Charlie Yardbird Parker's Blues & Best Available Technology

Charlie Parker's Blues No.1 cloaked in crackle, unclean audio emphasising time past of the old new Bop revolution shock delivered yesterday via my digital (portable) MP3 player - Cool now mainlined into mainstream culture and even 'hipster' (mis)appropriated to mean something else - so I sort of thought - like the revolutionary chic of a Che t-shirt or Punk pruned for meaning for popular taste - so it goes. The Complete Charlie Parker On Dial comp from which Blues No.1 comes is actually a version of Yardbird Suite, correctly titled on the box set pictured, so why re-title it? It crackles so because there was only one microphone in the home of Charles Copley, the 'venue' for a get-together to celebrate Bird's release from Camarillo State Hospital early in 1947. I would have posted the track, of course, but it hasn't been YouTubed.

Session7780 from Best Available Technology's Exposure album knowingly (ironically?) plays with notions of time and technological advances, muddying the stream as if to try and reclaim a time of old-skool cassette mix tapes, perhaps - whatever, the album's a treat for those who savour the sound of someone scratching their sonic signature on the digital 'wall' with a blunt blade as Kevin Palmer does. It's all very down, dirty and akin to being inside the mind of someone who's quite possibly as 'high' (low) as Charlie Parker before being put in hospital; a purple haze of crippled beats and subdued fx.

Jack Kerouac & All That Jazz (Writing)

Long-Player, RTomens, 2014

It's Jazz Appreciation Month, so I hope you've been dutifully appreciating it. Once May comes, you can stop. I wrote the a book on Jazz once. That makes me an expert, so you'd better listen. There are lots of books on Jazz written by experts but none of them are like mine. Perhaps no books are really like one another, so the authors hope. Otherwise, what's the point? In retrospect (and I may have even thought it at the time) my book is akin to a Jazz solo. In case you don't know, the point of those is to improvise, thus charting a course through territory for which you have no map and you're travelling very fast. Unless it's a ballad. Even so, quick unthinking is required and you're dependent on an ability to arrive somehow without getting lost. A bit like writing, only you have no opportunity to return and edit.

Much of my writing was unedited because I wanted to capture the 'sound' as I made it, rather than a cleaned-up version of that sound. The benefits are enormous, not least in the 'energy' transmitted. The downside is some people will think you're a little mad. And can't write 'properly'. People said Free Jazz players couldn't play properly, thus missing the point entirely. The point being total self-expression unfettered by musical rules. Jack Kerouac famously emulated Jazz musicians in his writing. As he wrote in Essentials Of Spontaneous Prose (1957): 'sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image.'

Kerouac is closely associated with the Be-Bop era, having been around in the mid-40s when it blew up, written those experiences into books and been inspired, prose-wise. What's probably less well-known is that by 1960, when Bop was over and had been replaced by Hard Bop, as personified by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Kerouac saw the importance of the New Thing. In The Last Word column of December 1960 he wrote: 'I think the first breakthrough since Charlie Parker has been accomplished by Ornette Coleman and Donald Cherry with his little cornet and that it will lead the way, like Parker's way, into a whole new era of jazz.' With hindsight, that's shows a smart, forward-thinking appreciation of new developments as opposed to the more common reaction of outrage and disgust. Whilst history tells us Coleman went on to earn his place as a bona fide legend, it's easy to forget the hostility towards him coming from many quarters at the time. The other point is that whilst he was a key figure in the evolution of freer forms he remained a totally singular player throughout his whole career, as distinct as Thelonious Monk's piano-playing during the be-Bop era.

Jazz is still a mystery to many who think they might get into it, or should really try, so next I'll be posting my Essential Jazz Albums. Because I'm an expert.

All That Jazz...Charlie Parker Art / Miles Davis Number 1 / Kurws - All that is solid melts into air

Long Playing, R. Tomens, 2014

...that's a piece I made by 'treating' a Bop 10-inch found on a market, there's another here if you want a look...

...Miles Davis reaches Number One - yes, in a poll from listeners of BBC Radio and Jazz FM (the latter having stopped being a proper Jazz station since, um, Day One, I think) - so a respected bunch of voters, eh? Maybe. Where was I when the BBC were asking? Anyway, His dominance got me thinking 'Why?', which lead me to muse that it wasn't his electro-psychedelic-free-funk that won him so much love, more likely Kind Of Blue, which everyone loves, yes, everyone, which is good but...

...I wish his electronic era would get the respect it deserves as an ear-shattering, mind-blowing, peerless example of live-evil-magical-music extrordinaire - yes! It is. You know it, but do they? Sorry, promise not to go on about my favourite passage of music by anyone. There's Bitches Brew, of course, but the 'live' material before and after up to '75 is something that I keep returning to and, vainly, trying to 'understand', as if within lies the Meaning of Life, the universe and everything...

...I think he got where he did in the poll through Kind Of Blue, the Cool, Bop and to some extent, his modal E.S.P band. But that's just me, musing on the motives of voters. Which is stupid. Louis Armstrong at 2 (pop-pickers) is no surprise, other than the fact that he's not Number One. Ellington is rightly up there. Coltrane above Charlie Parker? Ella above Charlie Parker? That's the Jazz FM vote right there, ditto Billie Holiday's ranking. The inclusion of two great vocalists reflects a mass fan base for The Song, rather than, say, the compositional/playing craft of Charlie Mingus or the pioneering individual genius of Ornette Coleman. Here's the Ten anyway...

Miles Davis
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
John Coltrane
Ella Fitzgerald
Charlie Parker
Billie Holiday
Thelonious Monk
Bill Evans
Oscar Peterson

...are they burying Jazz? Stop! It's not dead, it just smells funny (Frank Zappa). It's the cover to All that is solid melts into air by Kurws - who? Yes, quite, they were unknown to me until a couple of hours ago when I was sent the album, which came out to deafening silence, probably, but that's the world's loss because it's a cracking record, a cracked record, even; a blast of Punk Jazz, Jazz-Not-Jazz, or whatever The Lounge Lizards got called. They're debut from from '81 seems like a spark for Kurws, that and James Chance...the spirit of all that No Wave NY Jazz blasts out of this, with Oskar Carls' tenor and Hubert Kostkiewicz' guitar leading the line - charge! Bury the mouldy old figs! This is fun, frisky, spiky, spunky, mad and inventive. I particularly like the conversation between sax and synth on There was no wheel in the Inca empire. Colossus with feet of clay is choice too with it's free-range piano.

Here on Bandcamp

Sonic Instruments of War: Kerridge and Be-Bop

Like HATE's records, the A-side of Samuel Kerridge's Sonic Instruments Of War sets about giving Dark Jungle a reboot, making slacker drum'n'bass by dragging old break beats and the hoover b-line down into a sonic black hole where it spins along with old Doc Scott and No U-Turn records. All of which is fine by me.

There's more than one kind of sonic warfare, of course, and 70 years ago the Be-Boppers offered theirs. I've been playing Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker's New York Town Hall concert recently and despite the recording being far from perfect the power of the playing bites through. 

As far from 1945 as we are, without a little study it's not easy to appreciate what an assault this music was on the ears of those accustomed to the Trad and Swing history of Jazz. To call it 'the Punk of it's time' may be overstating things a bit, but considering it was a whole ten years before Rock 'n' Roll broke there's a radical shift in attitude at work here. I doubt that any music since has been made from such skilled players in the service of sonically going to war. 

Whilst Jazz (and Rock) musicality would gradually drag everything into a slumber land of clean, clever professionalism, in 1945 players with the chops for it were sending sound into hyper drive. Like Bronx DJs four decades later, they were 'remixing' old tunes, even 'sampling' (quoting) them in solos for original numbers. Here, with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker gunning up front, Max Roach adds heavy artillery and 'drops bombs' (as the style was known) into the battle. 

If Salt Peanuts demonstrates Gillespie's jester reputation, at the same time this version reminds us of what an extraordinary player he was; the only one who could match Parker blow-for-blow. Listen out for the moment at 2.15 when Bird and Diz erupt in what, for a few seconds, sounds like a wailing prophecy of things to come in the form of Free Jazz before Parker runs with it... 

Charlie Parker Died 60 Years Ago Today

Yes, Bird flew the nest on March 12th 1955...although it's uncertain how he got the nickname 'Yardbird', shortened to 'Bird', appropriately, because his flights of improvisation were something else, from somewhere else...planet Bop of his own mental sphere spinning magical lines 'round and 'round...reinventing standards and writing his original things such as this... 

...of course I never met Charlie Parker but I knew Slim Gaillard back when he was a Wag Club regular in the 80s so that was getting close to the legend by association, right? And you can bet I'll always savour the memory of buying drinks for (he never bought me one, the tight sod!) the man who did know Charlie Parker. The guest spot on Slim's Jam is great, not only for it's informality and Slim's vout-speak but also hearing Bird-orooni talk... (at 1.07)

...so I made this piece of art a few months back as part of a Bop/Bird whatever tribute...I do really hope you 'dig it the most'...heh!

"... and up on the stand Bird Parker with solemn eyes who'd been busted fairly recently and had now returned to a kind of bop dead Frisco but had just discovered or been told about the Red Drum, the great new generation gang wailing and gathering there, so here he was on the stand, examinign them with his eyes as he blew his now-settled-down-into-regulated-design "crazy" notes ... whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos - not a challenging look but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging the eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work, his eyes separate and interested and humane, the kindest jazz musician there could be while being and therefore naturally the greatest - watching Marldou and me in the infancy of our love and probably wondering why, or knowing it wouldn't last, or seeing who it was would be hurt..." - Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans

Bird, Booma Collective, Black Mountain Transmitter and...Franz Lehár

That's it, start the new year as you mean to go on...always reminding yourself that The Past is full of promise whilst The Future is history and holds none - whooopeee! Charlie Parker because of some recent shares which prompted me to listen again and coincidentally someone tweeted that something had clicked for them regarding Jazz. And why not. It's never too late...unless someone plays you Parker's Mood on your death bed and you only realise then what he was all about...

Meanwhile, Booma Collective Live at The Plant. This Montreal mob are worth keeping an eye on and here they maintain their standards with more deep electronic listening. It's a long trip but your 50-plus minutes will not be wasted as the multi-component mix moves through various stages of mood samples and electronic interference. Love the operatic voice about halfway through...

Deathdream! A cheery way to start 2015, but at least it's recorded in Edinburgh if you insist on some kind of traditional NY connection (which you don't, of course). James Robert Moore (Black Mountain Transmitter) absolutely perfects the (dark) art of blood-soaked electronics, the ritualistic resonance of  black sonic waveforms wash over you like...er...Satan's semen in a Dennis Wheatley novel...if such a thing was ever described...which I doubt. Seriously, this man knows how to put sounds together...I mean, this is not push-button Goth electronics. His Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of wicked pleasures.

And now for something completely different (wassup...too eclectic?)...

That was sung beautifully by Sophie Pullen (who took the trouble to change her gown for every number!) at a Kings Place concert last night...how very traditional...and heart-warming, yes it was, to hear a selection of waltzes plus a few songs...'A Strauss Family New Year', as it was billed. I could hardly prevent myself from jumping out of my seat and spinning around the auditorium with an imaginary partner (well, LJ, despite her infamous lack of self-consciousness when it comes to dancefloor action, would not have obliged). The Orchestra of St John's played the tunes...and it all made me smile inside.

Yes, I'm Sure I Want To Move This File To The Recycle Bin

Deleting shit is a good feeling, isn't it? Oh damn I've started by stating the bleedin' obvious. Forgive me, it's 7.46 am on Boxing Day (is it called 'Boxing Day' because by then certain family members feel like going twelve rounds with each other?).

I do sometimes write eraly early the morning whilst that little voice in my head intermittently says "Don't write when you're barely wake!" Nothing much comes of it but perhaps it's a useful exercise in awakening the dormant cells in my brain box.

...........(wake up!)........

The end of the year is a natural time to go on a deleting spree; it's when we feel ready for a new start and shedding all that stuff that's been clogging up our hard drives seems to lighten the load we'll carry into the next 365 days. Not that we carry the stuff. But it is a weight of some kind. The trouble is that it's weight that's so easy to accumulate. We do so without noticing (unless you're vigilant about checking your hard drive space).

Mind you, gaining weight in the physical sense is just as easy. The burden of excess fat, yes that old problem, is also on a lot of people's minds. Gym memberships are set to soar. The guilt of over-eating must be countered by exercise! So you do it for a few days then more than likely give up. "Bollocks, I'll just eat less and eat better." Oh but the siren song of sugar and fat is so hard to resist! Luckily, I'm don't have too much fat to shed but, you know, by a certain age us chaps do tend towards developing excess folds around the stomach (sit up straight, breath in, there, it looks better).

What about all those excess files? Mmmm....let's see...there's that album I've never played properly because it didn't sound so great on first skip yet everyone else reckons it's brilliant, that one. And here's the album I grabbed with a view to listening properly but never have. Ah, here's the album I thought was great on first listen but time has done it no favours and the exciting, instant buzz beats are now revealed to be just that with no other real substance in the music. Mind you, it's good to exercise to, by which I mean dancing like an idiot around the room, so perhaps I'll keep it.

Then again...what's the point of keeping most of this stuff? Can't I burn it to a disc? Yes, where it will join the mountain of discs, some of which have LP titles scrawled on (no accompanying cards with track listing, nothing that extravagant) and those blank ones. I've burned a lot to disc and most sit there unplayed. I thought that album was important enough to be transferred to the crusty old physical state, but, well...

I don't think 'the kids' keep anything physical (musically), do they? They live a fairy cloud existence of non-material (CD/LP) burden. They don't carry loads of physical weight either, the lucky little sods. Hold on, I'm thinking it's 1970, when fat kids were a rare and much maligned breed therefore targets for abuse. Perhaps only one existed in the whole school - imagine that? You may be old enough to remember it. The reverse is true today, so they say. So are playgrounds full of fat kids poking fun at the slim one? I dunno. It's only what I read about obesity and, to be honest, that's only panic headlines so shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Perhaps we're all bloated on the fat of the land in one way or another. Us kids of the 70s probably do tend more towards hanging on to discs and actually having box sets on our shelves. "Look, granddad's got big boxes full of round shiny things!" "Ask him nicely and he'll turn on the CD player so you can hear them." "What's a CD player?" etc When's the CD revival starting anyway? Next year?

Funny, isn't it, that today's kids are supposedly an obese generation yet carry no excess musical weight, whilst the reverse was true when I was a teenager. Hold on, is it because we were always carrying records around that we kept out weight down? Are DJs fatter today? That should be investigated by the Daily Mail. I thought I was being terribly modern when, towards the end of my DJ career, I played CDs - ha! Today, I hear, DJs just think of tracks and they're transmitted wirelessly through speakers.

I sold some CDs recently - £25 quid's worth. They refused a few because they were scratched - the irony! That new tech invincible disc isn't fooling the buyer, is it? "Nah, that CD is scratched." Eh? The fact that they play perfectly didn't matter. Still, there have been very rare occasions when I've had CDs which jump. They refused the Complete Charlie Parker on Dial box set because it's scratched. I wanted it gone because having to skip the third take of Relaxing At Camarillo became annoying and for that I lose Jazz Cred points because we're all supposed to be enthralled by the variations in Bird's solos, of course. I want to just have the master takes. Two or three versions in a row is too much, even for a fan like me (a lightweight one, obviously).

At least you can delete files and there's no-one to stop you apart from that little man/woman in your head urging you to listen again and reconsider because you might not be able to find that rare German electronic Prog album on the Net again. So I'll carry on deleting. We both know that there's a lot of stuff we'll never properly listen to so hit the button. Less is more. That being relative in the sense that the music we store on file outweighs, time-wise, all we've ever probably heard in our lives so far (gasp!).

New Year's resolution: be more vigilant about what I download. Be stricter.

TTFN

Improvisation: Charlie Parker, Mort Garson, Bo Diddley & Hilaire Belloc

'Scuse me while I do not kiss the sky but instead improvise...

Here's another bloke improvising...if only I could improvise word-wise as well as he does with the horn. He's just another dead, fat, chicken-lovin' ol' Jazz player, so feel free not to press 'Play'....

You don't need Charlie Parker - you don't need me. Correction: you need Charlie Parker, you don't need me...

Here's a picture of me at home listening to another another dead (aren't they all?) Jazz musician, Duke Ellington, whilst LJ asks if I'm comfortable enough, and can she hear Charles Mingus next, 'cause she's nuts for Mingus...then she asks why I didn't water the plants whilst she was away and threatens to break my legs and my Ellington CDs if I don't start tending to the precious lifeforms in our luxurious apartment, to which I reply: "But, darling, I've played them music all week-end! The aloe vera's leaves were vibrating to Mort Garson!" What happened next is a blank...

Reading The Wire's Invisible Jukebox book the other day I had to chuckle at Ali Farka Toure's contribution because 'I don't know this' is a recurring phrase and it heartened me to see someone else's ignorance exposed. He didn't know John Lee Hooker's 'Boogie Children', which I thought everyone knew, or Robert Johnson, or, perhaps most surprisingly, Bo Diddley (!) More than that, he'd never heard of Bo Diddley! By which time I started to think old Ali was havin' a larf, especially since his playing is supposed to be blues-influenced, the reason the tester played him a trio of Blues/R&B legends, presumably. Goes to show, you can't make assumptions about anyone's musical knowledge, or...

Talking of books and writing, I found this great quote by Hilaire Belloc the other day:

'The life of writing men has always been...a bitter business. It is notoriously accompanied, for those who write well, by poverty and contempt; or by fatuity and wealth for those who write ill.'

TTFN

Cop Goes Undercover As A Beatnik

Jet magazine, 1960. Pre-Serpico, this would have made a great film, surely, with the faux beat cop Sylvester hanging out in cellar bars, learning to play bongos and talk hip. With his 'natural cat-like mannerisms', he fooled many a beatnik into selling him dope, the dirty rat! If I'd made the film, he would have been unable resist the allure of those crazy chicks and cool sounds, and gone AWOL in San Francisco. Did he never get Charlie Parker and LeRoi Jones, I wonder?

Erasermemory, Eraserhead & The French Music Connection

In the Info Torrent era it’s as easy to lose information as gain it, don’t you think? Take The Missing Page – yes, the site I found, supposedly Favouritised, and do you think I can find it now? The Info Avalanche and rapidity of click research has another downside, being an inability to memorise – in my case anyway. The Machine memorises for me, for us all, I’m sure, although I’m reluctant to rope you into my problem. Nigel Slater’s recipe for pork and apple I can always find, oh yes, but this arts-based site, no. When saving I may have accidently placed it in the ‘Rick Wakeman’ folder, but no. The ‘Winsome American Female Songstress’ folder? No. Talking of which, I was in Gap the other day and realised that the only play Winsome American Songstress music, and that bugs me, or would if I went in there often enough. Admitting that I don’t go in there often undermines my claim, I know, but what the hell.
   Music in shops is always bad, or nearly always. Oxford Street shops are awash with melisma-ridden R&B, which must be one of my most-hated genres although, if I gave it much thought, the list would be very, very long. I was, however, trying on shoes once in Selfridges to the tune of Charlie Parker, no lie, G.I. I was dumbstruck, and elated. As you can guess, such a pleasing public space music experience has never happened again, and never will. That said, almost as good has been the French music theme that emerged recently. It started by discovering Philippe Petit’s album, ‘Henry: The Iron Man’, then watching the film ‘Gainsbourg’, followed by a coffee at Cafe Rouge in Highgate, where they played Django Reinhardt, and finally yesterday, in The White Swan at Twickenham, they were playing old French songs – funny, eh? I like that theme. How much I like Petit’s album though, is hard to say. But I like the fact that I don’t know how much, or even if, I actually like it. ‘Like’ isn’t an adequate word, is it? A weak word, really, although too much time on Facebook renders everything either ‘Like’-able, or not. Petit’s music came from a dream he had, apparently, in which Lynch’s classic mutated into ‘Henry: The Iron Man’, and he was given the task of providing the soundtrack. The three tracks are very ‘Lynchian’, if that’s a type of music – you know, nightmarish ambient mutations. They involve the crackle of vinyl history and mechanised noise of the modern configured in such a way as to suggest vague horrors, with partly submerged industrial beats and a saxophone somewhere in the mix. All of which make for an interesting experience; Henry rebuilt as scrap Iron Man made of old records and rusting computers. I first read about the album on The Missing Page. What’s stored on my computer does, at times, appear to be some kind of Lynchian labyrinth of trails that lead nowhere, and mysteries destined never to be solved.

Horace Silver Lives!

Horace Silver is not dead. I know, you never said he was, but cop this: I thought he was dead. I assumed he had died, and not being able to recall the year he died meant nothing because I don’t retain those kinds of dates.
   Almost all the Jazz Greats are dead, of course. Some say jazz itself is dead, but I like to evoke Frank Zappa’s statement that it’s not, it ‘just smells funny’. Whether or not it reeks of decay depends on the individual, naturally. When does a genre die? Can we safely say that Trip-Hop is dead? I think so. Heavy Metal? Probably not in the ears of many. Punk’s not dead as proclaimed by the studs arranged on the back of jackets worn by those sporting big orange Mohicans whilst being snapped by tourists at Camden Market. That was a few years ago mind you, so perhaps by now it is, dead I mean.
   All genres ‘live’ in the minds of somebody. Yes, out there in the wide world a listener is probably enjoying ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ as I type. Retromania is rife, as Simon Reynolds recently pointed out in his book of the same name.
   ‘Bird Lives!’ supposedly appeared on walls (or perhaps one wall, or perhaps the tale is apocryphal) soon after the death of Charlie Parker in 1955. Either way, it made a great title for Ross Russell’s biography. Parker had a New York club named after him whilst he was still alive. Birdland opened in 1949, and five years later Horace played there as a member of Art Blakey’s band. What to do when Be-Bop had died? That was the question. Not that Art and co were walking around asking themselves that, I’m sure. I doubt they held meetings to discuss the issue, with points raised by Clifford Brown duly noted whilst Rudy Van Gelder recorded everything. Rudy would go on to record the path taken out of Be-Bop, and Horace was a key player. Professors of music may be able to define the precise technical changes from Be-Bop to Hard-Bop, but it’s beyond me. I suspect it’s not a clear cut thing, as is the case with musical evolution.
   Horace developed a style that was ‘funky’, although not in the sense that we recognise Funky today. Not ‘funky’ as in smelly either, although some may suggest that the rootsy, earthy, bluesy elements are linked to the smells of home-cooking and, yes, even bodily odours associated with sweat, sex and the street.
   Horace brought in a bluesy swagger, a ‘down-home’ feeling, but not at the expensive of craft and composition. His wrote catchy tunes, but there was plenty of room for rising stars such as Hank Mobley, and later, Joe Henderson to express themselves. ‘Filthy McNasty’, ‘Song For My Father’, ‘Sister Sadie’ and ‘Senor Blues’ are just a few of his best-known tunes, but on the albums made during his golden era there are many which lodge into your brain as joyous earworms once heard. Back in the 80s when I was getting into Jazz I’d spend afternoons listening to Horace and, as a result, carried those tunes around in my head for most of the decade.
   I was going to say that if you haven’t heard of Horace Silver you must have had your head buried in the sand for the last thirty years, but that would be a ridiculous accusation. He may not have reached as many people as Miles Davis, or be regarded as highly artistically, but Horace has created a Silver (hah-ha) lining to many a cloud in my life; a real pick-me-up. So a belated happy birthday Horace (he was born on Sept 2nd, 1928). And yes, he is still alive, in more ways than one.

Possibly my favourite Horace Silver tune:

Hollywood Highs And Lows With George Shearing and Horace McCoy

‘It’s been a great financial pleasure being here’ quips George Shearing before playing the last number of the set – ah yes, Hollywood, home of stars that shone so brightly, and the broken dreams of millions. Shearing was riding high with his brand of cocktail schmaltz bolstered by forays into bop, and you can look at that two ways; he made palatable tunes such as Charlie Parker’s ‘Confirmation’ (as played in this set) by white-washing bop, or he introduced it to those who would otherwise remain ignorant. Either way, should I be strolling down Sunset Strip in 1959 and come across a sign advertising ‘The George Shearing Quartet’ do you think I’d carry on strolling?
   Today I strolled into a record shoppe (two days in a row!) and picked up this album for four quid. Look at the cover. I look at it now propped up on my desk and dream of being one of those two lucky fellahs, the one being kissed, perhaps...look at those dames, one of whom seems to be going somewhere... ‘Back in a moment, honey’, she’s saying – ‘You’d better be’, he replies, reluctant to release his hand from her waist, that beautiful waist above those beautiful hips in that stunning dress...what a girl! Isn’t this photo the personification of (M)ad men dreams? The suits, the white dresses and stilettos, neon, cars parked outside The Crescendo...
   ‘Swinging Shearing Sounds’ the sleeve declares, well, if not exactly swinging, Shearing encapsulates the smooth shining glitz of the place and time, the penthouse fantasies wrapped in an aura of cool Playboy sophistication. I bet those girls like to mambo; who doesn’t? Shearing delivers ‘Mambo Inn’ with Armando Perazza on congas lending that hip Latin feel to the occasion. I raise an imaginary cocktail to him, to the dream of being there whilst the rain tips down outside my window...

Rewind a couple of decades and you might have walked into a cinema to watch an RKO B-Movie scripted by Horace McCoy. ‘These bastards never gave me a shot at the A pics’, he would later complain. Having done some small-time stage acting McCoy went for a screen test and was turned down, just like Ralph Carson in his 1938 novel, ‘I Should Have Stayed Home’. I think this book’s even better than Nathanael West’s ‘Day Of The Locust’ from the same time, although that gets far more credit as a depiction of crushed hopes in Hollywood. Ralph’s a Southern boy, naive and desperate for fame. His accent works against him when it comes to getting a break and he lives on borrowed money before meeting Mrs Smithers of Beverley Hills. She’s well connected in town, knows the stars and their directors. Surely this is his ticket to the big time. Well, things don’t work out that way. McCoy’s hardboiled stripped down prose perfectly suits the raw emotions on display, the doomed air of desperation darkening almost every page quite brilliantly.  The author’s bitterness about Hollywood is channelled through his protagonist, as is the conflict between being starry-eyed whilst despising a social scene populated by stars. The pain of self-inflicted failure is reflected in bouts of quite disturbing sadomasochism.  It’s by no means a perfect novel, but for my money it’s a great read.

Everything is OK!

The title of this post sounds like it belongs to a self-help book...and it probably does...as in ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’...or ‘OK, I’m Stupid, So What?’, and the one that’s yet to be written, ‘OK, So The World’s Ending’, which someone will publish when we hear of the giant meteor heading unstoppably towards Earth. That or it will be the last best-seller ever before civilisation as we know it comes to an end due to an ecological catastrophe. OK. So what.

   Right now everything is only OK. I’m reading Charles Portis’s ‘True Grit’ as prep for the film (which I suspect will be OK), but it’s only OK, mainly because for some bizarre reason he refuses to condense any word spoken, and so supposedly raw characters like Rooster Cogburn only ever says ‘I will’ and ‘It is’ or ‘That is’. You get the idea. This refusal to create naturalistic speech started to annoy me after a while. A man like that, like most common men or women would be saying ‘I’ll’, ‘It’s’, and ‘That’s’ all the time. Perhaps that is just me being picky but I am not happy and I do not suppose I will finish the book anytime soon, and that is a fact. Huh. That’s OK, I’ve started Neil Coombs’ ‘Dark Windows’ (subtitled ‘or the death of Godard’, and because of that I could not resist it) – and since you hang on my every word regarding literature, I shall be posting a full, detailed, insightful review, or maybe I won’t...and if I don’t, that’ll be OK.

   A still from the ‘On The Road’ film appeared in The Guardian on Saturday. I looked at it in disbelief. Could they have got it so wrong? Look for yourself and tell me you have great hopes for the venture.

   It seems they’ve made it as a teen movie...for American teenagers today. Because it’s impossible to shoot a film about youths of the 40s without thinking it has to really be about kids today, isn’t it? Otherwise, how will they relate? More to the point, why would they bother going to see it? Kerouac’s book still has a large fan base amongst The Kids today, but not enough to justify the budget, I presume.

   The only aspect of this that interests me is how well Viggo Mortensen is going to play ‘Old Bull Lee’. Peter Weller in ‘Naked Lunch’ did a good job, capturing the essence of Burroughs without trying to impersonate him.

   How will they deal with all the drug-taking without appearing to – shock! – promote drugs? And Cassady was a notoriously wild driver. So, potentially, it could have ended up as a film extolling the joys and kicks of driving like a maniac whilst high on Benzedrine. This seems unlikely. The funniest part of what could unintentionally be a hilariously bad film could be when they encounter jazz, which is, as you know, crucial to driving the attitude and process of Kerouac’s spontaneous bop prose. If I could bare to part with the money I’d like to see these two try to be convincing in their adulation for Be-bop. As part of their research, I like to think the director filled them with Benzedrine and locked them in a room with Charlie Parker’s music blasting out for a couple of hours. I doubt that this happened.

   In OK! Magazine (where else?) Garrett Hedlund, who plays Dean Moriarty, says: ‘Improv was highly welcomed, to make scenes flow and have a rhythm. We had the freedom to fly.’ Wow. I bet they had a ball. And I’m sure this free-wheeling improvisational attitude created screen magic that will be the acting equivalent of a Charlie Parker solo. Yes, sir. If not, that’s OK.

Of Box Sets And Charlie 'Bird' Parker

Are CD box sets already archaic artefacts?

   Metaphorical secateurs in hand I move towards my music collection, primed for a bout of pruning, and consider the box sets. I recently sold one – ‘The Complete Benga’ (ten discs of all the official releases plus outtakes, versions, interviews and a booklet written by Simon Reynolds)...or did I imagine that?

   I see big box sets as the preserve of mid-life (and older) men having a financial fling with Miles or The Beatles. After all, financial security is a prerequisite to buying those behemoths of sound, isn’t it ? Well, better that than trying for the secretary, I suppose.

   A metal box catches my eye, it’s ‘Charlie Parker – The Complete Verve Master Takes’, which has been opened far more frequently than the one by PiL.

   The Bird box is an absurd example of excessive packaging, an excuse for the price, no doubt. Although, having said that, if any artist deserves to be encased in an indestructible container, it’s Charlie Parker.

   As I open it I’m reminded of how stupid such packaging really is, the awkwardness of getting to all the discs...and not least of all, if I may don my eco-righteous hat, the energy and materials used to make it. It wouldn’t bother me if all future packages were made from recycled cardboard only, the less the better. With apologies to the factory-workers made redundant as a consequence. At least the online listening experience is ‘green’, eh?

   Here’s a box I can’t imagine selling, although it’s entirely possible that one day, as I huddle ‘round the single-bar heater in my old age, wondering where the next slice of bread is coming from, I may well do so.

   It has a booklet, of course, which contains all the recording details along with extensive notes and rather bizarre artwork as well as photos. I’ve never read it, except to identify a track. Some people, I’m sure, will be interested to learn that Manny Thaler played bassoon on the May 25, 1953 session. Manny might have relished being name checked for posterity as someone who backed the mighty Bird...if he was alive when this came out, which I somehow doubt.

   Parker only has to start playing on the first track, ‘The Bird’, and you enter another realm. It’s ‘live’ at Carnegie Hall in ’47 and he simply sounds like the hippest person to ever put his chops around the mouthpiece of an alto. Which he was. At one point he kind of slurs a note, as if drunk on his own brilliance and unafraid to let the world know. Sometimes he was just too far gone to blow anything, but what he played when he was together makes me feel as if I’m high. Many musicians have attempted, consciously or otherwise, to recreate the ‘high’ of drugs...I think most of it is called ‘psychedelia’...none of which I’ve ever bought, mainly because I don’t like their shirts...or hair styles...or, to be honest, much of the music. In one sense you might say that despite whatever substances Bird had flowing through his veins at the time of playing, this music is a kind of ‘natural high’, as opposed to electronically manipulated or ‘artfully’ contrived. There is a track called ‘Cosmic Rays’, but really, everything Bird played was a trip along some strange celestial road laid by Bird’s brain, fingers, heart or soul, if you like.

   I probably said all I can about Parker in my book...but listening again reminds me that almost every Bird experience is like listening anew, because he was such an astonishing player...who could blow hot, cool, crazy, askew...and somehow it feels right to take him out of a box...like an act of resurrection.

   Legend has it that no sooner was he dead than graffiti appeared declaring ‘Bird Lives!’...and I wholeheartedly agree with that...

Tomorrow Is The Question - A Vote For Ornette Coleman

Tomorrow is the question and this Wednesday it will be a big one for voters in the UK. I may be pre-empting the prelude to polling day, but I’m not about to take to the soapbox to spout my political views, so you needn’t worry. Perhaps, like me, you’re sick of political views. I got election fatigue the day after it was officially announced.

   Ornette Coleman said Tomorrow Is The Question back in ’59 with the title of his album, and that’s been on my mind as well as in my ears over the last hour. Listening to it again, I wonder how it came to be that such astounding sounds got made. Music is a mystery to all but the experts yet even for them I doubt that the question of Ornette’s sound can be fully answered. Like Monk, his sound is a inscrutable.

For me, Ornette’s question regarding tomorrow takes precedence over the Political one. Perhaps that makes me shallow, but I do adhere to the Church of Cultural Consumerism, after all. And as a member, I feel it my duty to swear some kind of oath to Ornette (with my hand firmly planted on a copy of this album). “I hereby declare that I shall live by the truth, and nothing but the truth, of great art such as this, so help me Ornette.”

   Those who do not speak of Politics fascinate me more than those who do. And I don’t mean people who are incapable of thinking beyond their next wage/meal/car etc. The absence of Political commentary is, in a way, as big a political statement as those made by folks who can talk for hours about hung parliaments and electoral reform. Yet if I had a bunch of friends and we were in a bar I could no doubt talk for some time about how much I dislike modern Politics.

   As I age, however, I become more vacant. Thus, the largely unoccupied space between my ears is more conducive to allowing a deluge of music to replace what others might consider to be Important Thoughts.

   Tomorrow remains an unanswered question in Ornette’s music, which only raises more questions because despite (and because of) his musical system, it is open to interpretation, understanding and appreciation. These puzzles he constructed...the labyrinthine nature of the solos, of the whole body of work...where are the answers and what route should we take through the music? We must logically start at the beginning, but two minutes in I frequently find myself quite lost; ecstatically so.

   There is the melody of ‘Turnaround’, but that in itself does not conform to the rules...and is usurped by a bass solo where bass solos should not be, namely, first in line. And Don Cherry plays trumpet like a child discovering the joy of a new toy whilst Ornette plays the blues in the form of some abstract truth which only he may comprehend.

   The ghost of Charlie Parker is audible in this music. No surprise since he haunted all alto players. But Ornette did more than most to banish the spirit of Bop by asking the big question: what about tomorrow? The following year he delivered one answer, ‘Free Jazz’, which was insane. No-one had dared to record a piece so long, never mind so apparently anarchic. It’s as if he had pondered the question long and hard throughout 1960 before deciding that leaping into the unknown was the only answer.

   Tomorrow may always be the question for those living crazy lives of spontaneity and I applaud anyone who has miraculously escaped the restrictions and routines of ordinary daily life. For most of us the questions relate to such fascinating dilemmas as what time to go to the supermarket, whether to do the washing, what to wear and so on. Your society needs you. Without our kind, it would fall apart! That’s not to say that the ordinariness promoted by politicians is to be commended. How tiresome they are with their insistence on good old-fashioned ‘values’ based on the pretence that working hard, being a normal family and behaving decently will automatically bring happiness.

   I admit there’s something to be said for the comfort provided by a routine, and the security granted by a job. Still, as a form of relief from this predictability, some of us revel in the great escape route supplied by musicians such as Ornette Coleman. In his musical world, tomorrow is a question that can never be answered by politicians.

Larry Ochs Or Wynton Marsalis? Jazz Battle Rages!

The old battle between jazz factions has resurfaced with Ochs' army on one side and Marsalis' followers on the other. There will be blood splattered across forums as those loyal to freedom of expression hurl insults at traditionalists, neither of whom will concede defeat or admit that both forms of music are valid.  

The Guardian, Dec 9
Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him.
That changed on Monday night however, when's Spain's pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs's music was not, well, jazz.
Police decided to investigate after an angry jazz buff complained that the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core group was on the wrong side of a line dividing jazz from contemporary music.
The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was "psychologically inadvisable" for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.
According to a report in El País newspaper yesterday, the khaki-clad police officers listened to the saxophone-playing and drumming coming from the festival stage before agreeing that the purist might, indeed, have a case.
His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.
"The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back," said the festival director, Ricardo Checa.
"He didn't get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme.
He added: "The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.
"Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned."
"I thought I had seen it all," Ochs, who reportedly suffered a momentary identity crisis, told El País. "I was obviously mistaken."
"After this I will at least have a story to tell my grandchildren," the California-based saxophonist added.

The Guardian, Dec 21
The jazz legend (Wynton Marsalis) wanted to send a large part of his 70-plus catalogue of recordings to the anonymous Spaniard who called police to a jazz festival because the music being played was not, he insisted, jazz. Marsalis just needed to find him. Now Rafael Gisbert, a jazz purist from the Madrid dormitory town of Alcorcon, has stepped forward.








 
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
- Brian Eno

Even during the major avant-garde period of jazz in the late '60s and early '70s, the songs usually had melodies, some harmonic starting-off point, or something to unify a particular piece in the beginning.
- Herbie Hancock

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
- Mose Allison

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
- Charlie Parker

Report From The Bunker 1

Three days after drinking Irish whisky, which was like swallowing a bonfire...that had been put out...with whisky...my brain still appears to have been severely affected to the extent that it barely functions...

Watched the rest of ‘The Dark Knight’ today having consumed it in several chunks...Heath Ledger as The Joker is the best thing about it...as you probably know...some awful dialogue...spectacular action...and the Bat Bike...
Listened to ‘Gilles Peterson Presents Brownswood Bubblers Two’...thinking ‘I want to strangle Gilles Peterson’...which is a terrible thought, I know, but I get the feeling he’s somehow regarded, still, as a ‘jazz DJ’ and, yes, I remember hearing him play jazz records to a man and his dog (and my friend and I) in a Richmond bar back when he wasn’t Famous, which I assume he is now...this compilation makes me want to retch, being mostly smo-o-oth, wine bar bland soul Musak to slit your throat to...

So I drive out those demons by listening to John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’...which reminds me: someone I once knew claimed that, whilst recording a session with MacGowan, he was asked to play like Coltrane does on this track...or did I dream that?...no, it definitely happened...I recall seeing a photo of, or hearing about (oh how the retched memory fails!) MacGowan wearing a t-shirt with Charlie Parker on it...but idols of certain artists do not always exert an influence on their music...except to say that in the case of Parker and MacGowan, perhaps Bird influenced Shane’s hedonistic/nihilistic lifestyle...and I read today that Bono loves ‘A Love Supreme’...but we can’t expect him to create cutting edge jazz, can we?...and he’s played with BB King and met Burroughs...so I’m wondering how I can share a love of certain key artists with him and still find his music intolerable...instead of Rock, he should be making cutting edge blues-influenced jazz featuring some cut-up prose...
Cut to ‘Rise From Your Grave’ by Phuture, the dark techno classic from ’92...a message beamed straight to the crack-ridden wastelands where brothers are ‘living a lie selling drugs while they watch their brothers die’...but the ‘Wake Da Fuck Up’ mix proves uplifting...and perhaps my brain will wake up when that damn whisky has worn off...

Improv No.1 – Of Bundles Of Bones, Books & Other Things...

On the bus today I looked at the crowds and remembered something I once wrote in a story about how the people were just ‘bundles of flesh and bones wrapped in skin’ – so the character thought to himself as he sat on the top deck of the bus. I was at street level coming home, the bus being a bendy one, the same kind I had journeyed into the West End on this morning where, sat opposite, a man was in his iPod world and, as I always do, I wondered what he was listening to but looking him over (very non-descript) could not guess.
I scored a major victory in the Guess What The Stranger’s Taste In Music Is game a long time ago whilst sitting on a park bench with a girlfriend watching a girl pass by carrying a record bag (remember them?). I suggested Kate Bush and intercepted the girl to find out – correct!
I was impressed with myself, so was the girlfriend. It’s one of my major achievements in life, along with getting this far. Perhaps this makes my life rather...unexceptional – and it could be – but all things being relative, if I compare my life to the kind spent working 6 days-a-week for peanuts to provide barely enough for the family with whom this imaginary person shares a flat in a Hackney tower block where he sits slumped on the sofa every night, too tired to think, or act otherwise, wishing he was anywhere but there living that kind of life...mine doesn’t seem to bad and my achievements not so small...because, I tell myself, I’ve managed to achieve not living that kind of life.
But do we choose a kind of life or does Lady Luck throw the dice for us? I’ll leave that question right there...
On the bus my fiction came back to me as if I was the character...it took over, you might say, because I saw the people as he did, not as I wrote him seeing them...but I should say that the character was probably ‘me’ to begin with, to an extent, except that he was an agent for a secret organisation about to start work on infiltrating the gang that worked on behalf of aliens who had started taking over the minds of the population...something like that.
The story has long since joined all the sheets of paper packed into draws and cupboards which constitutes my Work (finished and unfinished) – my Life’s Work! I fantasise that after I’m Gone it will all be published and pored over by Lit Crits in ‘papers that have realised my genius too late – ha-ha. Forget Bolano...and Nabokov’s unfinished work...what about mine?
So, that will not happen. I was not born to literary greatness. Few are. Few strike me as Great anyway, and what matters other than our own opinion of a novel? Experts may unanimously praise some writers but their opinion is irrelevant if we do not see it ourselves.
I concede, also, that my boundless enthusiasm will not convince the refusenik that fails to hear the brilliance of, say, Charlie Parker. That is the way they listen. The penny may drop later, I sometimes tell myself. But what does it matter?
I console myself in times of doubt regarding the value of my life that I did once write a book about jazz which, according to some correspondents, sparked enthusiasm for certain artists. OK, it’s not on a par with Darwin or even Kerouac, but it’s something...
I joked with the shop assistant in Oxfam the other day that I was making my book-buying decisions based on their size, these days, because I live in a small flat. ‘Oh, why don’t you move house?’ he said with a smile. To which I replied ‘I can’t afford it, I spend all my money in here.’ I handed over three very slim books to prove my point.
I was only half-joking anyway. I truly do not wish to read anything thicker than two centimetres, on average, although I could be deceived by very small font size, in which case I should be stopping at around page 12 instead of the usual 30.
Fiction is such a bore, but as I told someone the other day, I love the thrill of the chase (as I did when desperate for girlfriends in my youth) – but like them, what follows is so often a disappointment.
I should say that the disappointment was no doubt mutual, except for those I ‘ditched’, as we used to say. There have been a few. But I’m not getting into that right here.
I now lord it over all the writers of novels...picking and choosing as I wish and, yes, ‘ditching’ them at will – the power! There’s nothing like slinging a supposed ‘classic’ away is there? ‘Hah!’ We tell ourselves. ‘Is that the best they can do? I demand better! My taste is more refined...and I am master of my own reading matter of nothing else!’ Well, that’s what I would say to myself, if I thought about it.
Authors have a talent (for pleasing publishers, if nothing else)...but when all’s said and done, most are just a bundle of flesh and bones wrapped in skin...