Twittering Machines

Bill Dixon
Thoughts

Recorded at Paul Robeson House – Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont on May 16, 1985

Bill Dixon – piano, trumpet, flugelhorn
Marco Eneidi – alto saxophone
John Bruckman – tuba
Peter Kowald, William Parker, Mario Pavone – double bass

I got to see and hear this ensemble minus William Parker in my last year at Bennington. What sticks in my mind most was intensity. From the first note to the last, this was an edge of your seat adrenaline crush of a concert. I also  remember Peter Kowald’s physicality – a big, bald, brawny German dressed in black, he nearly consumed his double bass when playing. They very nearly looked like one thing.

I also remember a distinct sense of violence. Or maybe fury is a better word to describe the emotion that lit up the hall during the performance. I also distinctly remember how direct Peter Kowald was when he asked my then girlfriend back to her room. I think it was the next sentence after ‘hello’. Come to think of it, there was this violent sexual tension in the music and this night these musicians seemed to have everyone in their grasp. Intense.

The Paul Robeson House where this record was recorded has an amazing history which includes housing the first retrospective of Jackson Pollock’s paintings in 1952.

And this is Jennings which was home to The Black Music Division founded by Bill Dixon in 1973 (imagine this shot with Dixon’s Jaguar E-Type coupe parked out front and imagine how badass that was).

Jennings was like its own college within a college and while I never took a course with Bill Dixon (yes I have kicked myself), I met him a few times and found him intimidating (I think he liked that) and intense with a wicked sense of humor. A truly fascinating character. And if there’s any one record that reminds me of the Bill Dixon I was lucky enough to be around, it’s Thoughts.

I came across this quote by Piero Scaruffi and even though he’s talking about another recording, it applies:

His own trumpet was a magical device, that attained great emotional intensity with a trickle of notes. Melodies were hinted at, rhythms disappeared in rhythmic vacuums, harmonies disintegrated as they were created.

I intend to get all of Bill Dixon’s recordings over time, fill in the blanks and be thankful for the time I can spend just listening.

I do not, as a rule, do encores. When I have finished playing, I have indeed finished playing. I have nothing left; there has been no reserve. ~ Bill Dixon

Bill Dixon
Considerations 1

All pieces performed at Bennington College, Vermont except “Places and Things” performed in Paris, France.

Three of these pieces are performed by Bill Dixon alone on trumpet. “Places and Things” adds Steve Horenstein on tenor sax and Alan Silva on bass and “Pages” adds Steve Horenstein again on tenor, Henry Letcher on drums and Dixon on trumpet and piano.

Bill Dixon was born on October 5, 1925 and he grew up Nantucket, MA “30 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean”. Considerations 1 includes experts from The Fifth of October his autobiographical writings and this entire record sounds like a very personal record; like pages from a journal or sketches from a notepad.

“There was a lot of fun in those days – walking along the beach even on the late Fall with no shoes on; feet sinking in the sand. And the roar of the ocean to be almost forever inscribed upon my mind and hearing. In fact, it was years later after we moved to New York that I discovered that what was ‘wrong’ or ‘missing’ was the absence of that sound.”

“..my mother has reminded me…..sometime in the Fall when they made their own beer – that even before I was able to walk I’d come noisily crawling down the stairs the minute I heard escaping air as the top was being taken off a bottle of beer.”

If you can imagine those two sounds, the roar of the ocean and the hiss of air escaping from a bottle of beer, you’ll have an idea of the extremes that sound out of Dixon’s trumpet. Yet this music is lyrical in the literal sense – “Pages” where Dixon plays piano accompanied by Horenstein on tenor sounds like the soundtrack from a Jean-Jacques Beineix film. “Long Alone Song”, “Shrike” and “Solo” where Dixon plays alone allow us to hear into the scope of his sound and his ability to tell a story with pure tone,  the absence of tone – instead the hiss, blurt, squeal and roar that he conjures from his memory/trumpet – and the spaces in between.

Considerations 1 includes a reproduction of one of Dixon’s drawings. There is a Considerations 2 but I’ve never seen a copy.

Bill Dixon
Son Of Sisyphus

“When I play, whether you like it or not, I mean it.” Bill Dixon

Recorded June 28/29, 1988 at Barigozzi Studio, Milan and released on Soul Note in 1990, this record features Dixon on piano and trumpet, John Buckingham on tuba, Mario Pavone double bass and Lawrence Cook percussion.  I saw and heard the trio portion of this lineup minus tuba perform a number of times at Bennington and this record brings back some bits and pieces of those memories – mainly a kind of exquisite tension.

This music is beautiful, sparse and tonal like taking a moment of In A Silent Way and extending it for two sides by dissecting and magnifying that fragment over and over until there’s as much silence as notes (a silence reminiscent of the Second Viennese School). It’s also a beautiful sounding record and the tuba adds a foundation whose voice is similar to Dixon’s trumpet yet makes it shine as something that much more apart, opening up a vast middle ground for Mario Pavone and Lawrence Cook to play around or wreak havoc within.

Here’ Bill Dixon from the liner notes: “This work, these small pieces, laced together to make a whole, is a representation of things, musical and otherwise, that at this point continue to occupy a considerable portion of my thinking. And in that instance serves /or should serve/ to detail these interests to that segment of the music public equally interested in those thoughts and their genesis.“

I hear it, I like it.

Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon
Consequences

Note that’s a “/” not a “&”. Bill Dixon’s “7-Tette” gets Side A, Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5 Side B. The Dixon side was recorded in New York, December 1963 and the Shepp side in New York in January 1964. Originally released in mono on Savoy, the reason for this odd un-pairing was Dixon and Shepp had been together as the Archie Shepp – Bill Dixon Quartet and they had a two record deal for Savoy. After releasing their debut titled Peace in 1962, they split but owed Savoy a second record so this is what they/we got/get.

The Dixon side is fairly straight-forward (for Dixon) but even within this structure Dixon’s trumpet playing is already showing signs of non-trumpet-sounding interests – that fat air-pulse pushing its way right through any sense of melody or time. Overall there’s some great playing from all involved and Dixon’s addition of tuba and oboe also hint at other more composed voicings to come.

Bill Dixon – “7-Tette”:

Bill Dixon, trumpet
George Barrow, tenor saxophone
Ken McIntyre, alto saxophone and oboe
Howard Johnson, tuba and baritone
Dave Izenzon and Hal Dodson, basses
Howard McRae, drums

The Shepp side is wild woolly and wonderful and Archie sounds as out and angry as ever, even at the crack of 1964. Don Cherry showed up late for the session so Ted Curson stands in on a few tracks but the New York Contemporary Five burn.

Archie Shepp and the New York Contemporary 5:

Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone
John Tchicai, alto saxophone
Don Cherry, trumpet (track 11)
Ronnie Boykins, bass
Sunny Murray, drums
Ted Curson, trumpet (tracks 9 and 10)

You can hear, at least I’ll offer this observation with clearer hindsight view, how Shepp is going in one direction – out, while Dixon’s compositions move inward.

No, I don’t have Peace but I will. Both were re-released by BYG Records.

Leo Kottke
Circle ‘Round The Sun

Idiosyncratic doesn’t do Leo Kottke’s style justice but it’s the best one-word I could come up with. And yea, his guitar playing is idiosyncratic to a point but his influences are clear (Delta-style) as are his amazing skills. But Leo Kottke sings, too. A strange quavering baritone that seems to be in constant search of a centered drone but makes due with a tune.

This record is Kottke’s third, released on Symposium records and never released on CD (ha!). Eight of the 11 songs are studio versions of his first LP – 12-String Blues – which was recorded live at the Ten O’Clock Scholar coffee house in Minneapolis in 1969. That’s! the record to have (released on Oblivion Records it’s out of print and was also never released on CD (ha!)) and I haven’t. Yet. Here’s what Leo says:

“Whereas with Circle ‘Round The Sun, the mistakes were made in pursuit of something. [Circle] was supposed to be the professional version of [12-String Blues]. That’s why [Circle] sucks and why [12-String Blues] is whatever it is. The vocals on [Circle] were [makes yodeling sound]. On [12-String Blues], you can hear a door opening on it. It was recorded with two old EV dynamic mics on goosenecks and a Viking quarter-inch tape recorder. Man, I’ll never forget it.”

I certainly wouldn’t say this record sucks, in fact I like it. I like it like I like homemade apple pie and Budweiser and things that are made by whittling. I like it for all its quavering baritone’d yodeled quirkiness and amazingly beautiful 6 & 12 string guitar.

Welcome to your listening session. Now just relax and pretend you’re in your living room.

Neil Young
On The Beach

Neil’s 5th solo record released in 1974 in between Time Fades Away and Tonight’s The Night and he’s still searching for Mr. Soul. A bare-sounding record low on polish high on grit, Neil is spreading his wings but he’s forgotten (purposely) how to fly. Maybe more than anything else he just sounds lonely and loneliness is feeding his voice just like that fever did on Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere.

On The Beach was a rarity for a decade or two since it was out of print on vinyl by the early ’80s and it wasn’t released on CD until 2003 (and the cassette and 8-track versions were limited). I had all but forgotten about On The Beach until Alex Halberstadt played it for me when I visited his home a while back. Since then I’ve been keeping an eye out for a decent copy and finally picked this one up eBay.

“Walk On” and “For The Turnstiles” are the more popular radio play songs but On The Beach also contains a blues trilogy – “Revolution Blues”, “Vampire Blues” (about our oil greed), and “Ambulance Blues”. Neil is joined by a varied crew of musicians including Levon Helm and Rick Danko, Graham Nash and David Crosby and Ben Keith the only musician to play on every track besides Neil.

If ever you could judge a record by its cover, this is one of ‘em. That newspaper headline reads “Sen. Buckley Calls for Nixon to Resign” and sits in the sand next to and under cans of Coors alongside a sand-submerged Caddy as Neil stares off into the horizon. As if to suggest he’s leaving things behind. A turning point, a fish temporarily out of water or something more literal for the flip side. Not to mention the cryptic liner notes by Rusty Kershaw that close with:

I give you my word
there is good music in this album.

And there is.

“You’re all just pissin’ in the wind. You don’t know it but you are. And there ain’t nothing like a friend who can tell you, you’re just pissin’ in the wind.” from “Ambulance Blues”

Here’s a peak at another side from the original promo poster…

see, he’s not really sad after all

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We went back to the Ship Inn (NJs first brew pub) in Milford, NJ for our 2nd annual Father’s Day dinner.  The good news is while I’ve grown another year older, I’ve also grown wiser and I offer the fact that this time I left with a full growler as evidence. OK, I guess you could point out how silly I was to leave without one last year but let’s not quibble. And you really do have to drink this stuff in a day or two tops since otherwise it’ll go flat. And that, as we all know, is a sin and in this regard I can be considered positively saintly.

The other bit of good news is my Mill is still for sale and its only a little hairier.

Happy father’s day fathers!

And what more fitting display of the occasional grumpy old-manism ‘because I said so!’ that seems to have seeped into my persona as it seeped into my father’s and his father’s before him than the old-world tradition of the after dinner smoke.

I offer a mostly pictorial appreciation (in chronological order)…

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Quit by accident, I stepped into a new and trans-formative hi-fi tweak – The Clever Little Shit.

First some history – One day one of our dogs accidentally poo’d in my listening room. My first reaction was obviously one of horror but as I bent to wipe up the mess, I noticed something unexpected – Jennifer Warnes had moved farther back, much farther back into the soundstage!

I quickly put on one of my favorite reference discs Jazz At The Pawnshop and it was as if I was right there ** in the Pawnshop ** surrounded by all of those great sounding musicians whose names I can never seem to remember. In any event being as curious and inquisitive as anyone with a thorough knowledge of DBTs and fiberglass-based absorption is wont to be, I brought some dog shit to a few audiophile friend’s homes and discretely left a wad or two in unobtrusive places.

“Say Mike, what did you do while I went to the bathroom? The soundstage is suddenly HUGE and the bass is much tighter.  And I swear I can hear more sparkle from those cymbals. And what’s that godawful smell?”

Well imagine their surprise when I showed them the shit! The only drawback that everyone seemed to agree on was the odor-coefficient and some of our better listeners, corporate jingle-writers by trade, seemed to notice a lessening of the positive effects as the tweak hardened.

Not to be discouraged, I decided to get serious and hired an ex-NASA custodial engineer who helped us create a synthetic poo that embodies all of the positive effects of real poo without any of the negative side effects. Our shit doesn’t stink and it lasts forever!

What’s more, Mr. NASA has also applied a Quantum DiLithium Cryogenic Crystal Tesla Area 51 shower to our Poo which alters the synthetic poo at a sub-atomic level imbuing it with EMI/RMF shielding properties! And say goodbye to Alzheimer’s to boot! (while we’re not certain of this last benefit, my great-grandmother who unfortunately suffers from the malady declared upon seeing our newly developed tweak – “That looks like shit.”)

The even better news is all of this can be yours for an introductory price of $159.87 per pound. We recommend one pound of poo per cubic inch of listening room. And if you order today, we’ll include a free 10oz container of “Honey I Can’t Believe It’s Not Urine!”.

The Seventh Seal
Tartan Video Special 3D Edition

I finally got to see Ingmar Bergman’s classic film The Seventh Seal in 3D and now I finally get it!

“And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal,
there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour”
(Revelation 8:1)

He was talking about God’s silence through all of life’s pain and suffering and the game of chess Block plays with Death represents mortality, the problem of free will and the search for meaning. “My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning. I feel no bitterness or self-reproach because the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed.”

I never understood any of this with the plain old crummy black and white version and I believe these revelations were brought on by how big and palpable Bibi Andersson’s breasts look in 3D.

4 out of 5 spectacles
Highly Recommended!

Marion Brown | Gunter Hampel
reeds ‘n vibes

Recorded at Blue Rock Studio, NYC on January 30, 1978 and released on Paul Bley’s Improvising Artists Inc. label, reeds ‘n vibes sounds like some dreamy dream soundtrack. The Brown/Hampel collaboration goes back to 1968′s quintet recording Gesprächsfetzen but here they’ve paired down and paired up. Side A opens with a pair of solos, first Hampel on vibes then Brown on alto sax as if to give your ears a clear taste of the individual ingredients. They join forces for “Arrow In The Wind” a sultry and beautiful city-in-the-rain sounding slow burn.

Side B starts with “Flute Song” a three-part row down some steamy jungle river – Brown plays wooden flute throughout while Hampel starts on percussion, switches to his own flute (the duet is like watching birds mate) and he finishes off on vibes. They close things out with reeds ‘n vibes on “Improvisation” a sparse back n forth with Hampel sounding at times electronic and Brown sounding like he’s singing about Coltrane.

Considering the fire in Marion Brown’s playing on records like John Coltrane’s Ascention and Archie Shepp’s Fire Music, the simple beauty of this record may come as a surprise. But Marion Brown is if nothing else surprising. From his musical tone poem Afternoon of a Georgia Faun to 1975′s Vista which features a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Visions” complete with vocals, if there’s one thread that connects all of these seemingly disparate Brown’s is I don’t think Marion Brown can make a sound that isn’t somehow beautiful if he tried. And Gunter Hampel’s vibes are a perfect accompaniment ringing equally lovely and lush. A perfect late-night in the dark record.

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