RIP Paul Horn

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Horn's "Inside" album set him on his path; he left behind his jazz background and explored what was eventually termed "new age" (why yes, I did recently post on that very thing!) "Inside" explored the reverb inside the Taj Mahal, Paul Horn's flute tones bouncing off the walls. I actually preferred "Inside II", which paired Horn's flute reverb with earth/air/fire/water ("The Elements"), and included some really sweet 'flute chorales', classical works arranged for multi-tracked flutes. Paul continued with more "Inside" albums (Great Pyramid, etc.), he played for whales at the Vancouver Aquarium, and if I remember correctly, played on "For Free" on an Joni Mitchell album.

 

And the whole "reverb" thing? Modern classical performers like Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster have carried on Horn's experiments, even (both) recording works in a subterranean cistern on Port Townsend's Fort Worden -- there's a 45-second delay! 

Miles (and the title that dare not speak its name -- not on this blog, mister!)

I referred to this album a few posts ago, upset that someone hearing it thought it was "weird". Sigh.

I took a few Film Appreciation classes in college (don't judge me!). During the evaluation phase, one of my professors said "This class easily understands the visual 'language' of the foreign films we'd discussed in class, while I've had to study it." Well, we'd had been exposed to that 'language' in commercials and contemporary film; one generation's cutting edge is another's common denominator.

So that was my beef with the diss 'weird' aimed at one of Miles Davis' groundbreaking (again!) albums. It's not weird, it makes perfect sense -- but only if you were steeped in music current at the time. A critic with an ear tilted back to Basie, Ellington and even Charlie Parker would find "BB" alien, as I think one reviewer termed it.

Here's my take: many people think of this as the beginning of Miles' fall from grace, when he adopted rock star trappings in sound (loud) and clothing (louder) to tap into those rock star dollars. But (again?), as one critic said, this was not pandering, it was some of the most uncompromising music of his entire career. I think he discovered "the pulse", the rhythm that supports almost all music. Rock music pushes the beat to the fore, and I think Miles heard that, thought "Let's simplify the drum patterns, and if we focus on a simple pulse, we can pile all sorts of stuff on it -- it's the support, and as long as it's strong and prominent, we can go for it."

So yes, it doesn't sound like "Stella By Starlight" or "It Never Entered My Mind", and yes, there's no melody/solo/melody format -- but it's not 'weird', just different, and if you listen without preconceived ideas, I think you'd find it intriguing, challenging -- and not at all weird. I was disappointed to read how much producer Teo Macero formed the record, sifting through the hours of tape, splicing and editing the raw material into 'compositions'. The edits are more obvious on the remastered version -- I was always blown away how, in the first few minutes of "Pharaoh's Dance", the band stops for a nano-second, then starts at the top again (twice!). Oh, editing. I intend to find a crappy un-remastered version just so I can listen without seeing/hearing the man behind the curtain pulling the levers.

One final BB anecdote (and for the record, ha! -- I hate the album title, and I refuse to type it out because as someone who loves women, I won't use the derogatory term): I was working in the newspaper office one afternoon at Skagit Valley College, editing the school newspaper, and the instructor/newspaper advisor who shared the space was in one corner listening to a student project. It somehow involved the very album I've been blogging about, and he warned the instructor "Okay, this is pretty weird!" (Oh, crap, that word again!) The teacher said "That's okay, I've heard Pharaoh Sanders!"  -post-Coltrane squonk. Student proceeds to play the title track, which starts with some low bass notes, drum splashes, spiky electric piano chords, and some Miles trumpet blasts with echo effects. Weird, I know! And that's what the student says -- and after a few more minutes, I can't take any more. "Did you listen to the whole piece? Did you not understand that 'weird' part is just the introduction? Like a trumpet fanfare as the band enters the performing arena? Then the piece proper starts, proceeds, and then the intro starts again -- 3 times!!! It's not 'weird', there's a formal structure here!!! Auuugh!" As I remember, I went back to my desk seething, and I think they quietly concluded their business.

If Music Be the Food of Love...

...then play on. 

"Then Play On" is my favorite Fleetwood Mac album, and yes, that includes the Buckingham/Nicks years.

First, thank you, Cheryl. I saw you carrying this album down the hallway one day in high school, and I knew I MUST  hear it --what better arbiter of taste than the girl you had a not-so-secret crush on? 

So I've been listening to that album for quite a few years, even got the poorly mastered CD when it came out. 

BUT -- I recently picked up the remastered edition, and it is radically different from the original American LP version I was used to. Sure, the first CD added a few extra tracks, but the remastered version is practically a different album altogether. "Then Play On" was FMac's last gasp as a blues band, so the American version focused on the blues/rock tracks. The remastered version has 18 tracks, adds Parts 1 & 2 of their biggest hit (at the time) "Oh Well", the single "The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" (later covered by Judas Priest!), the b-side "World in Harmony", and a couple more ballads (plus the 2 that were on the first CD version.). The ballads aren't bad, and they certainly give a rounder view of the band's music at the time. But what really threw me off was how the remastered version re-ordered the track listing. You have an album memorized, and then they do this to you! 

Actually, it's nice to hear it in a different version. Still my favorite Mac album, and it sounds even better all spiffed up.

Value Village Find: Jennifer Warnes

This is a terrible collection, but I was desperate. My wife and I love both of Jennifer Warnes' Arista albums ("Jennifer Warnes" and "Shot Through the Heart"), and this collection cherry-picks from them, and adds a few soundtrack cuts. As with most 'best-of' collections, it's usually not. Sometimes it's just sloppy programming, and as someone in the music biz once explained to me, they still want you to buy the original albums, so a 'best-of' is missing some tracks on purpose.

Oh well. On to Jennifer Warnes. As I mentioned, she's done soundtrack work, and that's how most people know her, and that's how she wins Grammys. But Jennifer Warnes is one of probably 3 singers who can make me cry, just with the sound of her voice. (The other 2 are Paul Buchanan and June Tabor, but they have the added heft of tragic lyrics.) I hear something in Jennifer's voice that really wants to communicate something to me, and even some B material chokes me up because she sounds so sincere. "I have something I need to tell you, and I really want you to hear me."  The other day, I said to my wife "Let's listen to this song ("I'm Restless") and you walk me through the vocal tricks she uses." I'm sure there's actual terms for these techniques, but I'll just do my best to describe them. She employs the 'break' in her voice for sincerity, she'll swoop up an octave, she gets breathy on some words, or sings some bolder ala Laura Nyro -- but I want to be clear, these aren't tricks, but Jennifer's been quoted saying how much she tries to convey the meaning in the lyrics, and she's a superbly gifted singer who has an embarrassing array of tools she can use.

The 2 albums I mentioned are mired in the production sound popular at the time, and a later album like "The Hunter" is mired in different production tricks of its era. But I think I noticed something different about her later vocal style (and I have nothing to base this on except my own theory). She's done great work with Leonard Cohen over the years, and I wonder if she took a cue from Leonard's vocal approach. I don't think you could ever accuse Leonard of over-emoting, so maybe Jennifer tried stripping back her own approach. It's a Zen thing, I think. Her latest album (from 2007) was produced by her without the usual record company meddling, so I plan to track it down, and see if my theory proves correct. Whatever she does, I just hope she keeps on singing.

Finding New Music Part 2

While I was thinking about this post, I read the book pictured above. "Let's Talk About Love" is the title of a Celine Dion album that writer Carl Wilson totally hates, but has sold gazillions, so he resolves to find out where the disconnect is. What is 'taste', and why do you have such terrible taste? How does something I may find totally unlistenable find such a large audience ?  It was an eye (ear) opener for me, though the discussion of the sociology of culture towards the end made my brain hurt. But it was helpful as I thought about how to recommend music.

Here's the deal: I was all prepared to offer my suggestions about where to find new music, until I realized, that's where I go -- you may have a totally different agenda. Where to go? 

Many people hear new music on TV -- commercials, soundtracks to TV shows. YouTube is good, and so is (trade secret) the library. Physically, my library's CD collection is pretty mainstream; mostly current rap/country/pop (minus the copies that were stolen),  new music by established artists that peaked years ago (the 'safe bet'), Jazz? You may have a fighting chance. Classical?   Good luck -- like western paperbacks, it's a market that is shrinking as us old farts die off.

Streaming services? So far, Hoopla is a winner. Use your library card, download complete albums, listen for a week, and deep, deep catalog. How deep? "The Return of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", a fantastic collection of  -- no kidding -- 78's from  the 1920's. 

Many, many years ago, I first heard Miles Davis on a record borrowed from the library. That's also how I first heard Debussy, and Thomas Tallis, and the complete "Nutcracker". I try to encourage people to take a chance; if you don't like it, just return it. No harm, no foul. And don't just stick with "current" music -- 90% of music from ANY era is junk, so don't be afraid to listen to something 'old'. I figure, we now have literally a thousand years of music available to us. There's lots of exciting things out there to hear.

Finding New Music These Days, Part One

There was a fine New York Times article by Jennifer Finney Boylan titled "When Music Was Strange" (May 10 -- Google it, the link is way too long to type here). It's about how the search to find new ("strange") music has changed from 1975 when she was a teenager. (Her experience with the Miles Davis album "Bitches Brew" ?-- I'll talk about that in a later post. It won't be pretty.)

She, like a lot of us at that age, had similar avenues then to explore new music: the radio (FM, not AM), and friends in the know ("Hey, you have to hear this!") Independent record stores? Not yet. But now we have online music services that pretend to be your personal radio, programmed, as the Firesigns once said, "with your mind in mind". Did you like that last song? Here's one that sounds just like it! As Boylan says, it's "the musical equivalent of Fox News and MSNBC" -- a closed system with your own taste "reflected endlessly back". 

A lot of the music I enjoy, I liked immediately. But many of my favorites now weren't at first; they were too angular, too many rough edges, too...wrong. It takes work to listen past the familiar, to hear with different ears. Boylan mentions learning to love the difficult music of American classical composer Charles Ives (very much worth checking out  -- again, we'll talk later). Boylan suggests that the online streaming services would block this one -- too weird! -- and what a loss that would be.

I still listen to the radio: KING, KSER, CBC (there's good music to be found there, despite their best efforts to bury it under utter crap), but with the caveat that radio now plays a track without explaining "Yeah, great song, but the rest of the album, not so much..." Friends pass along recommendations, but many times, they're just echoing some magazine's "best of", and that's pretty dicey advice. Like Boylan, my son clues me in to what he's currently listening to, and I'd guess I like maybe 15%. Hey, it's HIS music, more power to him.

But I realized quite a long time ago that "new" means "new to me" -- it's new if I've never heard it before. I've been listening to a few collections of 78's -- yes, dusty shellac recorded in the '20s -- and there's truly great stuff there, including a track by Geeshy Wiley, recently profiled in ... the Sunday New York Times magazine! 

Part Two: Okay smarty, where DO I find new tunes, and not just rewarmed versions of songs I already like?

Terence Boylan? Never Heard of Him...

Working at a record store for a number of years had many advantages, one of which was exposure to way more artists that radio could ever play.

Today's example: Terence Boylan. You've probably never heard of him, and I only did because I got a promo copy of his first album. I liked it well enough, liked his second "Suzy" even better. After 1980, he fell off my radar, but he worked on film music and made demos on his own. "Terence Boylan" was released in 1999, and it includes most of his first album, half of his second, and 3 or 4 new songs that fit right in.

Many albums in the late 70s featured a lot of the same studio musicians and guest stars, so Little Feat started sounding like the Doobie Brothers who started sounding like Steely Dan. Terence Boylan drew from the same stock characters, but his songs always were a bit more East Coast Urban rather than Southern California Cosmic Cowboy. And I enjoyed his slightly more sophisticated lyrics. One of my favorites was referring to a college girl returning from summer vacation "brown as a banged-up peach". And then there's the one that quoted T.S. Eliot -- well, this English major was smitten.

 

I've been weeding my collection more earnestly lately; as I get older, I just don't have time for third-rate music.  Terence Boylan never made it out of the singer-songwriter ghetto, but I've always enjoyed his work, and I'm still finding new things in the production and musicianship. And one song features a Chevy Chase Fender Rhodes solo!