2017's Highlights

I never got around to writing about my favorite musical experiences from 2016, so I figured I'd do this now before time slips away from me again, because 2017 was a really good year!

One of the few posts I wrote in 2017 was a review of Arcade Fire's Everything Now and as the year comes to an end, I have to say that the title track is one of the most moving and powerful performances I've experienced this year. I was fortunate to see the band in Denver back in October and the whole show was strong and inspiring. It really struck me as to how they can still seem to have an intimate rapport with their audience even though that audience comes close to 16,000 people in a coliseum type venue! 

Then there was the unexpected collaboration between two of my favorite 'slacker' song-writer/performers. I'd have loved to see them live.

Speaking of another performer who can make any venue seem like an intimate living room, though the album came out in 2016, I got to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in NYC in June, and more than once there were shivers running up my spine and tears flowing from my eyes. By the end of the concert, there were over 50 people from the audience up on stage and Nick was two rows away from where my friend Dawn and I were sitting at the Beacon Theater. When he returned to the stage, there was one of the biggest group hugs I've ever witnessed.

So, one of the many treats and surprises this year was the first album from Broken Social Scene in 7 years! It had gotten to the point where I just stopped thinking they'd ever get it together to record as a group again, and here's the title cut:

Perhaps the other most surprising treat was the new release from Do Make Say Think entitled Stubborn Persistent Illusions, their first in 8 years! Best listened to all the way through, here's "Bound and Boundless," one of my favorite tracks from the new one:

One of the heaviest albums released in 2017, and garnering accolades from many quarters is the new band, Ex Eye, featuring the phenomenal saxophone playing of Colin Stetson, alongside some fierce drumming from Liturgy's Greg Fox and guitar from Toby Summerfield, topped off with keyboards from Shahzad Ismaily who plays with Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog. While generally spoken of as "Metal" of an avant-garde variety, you'll hear influences from jazz and minimalism -- in a very maximalist way!

Speaking of Colin Stetson, he had a busy year, as along with several soundtracks, he released another solo effort, All This I Do For Glory. It was a difficult choice as to which piece to share here, but finally I settled for this powerful short one, "In The Clinches" as it shows a bit of the sheer physicality involved in Stetson's playing, free of any overdubs or looping! That's right friends, he does this all in real-time, every sound coming from him and his instrument; no enhancements! He mics the sax so the mechanics of the instrument create the percussive parts and the dog-collar he wears includes a contact mic picking up his 'vocalizing' via his vocal cords.

She didn't record a new album this year, but Natalie Lafourcade at The Rialto here in Tucson was a brilliant performance that was a true highlight of my year musically speaking. 

Another fun live show I got to see was the legendary "ramen rock" band Shonen Knife when they played 191 Toole here in Tucson. They've been rocking together for 35 years and none of them look like they're 35 years old! Must be that ramen....

Most ambitious project of the year must go to Stephen Merritt who wrote a song for each of the 50-years he's been alive; a kind of musical memoir. Each of the five disks covers a decade of his life. I don't think it will take the place of the masterful 69 Love Songs, but 50 Song Memoir is truly an impressive feat. Considering the scope, I offer this link to a page I hope offers a grouping of one song from each of the five decades:

Finally, I end this with three local bands including one of the more exciting discoveries (for me) from this past year; the Tucson-based Friends of Dean Martinez played several weekends at the dark and very cool whiskey bar, Owl's Club and they just blew me away with their lush, deconstruction and reconstructions of some pretty classic pop and jazz tunes. I knew nothing of them till I read about them in Tucson Weekly and apparently they have links to the more well-known Giant Sand and Calexico. 

I also got out a few times to see my creative neighbors (well at least two of the three of them) Golden Boots, who released a new cassette (yes, exactly) this past year.

I think the band I saw the most times in 2017, hands down, was Kyklo, which I've called one of Tucson's musical treasures. They need someone to get them into the studio and record them! Here's a small excerpt of them playing one of their many gigs at The Coronet...

AND yes, last but not least, the new one from Bradford Trojan who ends up being the last music performance I got to see in 2017; a fun gig at Tap and Bottle just the other night!

Happy New Year!

Everything Now!

Very early in my "music critic" career (which spanned from the late 70s through the mid-80s) I came to recognize that music criticism -- and by extension any critical writing -- is more revealing of the critic than of what is being written about. And even then, I shied away from the "critic" role, rarely writing about anything I did not like. Rather, I wrote about the music that moved me; that held importance for me. I wrote as a fan wishing to share with others the profound experience of listening to what moved me. Just maybe, I hoped, it would move you, the reader as well.

Arcade Fire has recently released their fifth full-length cd Everything Now, and I think it may be their most fully realized effort since their first ground-breaking cd, Funeral. That is to say, it's a near-perfect offering, and has deepened in my appreciation with each listening. Moments of sheer frisson, with the hair-raising, eyes misting telling me there is something about this music that viscerally means something to me at this point in my life permeate this album. And, as always when any piece of art moves me in this way, I feel gratitude and want to share it with anyone willing to listen.

Win Butler, the brain behind the band, has a real deep understanding and appreciation of the "album format," and to varying degrees, every Arcade Fire release has been a "concept album." With Everything Now, this carries to the very formalist aspect of the song sequence. The album begins with a short "Intro" titled "Everying Now (Continued)" with the first thematic expression of the concept: "I'm in the black again. Not coming back again. We can just pretend we'll make it home again from Everything Now." It's a slow, draggy staccato rhythm over a bit of a drone-dirge. It ends with a female voice saying "Now" and the title track, "Everything Now" begins with it's big romantic melodic motif spelled out on the piano. The more I listen to the opening verse, the more I get the chills:

"Every inch of sky's got a star and every inch of skin's got a scar,
I guess that you've got Everything Now.
And every inch of space in your head is filled with the things that you read,
I guess that you've got Everything Now.
And every film that you've ever seen fills the spaces up in your dreams, that reminds me
of Everything Now."

Later, Butler sings: "Every inch of road's got a town,
and daddy how come you're not around"

and you begin to truly understand the vacuousness of having "Everything Now."

When the chant begins, "Everything Now.... Everything Now" he sings:

"Everything Now.
I can't live without.
I can't live without.
"Till every room in my house
is filled with shit I couldn't
live without.
I need it.
I can't live without.
Everything Now."

Whew! I don't know about you, but this hits home a bit closer than I'd like to admit.

After Refector's electro-disco, Everything Now, while holding still to some of that (especially in the Kraftwerk sounding riff of "Put Your Money On Me") there's a strong white-soul-funk reminiscent of David Bowie's "Thin White Duke" phase, but to my ears, sounding more rocky and less artificially synthetic. This funk first rears its head on "Sounds of Life," with the repeating refrain:

"Looking for signs of life.
Looking for signs of life every night,
but there's no sign of life.
So we do it again."

"Creature Comfort" always raises the goosebumps and brings on the wet eyes. I know it's me. Fuck it. Wim and Regine trade lines:

"Some boys hate themselves, spend their lives resenting their fathers.
Some girls hate their bodies, stand in the mirror and
wait for the feedback, saying,
"God, make me famous, if you can't
just make it painless." Just make it painless."

And the sheer impossibility of making it painless rips into my heartmind. It's the first noble truth: duhkha. 

And:
"It goes on and on, I don't know what I want,
on and on, I don't know if I want it.
On and on, I don't know what I want,
on and on, I don't know if I want it."

Truly!

"Peter Pan" alternates between dreams where the beloved is dying or living. It's an expression of anxiety about what age brings:

"Be my Wendy, I'll be your Peter Pan.
Come on baby, ain't got no plans.
Boys and girls got all the answers,
men and women keep growing their cancer..."

Butler ends asking, "How can I live with so much love?"

"Chemistry" plays with the age-old notion that whatever makes any relationship "work" it's something beyond mere personality that boils down to sheer chemistry -- which if we could only remember, comes down to formulae! There's a playfulness when he sings (with tongue in cheek?): "Chemistry, you know me. But how could you know me? I feel like you know me. Right." Is this not the fundamental issue around NRE (New Relationship Energy)?

Then comes a pounding rocker just over one minute long called "Infinite Content." Butler chants:

"Infinite Content. Infinite Content.
We're infinitely content.

All your money is already spent on it.
All your money is already spend on
Infinite Content."

This formally ends "Side One" coming as the 7th song on the album followed by a folk-country version of "Infinite Content" beginning side two. There are 13 songs on the album and the 7th and 8th songs are different versions of the same song. "Electric Blue" is another funk-rock tune. Regine sings:

"Summer's gone and so are you.
See the sky electrocute a thousand boys that look like you.
Cover my eyes, Electric Blue."

The funk continues with the heavy bass line that introduces "Good God Damn," which plays with the phrase "Good God damn" by asking "But maybe there's a good god, damn,"

"Put Your Money On Me" has that Kraftwerk sounding ostinato pattern while Butler sings:

"Put Your Money On Me,
Or tuck me into bed and wake me when I'm dead.
I know that you gotta be free,
but I'm never gonna let it go."

The penultimate song asserts "We Don't Deserve Love" and Butler sings: "If you can't see the forest for the trees, just burn it all down, and bring the ashes to me." Mommy and daddy make their appearance again (they turn up periodically in many Arcade Fire songs gong back to Funeral, when he sings: "Hear your mother screaming, hear your daddy shout. You try to figure it out, you never figure it out" and what mama is screaming is "You don't deserve love."

And then we come to the final cut and it's the opening cut again! "I'm in the black again. Not coming back again. We can just pretend we'll make it home again, from Everything Now."

This time, a lush string arrangement builds in a crescendo that ends abruptly, as if the tape broke. When listened to on a car cd player, there is no gap between the end of this and the beginning of the first cut and you begin to related to the whole album as a helix; or a closed loop like a mobius strip. It's its own world. It is Everything Now!

Black History Month, Part Two

"Jazz is one of the most meaningful social, esthetic contributions to America.... it is antiwar; it is opposed to [the U.S. war in] Vietnam; it is for Cuba; it is for the liberation of all people.... Why is that so? Because jazz is a music itself born out of oppression, born out of the enslavement of my people."

- Saxophonist Archie Shepp.

Last week, in my own personal celebration of Black History Month, I wrote about those black musicians who had the greatest influence on my childhood development; specifically about several of the powerfully moving Black women vocalists, particularly Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughn, and the two giant royals of swing: Duke Ellington and Count Basie. This week I wish to share about those radical innovators I discovered while in High School.

My friend, Gary Conroy, was the one who introduced me to the later, avant-garde work of John Coltrane. Live In Seattle, recorded in 1965 but not released until I was a Freshman in High School in 1971 totally turned my musical world upside-down. I had already been introduced to Eric Dolphy through the work of Frank Zappa. I loved his huge intervals and sharply angular melodies such as in “Iron Man” as well as his amazingly virtuosic fluidity and range on the generally unwieldy bass clarinet as brilliantly shown in the classic “On Green Dolphin Street.”

But nothing in my previous experience – not John Cage, Morton Subotnick, or Karlheinz Stockhausen – had prepared me for the burning intensity of John Coltrane’s late work, inspired both by his study of world music (most significantly the music of Africa and India), his spirituality, and the civil rights and black nationalist movement of the 1960s. The opening track, “Cosmos” already sets the warning: stay with this, and you will be challenged, broken down and rearranged: I remember thinking, “The Beatles were playing ‘She Loves You’ the same year this searingly intense performance was recorded!”

I needed context for this new-to-me music so I read Amari Baraka’s BlackMusic where I heard an angry, erudite voice that a white boy such as I, growing up in Queens, New York had never had exposure to; a voice that gave words to the critique and challenge of the music. Read the linked excerpt to get an idea of what I'm talking about!

After this, I was hooked. I barely listened to any white artists other than Zappa, Beefheart and The Velvet Underground for several years, diving deeply into what Muhal Richard Abrams, founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (from which the Art Ensemble of Chicago, among many others, had their formative nourishment) called “Great Black Music.”

During High School, it was the passionate musical expression of the “Free Jazz” movement that dominated my life: Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, EricDolphy, Art Ensemble of Chicago, and others were who I listened to along with more reading from such books as Frank Kofsky’s Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music which really made explicit the political and social aspects of the music.  

From the psychedelicized Dixieland roots of Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" and Ornette Coleman's deeply moving "Lonely Woman," which after forty years continues to be among my favorite pieces of music from any genre, to John Coltrane's spiritual expression of "A Love Supreme" and Eric Dolphy's "Meditations on Integration" as well as the Art Ensemble of Chicago's musical "play" depicting the history of Black people in America and Mingus' "Fables of Faubus" which is directed at the racist governor of Arkansas who called out the National Guard to prevent integration in Arkansas schools, please follow the links and remember the sacrifices made by these amazing musical icons. 

To my mind, this music captures a time when real societal change seemed possible. We live now in a time when such a revolution is long overdue; a time when we must do what we can to nurture, what a friend has referred to as “r/evolution.”

Black History Month, Part One

Let's be frank; it's an expression of the institutionalized racism in our society/culture/nation that we have to even have a "Black History Month." Why the need to specify a month for Black history if there isn't the unacknowledged racist assumption that American history is generally White/European? This is made even more galling by the fact that Black men and women have made perhaps the largest and most influential contribution to American culture, especially music, which is the focus of this blog.

So, with that said, I wish to spotlight some of the Black singers, song-writers, musicians and music-critics that have had the biggest influence on my life. Throughout my life, music has had a central place in my development: my thinking, my emotional and intellectual understanding and my survival (not to sound overly dramatic, but following Nietzsche, I truly believe life withouyt music would be impossible).


This week, I'd like to share about those Black musicians who had the earliest impact on me, from when I was a child listening to Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, Abby Lincoln, Della Reese and others that my mother listened to.

Sarah Vaughn's nicknames were "Sassy" and "The Divine One" and indeed her voice could be both sassy and divine -- often in the same song. She may have been my mother's favorite singer, but that may have had something to do with the fact that mom actually sounded a bit like Sarah when she sang "Tenderly" (Vaughan was proud of the fact that she was the first to sing this song, making it a jazz classic forever more) or "My Funny Valentine."

The singer who made the biggest impression on me was, no doubt, Billie Holiday. I was entranced the first time I heard "Strange Fruit," and when my mom explained what the song was about, I cried and then got really angry. I was no more than four or five years old and could not begin to grasp how people could hate anyone just because their skin color was different. Today, writing this post, listening to this song, the tears and anger are still fresh. How is it that we're still fighting against such ignorance and hatred?

I could link to every song Billie sang; she made every song hers when she sang, but just check out the sweet-bitter of "The Very Thought of You." 

Mom grew up a "jazzbo," hanging out in jazz clubs, dancing and befriending the musicians. The most famous she befriended was Count Basie, and I can remember her telling me about the parties she attended. She would put on some swing records and attempt to teach me how to dance (she had been a dance instructor for Arthur Murray).

Finally, a very early influence on me was the "Duke of Ellington." I loved him and his music. My mom even supported me in staying home from school to honor him at his funeral in 1974. Here's "Satin Doll" and "Mood Indigo."  There is no way I can mention the Duke and not share something from Ivy Anderson, perhaps the singer best associated with him. This was a song mom would often sing as well: "I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good."   Just listen to the amazing alto sax work of the incomparable Johnny Hodges. The smooth glissando, a "trademark" technique of Hodges is sensual, sweet and sexy.

These are just some of the Black musicians who made an indelible mark on my 'soul' during my earliest formative years. I owe them a deep debt of gratitude -- as do we all.