So the format of Twitter I think is not for me. Too short. Too focused on outside activity. I can sustain writing one, but I really can't sustain interest in anyone else's, which to me is kind of the point of having one about my own excrement. I'll keep it up, but I've got reservations. I realized tonight in Prospect Park (free mgmt concert) that I've definitely done something. No more work. School is pretty much set. Going to a farm for two weeks. Yup. I made some decisions. Pleased about that, but it sure does exist, huh?
Last week I discovered Chris White's brilliant The Frugal Buffet. It, to me, is everything great about a blog, even if the concept (these are what groceries I've been buying) if a ridiculous extreme. It's a compelling read. I was struck by an idea after reading the whole back log that I would enjoy writing the other end of this blog - a poop blog. I thought about it, and the ridiculous extreme of a poop blog (which surely have existed well before my humble attempt) seemed to me better suited to Twitter than it is to, say, this institution or Blogger or what have you. I should disclose that up to this point, my opinion of Twitter has remained pretty low - I've never been able to bring myself to follow another person's feed. Anyway, I've given it a try, the Doo Doo Bloggin project is now operational, and I link to it with the following thought/caveat:
"if the particulars of your own life aren't absorbing enough, why not read doodoobloggin"
Context is always nice. And having a little space in which to stretch out is always nice. So a bit more: I played a very satisfying solo concert at Goodbye Blue Monday last night as part of a really well-curated day of solo shows. Dave Kadden was the curator. Surprised Dave and Night Market DJ Crew (aka DJ America Bambaataa aka Adam) with my own heartfelt version of a Popocatepel tune, playing clarinet and guitar at the same time and losing myself in some bellowy singing. I did more singing than I've ever done in a solo show, which is great. A trend, not an isolated event. Other great music that exists: Turner's music and Wes's music.
Gonna be in Norther California for two weeks towards the beginning of July with Lynn, farming on a grape & olive farm. Very much looking forward to it, following the excellent sheep herding and chicken bagging at Owen's farm last weekend. It's snap pea and sour cherry season! I stuck my hand in a bag of fertilized chicken yolks last week and it was actually a very positive experience!
Hope things, whenever & wherever you are reading this, are feeling just nice. From, Dave
1. First concert tonight: Steve Lehman Octet. First thought: TYSHAWN SOREY FOR PRESIDENT! GOOD GRIEF! I hear he's going to Wes. Second: a-ha, I get this I think - let the horns deal with the micro-harmonic interactions in hits and pyramids (rather than in composed lines), let the drums let you how crazy the rhythm is with the bass, tuba, and vibes just highlighting, and when everything comes together hold on. Amazing.
2. Robert Ashley show at Merce Cunningham Studios that I just found out about today. Made it over there in 13 minutes from first show (Le Poisson Rouge, which I don't really dig that much). Selections from a part of Atalanta (the Max Ernst section) I'd never heard and some new stuff from Quicksand, what he's working on now. As usual, what can I say? A whole lot. Rather than run on, I'll just say that in the second half, he used a long Elmore Leonard quote to illustrate what I take as marveling at the creation of a voice. This interchange is repeated six times (half by audience volunteers): Joyce: I think Gloria forget her bag. Rayland: You bet she did. And I think he's in love with the idea that you can imagine these two voices (there's a gun in the bag), this mundane thought about something vital. And you get to imbue with everything. That's my take, anyway. That guy is full of life.
3. marble cruller at Donut Pub, with a glass of milk. yes.
I'm sad the Cavs lost. I'm sad because if there's one thing that's more important in sports than loyalty, it's parity. It's not even that everybody deserves to win sometimes, it's that things are more compelling when everybody wins sometimes.
As a fan, there are not many teams I care about. The Mets, sure. The Steelers, maybe. The Penguins, eh. Was I pleased during the Super Bowl when the Cardinals, a team that has never won, were about to pull off a huge late upset? You bet. Was I also pleased when the Steelers came back? Sure. It's complicated. When the Rockies made it to the World Series against the Red Sox in 2007, I was excited about the match up. I was a Sox fan, sure enough, but the Rockies were just so improbable. A great underdog. A team that had never done anything before (albeit in only 14 years). The Sox winning in 2004 was amazing. The Sox winning in 2007 transformed them into something else. I would probably be displeased if they won again this year, or anytime soon. They've had their turn for a while, and I will root accordingly (not that the Yankees are due, like, ever again).
You can't argue with the Phillies, a team that has lost over 10,000 games, getting their second championship last year. Second. In what, 125 years? Even if "we" are their the arch-enemies. Back to the Cavs, I grew in up Pittsburgh, where next to West Virginia, Cleveland is by far the most dumped-upon locale. I have no love for the place, and neither do I have pity. (Incidentally, theseare brilliant) To boot, LeBron James is about the farthest thing from an underdog as you can produce. But there's something righteous about him winning in Ohio before us Big City Industrials snatch him away in 2010. A story line unique throughout sports, even if it's completely over-hyped. I want Cleveland to win, perhaps because then it's okay for my clubs to win again (guilt of Sox over Indians from '07?), but I also want the redemptive power of something one has an emotional stake in succeeding (winning!) for millions of people who have lacked it for 45 years. There is the catharsis of winning after 86 years, but isn't 45 or 25 just as powerful and without the culture of self-doubt and self-loathing?
I’d like it if every month, a review of the top five airplane landings (of that month) were emailed to me. It would be nice if this were like a three minute YouTube clip with video, narration, and maybe an expert in the field telling me why this landing demonstrates perfect form or how these particular pilots overcame inclement weather or bad runway surface or vodka haze or what have you.
WEIRD MOVIES ON LARGE SCREENS. Yes, I did do a lot of stuff this week, and whatnot, but what did I do three times? Watch a weird movie on a large screen. Last Sunday, Mr. C. Santiago and I combined on a 1-2 Dr. Chicago punch (really the 1st and 3rd installment, the 2nd is lost to history and the 4th, well, we just weren't up to that much Dr. Chicago). Chris had signed up for a room at Columbia (where he's a student, ya know) that had a huge screen, like 100 old wooden seats, and all the amenities a person could want to have whilst watching Alvin Lucier act like a clown in Michigan and California. I've had the DVDs for a while but had been waiting for an excuse to watch them Thumb up.
Round two was in the same room (the Schermerhorn building, incidentally) on Thursday night, this time some Kenneth Anger films. I'd read about some but never seen any, and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome blew me away. Invocation of My Demon Brother less so, but nice Mick Jagger electro-soundtrack. Thumb up.
Last night was a reviewing of Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. Evan and I watched it on his laptop a while ago, but last night several of us went to a midnight screening. Big screen. AMAZING art direction comes through like that time last year I saw Tron on a big screen. How could I have forgotten the lizard vs. frog history of Mexico? I remembered the 1000 scrotum collection and the snazzy matching mountain climbing suits. How did I forget all of those amazing tableaus? Apparently John and Yoko funded this. Isn't amazing that all three of these directors are still around? How cool is that? Did I mention that I'm studying music composition at Brooklyn College next year?
I did it. I finished. Woo, that sure happened. What am I talking about?
I made a CD album, it's called is Great, and it's by me, Dave Ruder. And I think you're great, too. Some of this material has been sitting around for years, but about half of it is brand new, or never recorded before. I jotted down some thoughts about it, and you can download most of it (I may put up the last three tracks soon, not sure) if you click on the album cover above. If you're interested in a physical copy (and you're reading this here), I'll send you one. Just let me know what your address is, either with a post or via email or whatever. I just need to get a working CD burning device, as there's a disc lodged in my stupid drive. Might have this point resolved by the end of the day. And the covers aren't 100% done, the ones I printed out are just a hair too big. But I'm getting there. Anyway, let me know if you want one. Or just download the sucker. I can send you the last three tracks. Woof, Dave
I haven’t got the energy to make this as expansive as it deserves right now, but I wanted to sketch out my area of thinking for you out there in the aether of the Internet. I’m was walking on Main St in my one-time hometown of Mt Kisco, NY on Monday, fresh from getting a dental filling. The previous evening, I had treated myself to this clip on YouTube:
Shatner doing Rocketman at SciFi Awards, 1978
It’s in my view the most exaggerated version of his trademark vocal delivery; he lays so far back on every line, he’s infinitely patient to get on with it. I don’t think this is necessarily any more inherent in the song than it is in his other classic selections. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” from The Transformed Man has a very hesitant first verse, contrasted with a later verse which begins to accelerate rapidly. “How Insensitive” fits the laid back bossa that backs it with an oozing delivery. Shatner has said his phrasing on Star Trek came about because they gave him dry tech-y dialogue and he wanted to add some contour & life to it. Presumably his approach to songs uses the same phrase conception. I also think about Nimoy taking the hand signals and wham…
What if Shatner’s rubato is tapping into an ur-Jewish rubato*? I also say that I love synagogue music of most shapes, short of Debbie Friedman, from your arch-cantoral to your more choral or whole-congregation because there’s not really momentum – there’s very little urging you forwards most of the time. It’s just there in that moment, with as much melismata as is needed in cantoral and until everyone is done with the choral/congregational.
Morton Feldman’s writing pointed me in the direction of thinking about this (“It’s too fucking fast and too fucking loud!”). Morty’s music is not going anywhere, it just presents sound objects in space as what they are, not always saying that much about continuity or purpose. And it’s beautiful. Morty, in a slam of Schoenberg (not to mention a slight of Bizet, Meyerbeer, HaLevy, Milhaud, sort of Mahler, Mendelssohn, and many folks with and without names) said he wanted to be the first explicitly Jewish composer. Sort of a post-Wagner asserting that in fact we make different music than Europeans (and everybody else) make, which I tend to support. I at least support this idea in principle. I think a big key to that is rubato phrasing.
After hearing some stunning live sets, I finally picked up Judith Berkson’s CD Lulu last week. I suppose it’s ultimately incidental that Berkson’s day job is that of a cantor, but I mention it nonetheless. This album touches on lieder, standards, and originals. Using familiar materials as her palette, she outlines a concept of floating phrasing that transforms the old into something choppy and darting and uses the new material to take these ideas in freer directions. I suppose it is important to know that she’s a cantor after all; the timing in cantoral music is based entirely off the timing of ornament in the moment. A different rendering (over time, by another person, across traditions, etc.) of the same prayer can take markedly different shapes, and there is definitely an over the top element to this. Berkson’s performance of standards is this same idea, and she’s painted them with a very Jewish, cantoral-influenced brush.
There is no way to be comprehensive, but I’m saying this what else is on my mind. A few other things: in the hybrid klezmer-jazz of the 20s to 40s, there are amazing violin or clarinet intros and breaks over held chords that aren’t ultimately unlike the same effect in Ellington, which is reassuring to me in what it implies about musical syncretism of that era. It feels different, but then again, the Jewish violin tradition (and the clarinet tradition that derives from it) and the African American jazz/blues soloist tradition both strongly derive from imitation of the human voice (see “ya-ya” trombone playing in Ellington’s Black, Brown, and Beige). Also, I was thinking about the differences between the Fugees’s “Killing Me Softly” and the Roberta Flack original: Lauryn Hill is really laying back for almost the whole song, whereas for me hearing the Roberta Flack makes it sound so regular, that’s some really nice rubato in a more popular venue.
Also, a disclaimer: As has been semantically popular for some fifteen years, I am talking about “Jewish” music in a broad sense. There is nothing that music has to do or be to be Jewish music, generally (but not always) it is executed by musicians of a Jewish background, or derived from music made by folks with a Jewish background. I think that Tzadik records “Great Jewish Music” discs from the late 90s are some of the greatest compilations ever produced, but there’s really nothing coherent tying them together. There are a few really fine rubato moments, like in Dave Douglas’s “Wives and Lovers” on the Burt Bacharach album, but I'm stopping here.
*I tend to understand rubato as melodic pulselessness, rather than simply speeding up or slowing down a little, it’s merely the most convenient word I can find.
I was wanting the sensation of someone else putting up a picture of me online, but sometimes you just have to take things into your own hands. I got new glasses about two months ago. I may have single-handedly netted a gig in NYC for the first time in a while (albeit for the large ensemble, not necessarily for my own solo ends, which would be nice). Maybe time to take matters into my own hands again. The future: more Wasa crackers with peanut butter and cabbage (purple). And on. Two notes on the picture - 1. I like my nose a lot 2. that's Bess's shoulder
Hello friends. I made a jam, and I want you to hear it and maybe think about it. It's called puppies and kitties and it's my voice plus a drum machine. You can find it here.
I asked a woman from Quebec tonight if they call them loonies and toonies in French, and she was very confused. I took that as a no. I've been thinking about the Lonely Island's music (after a bunch of older music lifers were sending around Ras Trent on il face book, and after hearing J. in my P. like a month ago), and in a moment of promoting the overdog, I dunno. Something about Andy Samberg is just the happiest rapper ever. It's like rapping for your parents in second grade, with a big dumb smile that never leaves, but so so nice. Eh. Good for them.
The suggestion of a song from some ethnographic psychological speculation on divination: "My wife is sleeping with a stranger and I am going to shoot a caribou." I hope everyone writes their own song with this idea, then we can compare notes. Courtesy of Marie-Louise von Franz, Jungian psychologist in her lectures captured in On Synchronicity and Divination. I think something trying to explain Bob Ashley sent me to this book, but it was so long ago I forgot what the reference was/was about. Anyway, really cool book that's not that much about tarot and I Ching and stuff, more about cultural differences in conceiving of numbers as quantitative vs. qualitative (i.e. the character of three as opposed to the amount of three). But also about why people would want to use divination methods and what they hope to get out of it (an explanation of their situation, a prediction for the future, etc.). Way more interesting than Jung's book on Synchronicity, but also based on that book. Here's the whole page about the caribou, pretty excellent.
Incidentally, wicked awesome Bob Ashley jams at LaMama in the last two weeks. Celestial Excursions particularly.
I'm reading a lovely book about Yvonne Rainer called Being Watched, it's by Carrie Lambert-Beatty. It's made me realize that one reason I read non-fiction is because it's so much easier to root for the protagonist. I mean, Yvonne Rainer could do, think, or say anything (as represented by the author) now that I'm 145 pages in and I'd think it's brilliant. Nice self-assessment. Anyway, two quotes that surround her landmark piece Trio A*, a series of non-emphasized, fluidly (yet awkwardly) connected gestures which involves no direct eye contact with the audience:
"The choices in my work are predicated on my own particular resources - obsessions of imagination, you might say - and also on an ongoing argument with, love of, and contempt for dancing. If my rage at the impoverishment of ideas, narcissism, and disguised sexual exhibitionism of most dancing can be considered purtian moralizing, it is also true that I love the body - its actual weight, mass, and unenhanced physicality."
"The condition for the making of my stuff lies in the continuation of my interest and energy. Just as ideological issues have no bearing on the nature of the work, neither does the tenor of current political and social conditions have any bearing on its execution. The world disintegrates around me. My connection to the world in crisis remains tenuous and remote. I can foresee a time when this remoteness must necessarily end, though I cannot foresee exactly when or how the relationship will change, or what circumstances will incite me to a different kind of action. Perhaps nothing short of universal female military conscription will affect my function (The ipso facto physical fitness of dancers will make them the first victims.); or a call for a world-wide cessation of individual functions, to include the termination of genocide. This statement is not an apology. It is a reflection of a state of mind that reacts with horror and disbelief upon seeing a Vietnamese shot dead on TV - not the sight of death, however, but at the fact that the TV can be shut off afterwards as after a bad Western. My body remains the enduring reality." quotes from Rainer's Statement regarding "The Mind is a Muscle"
This book traffics in ideas of media (film vs. photograph vs. art vs. performance), fixedness/static vs. motion (i.e. ballet and burlesque vs. modern dance), seriality, and a whole bunch of other fun stuff. I'm also thinking about how much I've been more into Fluxus and the Judson group and their early to mid-60s ilk recently. I love the clarity of the ideas, the ascetic extremeness in articulate people who, as later decades have shown, are mostly pretty compassionate.
Also, I'm thinking that there's a productive analogy to be found in comparing Trio A to Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music. Series of non-emphasized things.
As far as NYC goes, it's pretty clear I'm a Brooklyn guy. I could be a Queens guy given different circumstances, but I'm a Brooklyn guy. Once in a while, I think about Manhattan again, as I used to do more often. I work on the West Side, I used to work on the East Side, both Upper. My grandpa has lived on the U.E.S. since before I was born, and in a sense it's home-ish. I think I prefer the logic of the East Side, particularly once you get over to 2nd, 1st, York/Sutton/A, etc. Not such a different pace, but it was sort of where I grew up (more than the West anyway). All those long avenues, long, often tall avenues. Anyway. I have very little desire to live in Manhattan, but I was walking through Gramercy Park today, and I thought that if someone wanted to give me a place right on that park in which to live, I wouldn't say no. I'm not going out of my way, but you know, if it came up, then sure, I'd suck it up and do it. Groceries would be more expensive, shit, but you know.
Most rocking flute/organ/drums trio conceivable. Very hard stuff; I love the percussive flute hits at the very beginning, and Steve Winwood's face, too. Ta gueule!
Also, I really dig the emerging-from-the-mystery-and-looking-content quality of this photo of C.E. Ives, not sure if it comes through in the scans:
Are you well? I'm pretty well tonight. Almost done with something more narrative than this walrus. Tried the grass jelly drink finally, at LRL's behest.
This is frankly a terrible video, but there's something about the song ("Chewing Gum"). I heard it over the weekend and have been trying to figure it out ever since. The chorus has this bizarre flow that sounds very speech like to me, but at the same time very irregular. The stresses are all over the place in terms of the meaning, which is admirable. I think the conflict between the two in this case elevates both, even though I wouldn't exactly call either brilliant on their own. It's making something really neat out of a pretty straightforward pop song. ( I've taken the liberty of scanning it underneath this here cut. )
Anyway, it's a good time right now, I think. Warm late autumn with some extra stuff in the air, some of the that good non-tangible stuff.
About to finish Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones)’s Blues People, an excellent, not-unpleasantly speculative, cultural genealogy of music made in America by those descended from Africans. Some of its most compelling discussions, to me, are of the flipped genre connotations many musics had: for example the Cakewalk arose as a black parody of white dancing, was adopted by whites in the forms of minstrel shows, which eventually featured black performers parodying themselves. At this point the music associated with these shows, ragtime, became a solo piano and small band music, primarily performed by black performers, until it was watered down and repopularlized as more polite white music. This happens many times over; in discussing the post-swing black reaction of bebop and the various reactions to bebop, Baraka comes to the early 60s:
“By now, even the fresh uses to which the boppers put riff-based chords have been exploited and re-exploited to staleness. The hard boppers, if anything, increased to an even greater degree the improvising jazz musician’s reliance on ‘changes’ (recurring chords). Also, the ‘tonal centers’ of this music, especially as influenced by pseudo-gospel harmonies, are so predictable and flat that in this context even the gifted improvisers began to sound dull. What [Ornette] Coleman and [Cecil] Taylor have done is to approach a kind of jazz that is practically nonchordal and in many cases atonal (meaning that its tonal ‘centers’ are constantly redefined according to the needs, or shape and direction, of the particular music being played, and not formally fixed as is generally the case – what composer George Russell has called ‘pan-tonality’). Their music does not depend on constantly stated chords for its direction and shape. Nor does it pretend to accept the formal considerations of the bar, or measure, line. In a sense, the music depends for its form on the same references as primitive blues forms. It considers the total area of its existence as a means to evolve, to move, as an intelligently shaped musical concept, from its largely artificial considerations of bar lines and constantly stated chords, but the more musical considerations of rhythm, pitch, timbre, and melody. All these are shaped by the emotional requirements of the player, i.e. the improvising soloist or improvising group.”
-Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963, pg. 226-7
This is very revealing to me. You see critics always talk in hushed tones about the actual theory or conception behind Mr. Coleman’s music, instead usually talking about inherent “freedoms” it involves. This has never satisfied me, and in lieu of a published theory of harmolodics (something that’s been floated before), this is a very level-headed analysis from when the music was still new. If you are unaware, the general reaction of critics in the early 60s was far more sensational, there’s a great book about it called The Battle of the Five Spot by David Lee. What a great idea of openness though – there’s still a specific kind of expression you prize, but you get there on your own time rather than at the pace of convention. As George Russell is quoted as saying in the next paragraph: “This approach liberates the improviser to sing his own song really, without having to meet the deadline of any particular chord.” Ideas, ideas. One day I’ll get into Cecil Taylor, my first three attempts haven’t stuck. Maybe seeing the guy live would help.
Next up: Jung's Synchronicity. Seems like a book that I've been supposed to read for a while.
