Twittering Machines

spotted here

“Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart.”
Maria, Metropolis (1927)

John Cage & Marcel Duchamp
27’10.554″ for a Percussionist
The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. Erratum Musical
First Recordings

John Lee Hooker
Sings The Blues

This was part of last night’s play list – in order – and it reminded me of how broad and useless the category Music is. The Cage/Duchamp record is a mind game of sorts, titillating antiseptic cleverness which is only apparent once you read the liner notes. From the first few notes of John Lee Hooker’s first track, “I Need Some Money” you’re immediately rooted into the earth, dirt and all. No reading required. I wasn’t really thinking, consciously at least, when I put that John Lee Hooker on the platter. But it made me laugh out loud.

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

After days of running what-if spreadsheet scenarios, I have to say my body wanted to respond to John Lee Hooker while my head was looking for a more elegant solution. I guess the trick is finding some in-between that allows the heart some necessary mediation.

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Around the turn of the last, last century in North America, a few kinds of people spent an inordinate amount of time outside when most were inside staying warm by the fire: these included lumbermen, Alaska gold miners and hunters. Most of them wore woolen clothing made in American woolen mills from companies like Woolrich (1830 in PA), CC Filson (1897 in Seattle) and the Johnson Woolen Mills (1842 in Vermont).

But if we want to stay warm today while bar hopping in Manhattan, cutting down a Christmas tree or trying to find our car in the Costco parking lot while carting a month’s worth of beef, what’s a modern mountain man to do? Buy a coat with an ® or â„¢ after the material name, I know. But in keeping with our work wear /  classic American clothes theme, there’s an even more obvious choice…

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James Brown, Mayor Kevin White (right) and city councilor Tom Atkins, at the Boston Garden, April 5, 1968.

…a Lamborghini Miura and a Stockhausen cassette.

” It was Stockhausen which so totally caught his attention,” proclaimed British arranger-composer and master cellist Paul Buckmaster, a close friend and collaborator of Miles’ who initially introduced the trumpeter to Stockhausen’s post-war forays into electronic music and tape manipulation and oversaw much of the On the Corner sessions alongside Davis. ‘He obtained a cassette copy of Stockhausen’s Hymnen and found that piece most intriguing. I saw, in fact, that he had that cassette in his Lamborghini Miura’”¦”

Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid
The Exchange Session Vol. 2

If there’s any recent LP purchase that screams JD, this is it. Kieran Hebden pairs up with drummer Steve Reid for a 3-sided co-mingling of musical souls. Electronics, drums & percussion. Two men making music together from seemingly disparate places yet these 3 sides heat you up from the inside out like some Shamanic ritual.

“This record represents Divine intervention & revelation knowledge…Keiran Hebden, my musical soul mate.” Steve Reid

“…the most natural musical connection that I have ever felt with anyone. Meeting Steve Reid has changed everything for me. He brings the rhythms to the music that I have always dreamed of.”

Reid grew up playing drums in John Coltrane’s living room as a teenager and went on to be the drummer for Martha and The Vandellas while still in high school (on Dancing in the Street), James Brown and Fela Kuti to name a few. He also had his own record label – Mustevic – and played with Miles on Tutu.

Kieran Hebden is best known for his Four Tet recordings which I know of because of JD and he’s also done a boatload of remixes for artist as diverse as Aphex Twin, Anti-Pop Consortium, Beth Orton, Super Furry Animals, Radiohead, Matthew Dear, Andrew Bird, and Black Sabbath.

From the liner notes by Joseph Ghosen & Antoine Rajon – “No doubt this session…will be as highly regarded as any previous output because of their spiritual force, very brutal and delicate, a true tapestry of sounds born on opposite sides of a river but finally finding a common ground somewhere in the middle of an ever-changing flow.”

You can’t step into this same river once, you’ve got to dive in head first. Splash. Recorded live with no overdubs or edits on the 4th of April, 2005 at the Exchange in London and released on Domino Records.

You know that nice, simple and relatively inexpensive Pointer Brand Hickory Chore Coat we were looking at? Well Junya Watanabe / Commes de Garcon got a hold of one of Pointer’s denim chore coats, took it apart, put it back together again and added some PVC pockets (and admittedly some style) and turned it into the “Deconstructed Fully Reversible Junya Watanabe Comme des Garçons Man x Pointer Brand Denim Jacket“.

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At this very moment, my old cherry red Gibson Flying V is being transformed — transformed by the good man, Mark Dalzell  (who, strangely, reminds me of John DeVore in many ways), over at Metropolis Music (240 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ) — transformed from a mild-mannered axe into a weapon of love; a sexy demon of blissed-out, psychedelic daydreams, of fire and air and soul and all kinds of hot shit.  (See above.)

Dalzell, who holds a Bachelors of Music in Viola, “has studied and performed on everything from 15th century instruments such as vielle, cittern and shawm to Indonesian gamelan instruments, to experimental electric violins, digital trumpets, and just about every instrument in a symphony orchestra.” He also builds his own strange instruments, including “The Destroyer,” a hybrid electric guitar/mandolin/theramin.

To see more of Mark’s work visit PhotoGuitar.com.

…a 1965 Porsche 356c Cabriolet (with a funky paint job). I must make amends.

(May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010)

Rickie Lee Jones
Girl At Her Volcano

A mix of studio and live tracks from the late ’70′s through the early ’80s and released in 1983, Girl At Her Volcano is my all time favorite Rickie Lee Jones record. Her live version of “My Funny Valentine” is pitch perfect her vocal inflections conveying waves of emotion and sounding like the best unknown horn player you’ve never heard while drunk in some bar, “Walk Away Rene” is touching, “Under the Boardwalk” is full of youthful hopeful happy longing, “Hey Bub” is coolly forlorn, “Lush Life” is sloppy happy sad and “So Long” is nearly impossibly lovely.

But it’s always been “Rainbow Sleeves”, a song written by Tom Waits, that dredges up impossible alcohol-fueled hopes from the deepest places you never knew you had and don’t want to know about when sober. “whiskey gives you wings / to carry / each one of your dreams”

Group Bombino
guitars from agadez
music of niger vol. 2

Group Bombino is lead by 29 year old guitarist and vocalist Omara Mochtar. He got his first acoustic guitar at age 11. Today, the Group Bombino like other Agadez musicians including Group Inerane use mostly shared gear when they have a show. This is music of rebellion, the most recent rebellion ended in May 2009 and I gather the main issue is Nigeria’s Uranium-rich land making politicians, mine owners and foreigners rich while the rest of the country lives in poverty.

Side 1 is the “dry” or acoustic side and side 2 is most definitely electric. If you dig Tinariwen, you will dig this. I was reminded of this record when I saw it on The Wire’s Top 50 from 2009 list and it’s a raw, angry and brutally beautiful record.

photo by Laurie Giardino

In the town where I grew up, there was a father who left for work each morning with all of the other fathers and like most other fathers he wore a suit. One day, an older brother of a friend went for a job at a local warehouse and saw this particular father working. Only thing was he wasn’t wearing a suit. He was wearing work clothes. Turns out he would change into his work clothes every morning at work and then back into his business suit before coming home.

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I’m away for like, well, honestly it feels like a year or so, and I miss an epic string of awesome posts. Woo-hoo!