, I’m still diggin these mighty guitarmeister collaborations.

Sept 17, Wed NY – BROOKLYN MUSEUM
Jesper Just’ Solo Exhibit featuring new works w/music by DC

Kari gave me the heads up on this one – a show at the Brooklyn Museum featuring artist/film maker Jesper Just and music by thereminist Dorit Chrysler. From Kari:

DC is the beautiful thereminist Dorit Chrysler whom I interviewed for the first IWA; Jesper Just is her Danish boyfriend; I saw recently a video work WITH MUSIC by Just Jespers here in Helsinki, and I liked it: both appealing and crazy.

Etron Fou Leloublan
Face Aux Elements Dechaines

A big blast from my college days past. Etron Fou Leloublan (Crazy Shit, The White Wolf) are wacky madcap French avant-jazz-punk-satire-rockers. Oh so French, oh so fun. I haven’t listened to this music for probably 20 years and it’s a blast hearing it again – and it sounds great. This is their last LP from 1985 featuring Ferdinand Richard on bass and vocals, Jo Thirion organ vocals and Guigou Chenevier on drums, sax and vocals. Produced by Fred Frith.

 From ProgArchives:

“All of ÉFL’s albums are so off-the-wall their music is almost impossible to describe: pulsating staccato snaps of drum, bass, sax, keyboards, with vocals vicariously woven into odd, complex musical structures – all this performed with amazing precision.”

scrap ready for my next trip to PREX. The thought of converting this stack o plastic to beautiful LPs is music to my karma

My Morning Jacket
It Still Moves

Maybe I lost them in all that swingin hair? Last week I heard one of My Morning Jacket’s songs on the radio and liked it. Yesterday I grabbed this at PREX, listened and really liked it.  At times coming scarily close to unpleasant memories of southern rock but they veer off down a more psych and varied road in the nick of time. Big voice, sweet harmonies and tasty guitars.

And then there was this reference I should have picked up on:

“…now I’m listening to Fleet Foxes, and, yes, it is good””a gentle mix of early Arcade Fire and earlier My Morning Jacket, but that’s too simple.”

I need to pay closer attention to that blog.

Archie Shepp & Philly Joe Jones

From 1969 and essentially the same line-up as Blase including Chicago Beau on vocals, soprano sax and that wonderful harmonica, Julio Finn harmonica, Earl Freeman on bass (and wearing the coolest headgear ever) and with the addition of Anthony Braxton on alto and soprano sax and Leroy Jenkins on violin. This set’s 2 tracks “The Lowlands” and “Howling in Silence” have a wilder, angrier flavor compared to the seemingly appropriately titled Blase with screams and screaming as themes burning through both tracks. Hot.

From the liner notes:

“The Lowlands” is a musical portrait of life in the black ghettos and southern black communities. The music begins with shouts and screams because shouts and screams are a sure sign of life. L.T. Beauchampe (Chicago Beau)

What is “howling in silence?” Examples, I think, are the best explanation: Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Martin Luther King. I have used this expression because I think it is the most beautiful way to say “screaming”. Julio Finn

:zoviet*france
Norsch

Finally. I have every Zoviet France LP I used to have. The most recent purchase, Norsch, a 12″ 45rpm from 1983 is one of my favorites. Heavy foil cover, silk screened cardboard insert all carrying some desolate, raw, distorted creaking and groaning pulses of tribal musical noise. Yum.

Milford Graves is a drummer, herbalist, professor, martial artist, acupuncturist and Guggenheim grant recipient for his proposal titled “Biological Music“. Milford taught at Bennington College for nearly 30 years. I was fortunate enough to have met him during my time at BC where I heard him perform (which was a physiological experience like no other) and where he treated among others an x for back problems eliminating the need for spinal surgery.

Milford also developed Yara, a ‘fighting style’. From an article in New York Magazine from 2001:

Yara sparring sessions, hours long and full-contact, are legend in South Jamaica. “People come in here thinking they’re bad,” says Wendell Orr, a yara student now working in the international-security field. “But once they see bodies flying around, they rethink what they thought.” And everyone agrees that the most dangerous yara practitioner is the form’s inventor, and guru, Professor Graves. Expressing “no toleration for those who are more mouth than practicalities,” Milford knows every pressure point and still throws a very wicked double left hook.

“Me and Shaq O’Neal?” queries the 180-pound Professor, dead serious. “Anytime. You hurt him where he’s not used to being hurt. Then teach him to heal himself, get him in tune with his natural frequencies.”

This is the essence of Graves’s basement project, which he calls “biological music, a synthesis of the physical and mental, a mind-body deal,” for which he won a Guggenheim grant in 2000. “We want to explore the true body rhythms,” Graves says, “people’s vibrations, frequencies. Because people vibrate, and they vibrate differently. There’s a true personal music. Once you get with it — it can make you feel a lot better.”

Here’s Milford:

“I didn’t get into jazz until maybe 1962. It was John Coltrane who did it. There was this place out here on Merrick Road called Copa City. A little Queens club. A tenor player friend of mine, Joe Rigby, a great high jumper from Cardinal Hayes, he was a Trane man. He said, ‘Hey man, get your head out the sand, the greatest saxophone player who ever lived is playing out in Queens, right by your house, and the greatest drummer is with him.’ We went down there, young guys, got a front table. That was the first time I ever saw Elvin Jones. They were playing My Favorite Things, man! Elvin, he was so loose …and I said to myself: that’s it for the timbales. I went out and got myself a trap set.”

Milford’s recordings as a leader are sparse but Tzadik just released another CD-only wonder notable for a number of reasons including; Milford doesn’t record much, his last 2 releases on Tzadik were solo efforts and here he’s playing with Anthony Braxton and William Parker and they are just amazing together. Masterful. And the music they make is fresh, powerful, wonderful and alive. (I know I know. I emailed the people at Downtown Music Gallery who fill the Tzadik orders asking them about the possibility of a vinyl release and got no response):

Braxton, Graves, Parker – Beyond Quantum

Milford Graves discography as a leader includes:

Percussion Ensemble (ESP Disk)
Babi (IPS)
Meditation Among Us (Kitty)
Grand Unification (Tzadik)
Stories (Tzadik)

Millford also played with Albert Ayler, the New York Art Quartet, Sonny Sharrock (Black Woman) and others.

Anthony Braxton, Milford Graves and William Parker

Sonny Rollins
Freedom Suite

One of my favorite records of all time. I listened to this on cassette over and over and over while painting at college. And over. My cell mates must have hated it, my painting teacher loved it as he spent years listening to it over and over. Meditative music that tends to ease off internal pressures like a steam value. 1958 Sonny, Max Roach and Oscar Pettiford.  Simple (deceptively) beautiful and masterful.

Emotions are a funny thing. When I first bought this box set, I felt disappointment. Now that I’ve lived with it and listened to it a number of times, I’m thrilled to have it. My guess is, buying up in 1 shot such an important chunk of my musical past just felt a little too convenient, too condensed. It also served to remind me how I used to own all these LPs and how we used to listen to these songs on cassette tapes in our cars parked on a mountain side singing along drinking beers and how the future was so big, unimaginable and filled with endless possibilities. Looking into the night sky.

I am the lizard king, I can do anything.