There are less glorious ways to greet a Sunday morning than with Mahavishnu Orchestra. Listening to Between Nothingness & Eternity first thing in the morning is akin to surveying a cluttered room for a minute before spending the next twenty running a gas-powered leaf blower over it until ever nook and corner is blasted clean and empty.
There is a lot of music to walk to the dog to, Yusef Lateef being as good a choice as any. I had read somewhere about his "symphony" albums Concerto for Yusef Lateef and Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony, wrought on the most cheddar of keyboards, and considered one of them for this sojourn, a nice follow-up to the aformentioned orchestra. I like the way he incorporates his name into the sterile servility of classical composition names. I picture him in a skit referring to himself by his full name - "Yusef Lateef is going to eat Yusef Lateef's hamburger now!" But ultimately, this hipster jazz won out - one needs to have one's stroll on while walking the dog.
The weird opening track "The Plum Blossom" with the jug-sounding muted flute against that ratatat beat and idle tambourine - it's like if you were drumming your fingers and so were the people around you and somebody yawned and suddenly everyone at once realized it made a song.
Ed. to add: My daughter and I were listening to this on repeat as we cleaned up the back yard. "I like that song you were playing. It sounds like jazz." she remarked. I told her, "It is jazz."
"Hmm" she said. "Weird. I don't usually like jazz all that much."
Preparing, always preparing. My friend Philip and I are preparing a new collaborative blog effort about badass contemporary composers, if for no other reason than it will lead us to find our who they are. In those efforts, I came across a best of 2008 list from the classical critics at the New York Times and acquired a few of them in preparation for a day on the road - today I was headed back to my home town with my daughter in tow to see my parents, and to, of all perverse things, go to the circus. (click at your own risk) So as a part of subpreparation, I went to Wal-mart with the above collection of Michael Gandolfi's fine orchestral work in my ears. I can do the big box stores with headphones on, in fact I rather enjoy how the throng of frustrated shoppers get Koyannisqatsi'd by whatever I'm listening to. NY Times critic Allin Kozinn said this collection would "show that angularity can be beautiful" and well, the only beauty one can find in Wal-Mart is at an angle.
Gandolfi's tasteful survey of 20th-century music styles is a little smooth for my jagged palate, though I will say I stopped my cart in its wobbly tracks at the 9th movement of Themes from a Midsummer Night (Time Dream) where strains of pulses and patterns collide at differing tempos forming a complex organic harmony out of disorder, perfectly describing the relatively deserted shopping behemoth at that early hour.
The road calls for sturdier stuff, so the Orion String Quartet's muscular performance of the first four string quartets by Leon Kirchner got me on my way. One of my goals of this new blog is to find a contemporary badass specializing in string quartets, for they are my favorite, and Kirchner is close. He has that Schoenberg daydream thing going without the master atonalist's feathery touch - Krichner saws through the laws of music to form his pieces. The music takes place like a cocktail party - people speaking in bursts, possibly answering each other, possibly not. The 3rd quartet with the electronic tape accompaniment was particularly nice - at one point there was a giant squelching buzz, like when someone on Family Feud offered an answer not in the survey results.
Once that played out, I opted for the pleasantries of the Now Ensemble. I know nothing about this group, except they share a label with itsnotyouitsme, whose album as described in the NYT roundup piqued my interest. My suspicion is that the real interesting new music is being done not by composers as such, but by art music bands such as this one. It was raining hard at this point, and the back roads to my home town are slick and nerve-wracking in these conditions, so all I can say is the Now Ensemble was a sweet burbling compass that guided me through the storm.
Thanksgiving leftovers were eaten. The circus was observed, and pretty funny actually. There was a French clown that did these really simple but effective stunts on a bike, and nothing is cuter than six immaculately trained dachshunds. I will agree that the circus is a terrible thing - I kept hoping one of the elephants would toss a goddamn clown into the bleachers and go out in a blaze of glory, but nope, they danced to rehashed New wave hits along with the rest of cast.
On the way home, I wanted to hear John Adams' Hallelujah Junction since I plan to read his autobiography named for this piece, lauded in yet another NYT list. The piece is piano four hands, and consists of, it seems, only two notes arranged and overlapped to create a full orchestra simply out of juxtaposition, resonance and rhythm. Like most everything else Adams does, it is lovely.
My tastes for rippling minimalism were like my desire for Thanksgiving leftovers at this point - fully sated, so I jumped into Yes. I cannot stop listening to Yes. They have become my "What Would Jesus Do" bypassing the question part and going straight to the affirmative response. My daughter requested that I change the song from the back seat because it was creeping her out. Once again, youth recognizes when questions need not be answered, or even asked.
So I put on The BBC Sessions from Belle and Sebastian. If I didn't have some silly personal rules against reissue packages residing on my favorite-of-the-year list, this would be near the top, if only for "Stars of Track and Field"
From 2006 in San Fransisco:
I love this song so much it hurts - I think the version recorded for the Beeb is implausibly more poignant than the original, and any tension of darkness and rain and family and holidays was quickly erased by it. The excess of Yes was contained by it, the racing pulses of minimalist composers and the lurching arrhythmia plaguing old Kirchner corrected into a slow, healthy gate, and in it Wal-Mart and my hometown and the circus converged, elephants freed from their duty playfully tossing merchandise around the store and with that, I pulled into my driveway and shut off the car.
I just heard this song on the radio and felt its simple yet profound joy needed to be shared with all who can hear me. Jonathan Richman is no musical genius, nor is he a knucklehead but he can extract the genius in the knucklehead like nobody can. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go listen to the Original Modern Lovers album over and over and over and over
Born in the 50s looking so bold Fender Stratocaster Everythin' your parents hated about rock 'n roll Fender Fender Fender
Wangin' and a twangin, sounding so tough Fender Stratocaster And the kids in my corner, they can't get enough Fender Fender Fender Like the wind in your hair when the top is down Like taillights headed for another town Fender Stratocaster, well there's something about that sound.
Like gasoline in the sand Fender Stratocaster Like a motorcycle at a hotdog stand Fender Fender Fender Like the Dunkin Donuts in Mattapan Fender Stratocaster Like the Thrifty Drugs in Santa An' Fender Fender Fender Well the sound is thin and the sound is cheap Like a tin can falling on a dead end street Fender Stratocaster, well there's something about that sound.
(Guitar)
Well how can it sound so tough? Fender Stratocaster And it's made to be treated rough. Fender Fender Fender It's got the ancient Egyptian script Fender Stratocaster It's got the wang bar from the crypt. Fender Fender Fender Oh you should have known it right off the bat One look and you know it would sound like that Fender Stratocaster, well there's something about that sound.
Like gasoline in the sand Fender Stratocaster Like a motorcycle at a hotdog stand Fender Fender Fender Like the Dunkin Donuts in Matapan(?) Fender Stratocaster Like the Thrifty Drugs in Santa An' Fender Fender Fender Oh and the sound so thin it's barely there Like a bitchy girl who just don't care Fender Stratocaster, well there's something about that sound.
Like Woo Woo Ginsberg at the juke box joint You hear the sound and you get the point. Fender Stratocaster, well there's something about that sound. Oh Oh Oh Alright, etc.
rating: 3 of 5 stars I am notoriously terrible at watching movies - the combination of a contrived story, the dark, siting still, and the hours between 8 and 10 in the evening are the lyre of Orpheus. I usually fall asleep twenty minutes into a movie and wake up twenty minutes before its over and think nothing happened, piecing the two ends of thing together with dream logic. I walk away feeling GOD I hate movies, how can anyone like these stupid things before realizing that I missed all the important parts that make for a compelling story.
I feel like that happened to me with this book, thought I am pretty certain that I bookmarked my spot when I did occasionally fall asleep. This has all the right elements: an author I like, the post-apocalypse, and most importantly, the suggestion of a friend whose tastes I trust. He brought this up during a discussion about The Road --he did not care for and I consider to be one of the most powerful books I've ever read-- saying this was a much more dynamic, interesting and believable traipse through the years after end of the world, citing one particular detail I won't disclose here that made me go "NOOOO WAY DUDE I gotta read that!"
I think dream logic is the mortar with which this thing was put together, but it was not that delicious, heavily perfumed kind that Garcia-Marquez uses; this was the haphazard, loose threads of actual dreams. The garbled patois of the post-apocalyptic inhabitant of the Florida keys and the uneasy interplay of customs that even the characters didn't understand made a believable case for what it would be like for the shell-shocked next generation to rebuild some sort of society out of the scraps, there is little talk of the bomb or what goes down in the Quarantine - they are stumbling through the process of living like people always do.
And maybe that is what is missing here - you don't feel a philosophical resolution here, or at least I didn't. I felt like I was missing something throughout this whole thing, some thread tethering me to the cosmic had been missed. You want this out of apocalyptic literature; the idea that we have learned something about ourselves in the destruction of the world. The truth is, we probably wouldn't learn anything and we would go about the business of rebuilding the absurdity of society in the shadow of the radioactive nightmare, dragging in fishing nets, being scared of other ethnic groups, practicing our weird little religions, wondering what those old silent grandma's are thinking up there on the porch. In that sense, this is likely a more realistic portrait of life after it all goes to shit than in the bleak, magnificent fable of The Road, but that is the kind of thing I tend to sleep right through.
