Neptune Research

I will begin with a quote, from Zero Point Space, the venue that hosted this thang:

“Since March 2003, The Hop-Frog Kollectiv has been hosting monthly experimental art, music & poetry gathering. To celebrate HFK is hosting two nights of the best experimental music Los Angeles has to offer. From ear piercing harsh noise to noise rock to asiatic dreams and melodies, the two nights features the Kollectiv’s dearest friends and mosted respected artists from the LA area. The festival will be fully documented for the upcoming Dung Mummy DVD/CD compilation. Each night features sax wielder, Steve Mackay who played on the seminal Stooges album, Funhouse. In addition Steve had been a member of the Violent Femmes, Snake Finger and has led the international Radon Ensemble with members of Sikhara, Amps fo Christ and much more.”

Or, from www.hop-frog.com…

“Dung Mummy is an ANTI-fascist experimental arts institution hosted by the hop-frog kollectiv. It is our goal to give artists a voice and platform that would otherwise be shunned by the Los Angeles/Hollywood matrix of hell-hole politics and depressing, self-confidence bleaching antics. We are dedicated to political dissent, artistic revolution and experimental realization.”

…All of which sounds good to me. So I went to the second night of the 5-year-anniversary Dung Mummy festival, only scantily informed.

I did know a few other things going in. Most of these things stemmed from my purchase not long ago of the Post Asiatic sampler, “Lost War Dream Music.” Disc 1 is hypnotic and nearly entirely awesome. Tracks by Seattle’s lunatic guitarist Bill Horist (who plays with cymbals wedged under his guitar strings, among other novelties) and the deceased musical madman Muslimgauze (I dig his “Farouk Enjineer” disc in particular) are interspersed with tracks by bands with names like Amps For Christ (very cool - see below), Refrigerator Mothers, Hop-Frog Kollectiv, and other weirdnesses. I can’t always tell one track from another, but that works to the disc’s advantage.

Disc 2 hasn’t sucked me in so much. I will give it time. ***

The disc’s notes and the online literature refer to something called “Post-Asiatic” music which basically amounts to the largely uninformed appropriation of traditional Asian musical elements and the running with said elements in a variety of directions. I can dig it - I listen to lots of Japanese rocknroll, bunches of traditional Vietnamese, Balinese, Tibetan Buddhist and rural Chinese music among other things. I could probably call my own music “Post Asiatic” (though it would give my Taiwanese-American girlfriend fits if I did) but I prefer “Post World.” In any case, the results of this not-so-cohesive-as-it-sounds movement are varied in quality and sensibility and liking some of it is no guarantee of liking all of it, though it makes for a nicely information-rich cultural system when it all gets banded together.

As the reader is by now aware, the Hop Frog Kollectiv has much to do with the Dung Mummy Festival, and several of the bands from the compilation were on the bill for Saturday night. Actually, the bands I initially thought I wanted to see were mostly billed for Friday night, so I thought of going then even though I first heard of the thing on Friday afternoon.

But then I saw that Steve Mackay, saxophone player from the excellent album “Fun House” by the original Stooges, was performing on both nights and that on the second night he would be backed by Liquorball. Liquorball is associated with Grady Runyan. Grady Runyan is associated with Monoshock and with The Bad Trips, bands which have put out two of my favorite records (”Walk To The Fire” and “The Bad Trips,” respectively). I listen to The Bad Trips more, and the album is newer, but Monoshock has things that sound more like “songs” if you’re into that. Anyway, I dig Grady’s guitar playing and I went and took in Saturday night mainly to see him play.

There were more bands on the bill than is almost conceivable. Here is a rundown of what I was into:

Openers Metal Rouge played a kind of improvised noise for guitar, keys and voice (man on guitar, woman on keys and voice), all treated heavily with electronic effects. This music was not at all in any kind of realm of jazz or blues-derived improv. It was more akin to Japanese freeform in that it started somewhere relevant only to its own sensibility and proceeded to move, slowly, to somewhere else without following any clearcut precedent or blazed trail of any kind. This kind of thing is amazing when you hear it for the first time - I am well acquainted with the type so for me the novelty was in the personalities and the instrumentation. I liked her voice alright, I enjoyed the guitar player, some of it was bracing and some of it was enveloping and some of the squiggly high notes were very funny. I think this group probably works better live than on CD (unless recorded in just the right or just the wrong sort of way).

The third group did something similar but added a woman on drums, whose tribal pounding really made it. They took the freeform improv thang and added hypnotic groove to the equation. I boogied. This group, whose name I do not at the moment recall, included a singer-with-effects who also played bits of keys and recorder, plus a bass and a guitar if my memory serves. Noisy and fun.

Next up was howardAmb, a duo who flat out blew our minds! Instrumentation = James (electronically treated voice, Q-Chord) and Stefan (drums, electronic drums and samples, treated voice). They played polyrhythmic songs and things that might have been trancey jams. Their energy is loving and wonderful. They were giving out free copies of their pre-release CD - I’ll report back when I’ve listened to it. Go and see this band.

Hmm… I recall enjoying Amps For Christ a lot. They had a roto-koto, a spinning mechanism with strings and pegs that has to be seen to be understood though it still doesn’t come easy. They also had other strange instruments. One looked sitar-ish. Not sure. Music was free-jazzy in a traditional-Vietnamese-musical sense of the idea. Amps For Christ has a track on the Post Asiatic CD #1. (Also on the vinyl***)

There was a collaboration between Catastrophic Mermaids On Parade and Hermit The Flog. It was mellow, low-key, electronic and rhythmic and included live bass and guitar as well as samples and sound effects. I liked that one a lot. It made me dance, and a man with a top-knot smiled at me.

There was a band from San Diego called San Kazakgascar. They were the most straight-up thang we saw - guitar, bass, drums, group vocals -they’d function alright in any highbrow watering hole. But the arrangements were screwy-cool, tribally rhythmic, chanted syllabic, vaguely implicating of surf music somewhere deep back in the lineage but not in any kind of overt way. The guitarist’s strat looked WAY out of place in that room full of weirdness, but it sounded fine and they made us both dance. Props fer sher.

I should say, too, that the room was instantly inviting. The vibes were cool. Couches and chairs, crazy tapestries and art and weird stuff written all over the walls, freaks everywhere - the people running it were WAY nuttier than the “audience,” some of whom looked a bit lost or otherwise confused. The most interesting audients always turned out to be performers eventually to the point where I wondered after a while if we were the only two there who weren’t actually involved in putting on the show!

Good feeling. We walked in and it was like being back in Seattle but without some of the attendant cliquishness. I mean, I love and miss Seattle but I always felt like a leper when I walked into a new scene. These people make eye contact, and they talk to you if you smile. Although on the other hand the smallish crowd was SO mellow I was wishing for some of my wilder pals from up north to shake things up a bit.

Alright, now we come to the “finale” - Steve Mackay and Liquorball. It was close to 2am when they started and we were falling asleep. If they’d been anything but unreal good I woulda been dragged and started grumbling about leaving. But guess what? They KILLED it.

The closest analog I could think of would be Acid Mothers Temple if they’d relax a little bit. This music was fast and driving and pounding but not generally invasive. It made me want to move.

Grady played mainly wash-of-sound guitar including dalliances with a slide and an e-bow, some strange hand-techniques I didn’t recognize, some wah sweeps that reminded me of, well, me… There was a dude devoted entirely to some kind of oscillating rack, a thunderous left-handed drummer, and a thunderous bass player. There were two saxophones, Steve Mackay and another guy with shorter hair. The second horn played more in the way of spaced-out overblowing and atonalities and such - did it very well, too, I dug it, it wasn’t just chaotic noise for noise’s sake. And Steve’s devotion to the groove (he was shouting about it after the set!) was exemplary. He was psyched to have a tight band behind him that he could just groove out over - even if his idea of a tight band is a rumbling wad of space noise from a parallel wavelength! His stage energy is comparable to that of Seattle’s eccentric artist Joe Reno, if that means anything to y’all…

They played til they blew a fuse and the power went out. Awesome.

Apparently Steve and Liquorball just played a string of shows together. I hope they do more. I hope they record. I’ll dig it all. Totally great. Psychedelic ecstasy. Thanks, guys.

*** I bought a few bits of musical artifacture at the show - the pre-release from HowardAMB was a freebie, major score it’s supercool as of one listen in the car and includes my favorite tunes from their set, but I shelled out $$ for a disc by the Master Musicians Of Hop-Frog (I am a sucker for bands with Master Musicians in their name, like Seattle’s Master Musicians Of Bukkake or even the original Master Musicians Of Joujouka - I like ‘em all) and for what seems to be the major find, a vinyl edition of the original single LP “West-Coast Post-Asiatic.” It’s all different tracks than the double CD but it’s many of the same artists. I am listening to it now and I can tell you the sound is BIG and WARM and LUSH. Some of the CD tracks have a thin, not-unappealing insectile quality but the record is KUSHY and SOFT. And the vinyl is all kinds of skronky colors. Total score. Not sure if you can still get this, but if you can, do.

Do yourself a favor and go here:
handofdave.com
and click on
“Download WAYDOWN”

listen to it, say, twice through

wait a few days or weeks, depending on the pace of your state of being

then listen to it again

WAYDOWN consists mostly if not entirely of solo performances on various acoustic instruments run through various electronics. Guitar, banjo, jaw harp, other. It is not a long album, and most of the songs are not long songs, but the work as a whole is hypnotic. David Drew Longey is the artist. The rest of his website is also rewarding in various ways, if you have a few minutes

I was going to post some mp3s here today of guitar improvs based on riffs I jotted down yesterday and last night. Yesterday was my birthday, and I was in a lame mood. Notably, the feel of the riffs improved greatly after midnight, when I got home from seeing an excellent set by Howlin Rain with my Lady Z. But, my ability to hypnotically repeat polyrhythmic guitar grooves in a meditational fashion is not currently up to snuff. The tones were great, the ideas were solid, and I just couldn’t hit the notes I wanted more than once or twice in a row. So… I will work on that and get back to you, and meanwhile I will tell you about Howlin Rain.

I went to see them again tonight. That should tell you something.

Last night (March 5) they played at Spaceland. I have heard of Spaceland because I have a recording of Acid Mothers Temple playing there. I am new to Los Angeles and was excited to actually see the place. Now that I have seen it, I am even more excited to see Acid Mothers play at, uh, The Echo - a club which I prefer for reasons I can not specify. Spaceland is nifty, but I liked the vibe better at The Echo last time out (Kinski, from Seattle, back in the fall). Plus it’s closer to home…

Not that I had a bad experience at Spaceland. Far from it! The walls were at least partially covered (well, some of the walls were entirely covered and others not at all) with sparkly blue stuff. I like that. And the people-watching was above average.

The opening band was silly, the second group was possibly sillier despite or perhaps because of appearing to take themselves much more seriously. I don’t want to dis, so if you want to know who they were you will have to do your own research. I will say that I really dug the keyboard player in the first band and the keys player and the drummer in the second band.

I saw Howlin Rain for the first time in Seattle, probably in the fall of 2006. I went to see them because I liked Comets On Fire, who I most likely had heard about on headheritage.com. Comets’ “frontman” Ethan Miller had a side project, Howlin Rain, with members of some other bands I’d heard of in the rhythm section, and they were playing at the Sunset. I think I knew some people in one of the opening bands, also, but they didn’t impress me much on that night. Unless that was the night Andrew McInnis played in a group with Chris and Lucy from Kinski - in which case, the opener was KILLER COOL AWESOME! I believe they called themselves LIverburst. Coulda been great, but Andrew moved to Maine. He’s back now. Perhaps they will continue.

I liked Howlin Rain’s set alright, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. Comets is full on outta sight mania, and so was Liverburst. Ethan’s guitar playing was wild, but none of it really penetrated. A guy standing near me in the crowd made a point of grabbing hold of me to insist: “This is the new Jimi Hendrix!” or words to that effect. I was not convinced, but I did pay more attention to Ethan’s guitar playing after that, and I said hi to him after the show. Really nice guy.

Saw him play with Comets in the spring of 2007. Blindingly incredible show. So glad I got to see it happen. Ethan hung out at the edge of the stage after and talked to people. Supercool.

Meanwhile I checked out Howlin Rain’s debut CD. It’s good. I wanted it on vinyl, but it didn’t exist that way. (I heard there might be a reissue? We’ll see if I can budget it…) Unlike the stage show, which was gloriously messy and smothered by the Sunset Tavern’s dense, small-room acoustics, the album is crystal clear, super-cleanly recorded, melodic, vital and raw all at once. It has obvious reference points to particular forms of rocknroll, Jimi not least of which, but none of them touch on plagiarism and there are a few AWESOME surprises. The lyrics are literate. The guitars chime and groove and strum and riff and then suddenly they BARF. Not really like anything else out there. I tell people they sound like Stooges eating Lynyrd Skynyrd, but that is not really it, exactly.

So make a long story slightly less long.

They played at Spaceland last night. It was a good set. The sound was muddy. Some of the band members were different, but that is OK. They have a new album out, which I have (on vinyl) but haven’t played yet. There will be a time for that. I am certain that it is good. It is called “Magnificent Fiend” which makes me think of Kinski (Klaus Kinski, that is) who was referred to by Werner Herzog as his “best fiend”. So maybe two of my favorite bands are communicating in secret codes?

What else to say about the show… Ethan walks out and he’s always taller than I remember. He is unaffected in his speech, his gait, his dress, his hair. He turns on his guitar and a flurry of distorto-delay mania erupts and from then on he’s all eyes-closed squinting-and-screaming flailing his axe into the air and down and around - for effect? cos he feels it? cos it’s in him and it got to get out? Who knows? Whatever. I don’t question it when Kawabata hangs his strat from the ceiling, so Ethan can do whatever the hell he wants when he plays his own Fender. I’m just saying, you wouldn’t expect such a mild-mannered dude to turn into such a maelstrom when he plays.

The new songs are a lot like the old songs, which is not a bad thing. I’d like to hear more forward motion in next year’s set, but it was good to hear this lineup play at all, and the mix of new and old tunes was appealing. The intros to some of the tunes are killer - unison or harmony guitar and bass lines, crazy feedback power slams - and likewise the bridges and outros and whatnot. Good arrangement, but it all blurs together through a club sound system.

Which is basically what brought me to Amoeba Records on Sunset today at 7pm. I wanted to hear the band properly. They only played a quick 45 minute set at most, but I could hear how the two guitars and the keyboard play off each other, in and out of the arrangements. I could feel the bass a little better. I was able to hear the diverse tones and influences in the rhythm guitar work - to suss the elements of the show which are not Ethan Miller, not that he isn’t great but I’d checked him out already.

I think most of the band had a better set at Amoeba. Despite the bright lights and the time of day and the odd setting, I mean, how can you go wrong playing in a record store? Especially one as cool as that - they stock Sublime Frequencies and Les Rallizes Denudes… I mean, get real! And the stage has a big pyramid over it with an eyeball at the top. Very vibey.

Ethan was happily talking to everybody after both sets, smiling and sweating and shaking everybody’s hand three times and thanking everyone for coming. Too cool. I mean, I don’t mind if someone doesn’t want to do that stuff, but it’s so nice when they (we) get real that way.

Also:

There’s a limited edition CD which you can only get at Howlin Rain shows. It is part of a larger series about which I know nothing at the present time but will be looking into eventually - I can’t budget the whole set, regardless, but I picked up the Howlin Rain disc. It is called “Wild Life” and consists of an epic psychefrazzled jam on Paul McCartney’s tune, “Wild Life,” plus another epic jam on nothing in particular, both of which are pristinely recorded and very warm and pleasant to listen to. Even if the official album turns out to suck (which would surprise me) I got my dime’s worth with “Wild Life.”

Also:

This post originally ended with the line: “Ethan Miller is a REALLY NICE GUY!”

Which is TRUE, as far as I can tell. But I want to make it clear that I do not KNOW Ethan Miller, have never met or really talked to him beyond a few sentences in a loud club after a noisy show, in short I am in no position to judge the niceness of Ethan Miller.

What I really meant is, his energy is great. He vibes well. He is not, as a musician/performer, off-putting or indifferent.

As far as I can tell, from interviews and song lyrics and stage manner, Ethan Miller is an intelligent and compassionate human being with a wild streak. Be that to your taste, or not.

Blue Afternoon is one of Tim Buckley’s least highly regarded records. Trite, record-company-appeasing, lightweight kack from an otherwise genius. He had to record Blue Afternoon to fulfill a contract, so he could get on with making the album he wanted to make. That is the story.

(It is also the story of his last two records, Sefronia and Look At The Fool. People tend to accept Sefronia before Fool, but I can’t see it. Look At The Fool is brilliantly offhand where Sefronia is competently, cloyingly produced, if sometimes more digestibly concise in the song construction. “Honeyman,” “Sally Go Round The Roses” and “Stone In Love,” all from Sefronia, are probably more effective songwriting than any one tune on Look At The Fool. But Look At The Fool wins out by miles in terms of mood, feel and funk, even if it is desperate.)

I have also read interviews in which members of Tim’s band referred to Blue Afternoon as the logical follow-up to their previous record, Happy/Sad. Happy/Sad is a loose and stretched-out post-folk passive-fusion set wherein songs with simple but unusual forms are elaborated upon… Slowly.

There are six tunes on Happy/Sad. The first, “Strange Feeling,” is in Miles-ian Kind Of Blue territory, as played by 12-string acoustic guitar, upright bass, mellow electric guitar, congas and vibraphone and Tim’s awe-some voice. Then there’s a quick fake to the left, the almost-a-pop-song “Buzzin’ Fly,” beautiful like autumn sunlight on your windowsill. Then things get REALLY slow, and, with the exception of the frantic and premonitory “Gypsy Woman,” they STAY that way.

You could almost not notice that you were listening to Happy/Sad. You could think, ‘Gee, I should put some music on!’ Then you’d go to the turntable and, whoops, Happy/Sad is playing!

That is not a complaint. Happy/Sad is an amazing record. If you haven’t heard it, you should. I like the vinyl, but whatever you can get will do. I also suggest you play it in late September or early to mid October. Play it in the afternoon. When you are feeling. Very. Relaxed.

Blue Afternoon was Tim Buckley’s next, fourth, album.

Lorca came out at about the same time as Blue Afternoon. The two records can be seen as equally logical motions in diverse directions from Happy/Sad. It has been suggested that the near-simultaneous release (record company bullshit) of two such different discs by the same artist led to the commercial downfall of both.

So. Lorca. Side one consists of two jarringly odd compositions. The first is based mainly around a HUGE, dry, odd-metered organ theme. (Everything on this side of this album is very dry. I am used to such strange music being steeped in reverb to ease it down the auditory throat. No such.) The vocals croon and wail, sometimes at once.

The second tune is equally weird, but shorter.

The tones are not especially jarring in themselves, but the composition and performance are strange. Well done, but alien. Listen to it. You’ll see.

I like this music, but I don’t play it much. It isn’t even one of the sides I pull out to show what a nutball Tim Buckley was. I use Starsailor for that, or parts of Greetings From L.A. or that live one from 1970s radio called Honeyman. Buddy Helm plays drums on Honeyman, which is another good reason to listen to it.

Lorca, side two, consists of two lovely acoustic ballads and a rave-up, “Nobody Walkin,” along the lines of “Gypsy Woman”. A more fully-developed performance of “Nobody Walkin” can be heard on the amazing Live At The Troubador 1969 disc. The ballads are on that album, too. I would suggest Troubador ahead of Lorca, for most people’s sensibilities.

Lorca is remembered as the experimental prequel to Starsailor. Blue Afternoon got the dis. It was not weird enough to be legendary and not really experimental at all, except in its historic relativity to what everyone everyone everyone else was doing then or even now.

Blue Afternoon might be the only session in Buckley’s entire career where he and the band did what they did, and did it well, without exercising their need to document their process of continual forward motion. They just made a good record. The songs are tight and affecting and haunting and pleasant, the instrumentation (same as Happy/Sad but with the addition of a drum kit) is very cool and enveloping. Buckley’s voice is in great shape, always on. Those moments that pepper his every disc where he tries for something great and wild and just misses it? There aren’t any.

He was clearly moving forward, as each record evolved from the last. He didn’t need to show us the exact extent of his reach and limits of his grasp, every time out. It is good to know that an artist is working to extend his or her abilities, but it is also good to hear one working comfortably and effectively within that extended reach.

Every tune on Blue Afternoon is a lost classic. Every one. It starts with “Happy Time,” a jaunty and yet blue-toned (duh - what was the album called again?) song about writing a song. Or about the joy that a song feels when it gets written? Not sure. But it’s great.

Next up is “Chase The Blues Away,” a Lorca-styled ballad also heard on the Live At The Troubador 1969 disc. This is one of my favorite songs. Ever.

Then comes the equally beautiful and somewhat more pained and ethereal “I Must Have Been Blind.” That’s a phrase that feels great to say or to sing, like “I’d rather be blind than to see you go,” can’t remember just where that line comes from but all I mean to say is how can you go wrong with a phrase like “I Must Have Been Blind,” and he doesn’t blow it, the sound just builds and builds and peaks and washes back down into

a song that is called “The River,” a haunting and meditative and somewhat obliquely droning minor epic, like Astral Weeks-ian Van Morrison with a higher, rounder voice and a quite different sense of space, time, and blue tonality.

That is side one.

Side two begins with “So Lonely.” This sounds to me like one of Fred Neil’s totally brilliant throw-away filler tunes, like “It Happens Every Time” or (really) “Everybody’s Talkin’.” “So Lonely” is just a quick, upbeat and lovely little sad song. “So lonely… Mama, you don’t know how.”

Next is “Cafe,” and I honestly don’t offhand remember this one, though I have heard it at least four times this week. Even a quick online glance at the lyric isn’t bringing it back. Hmm… I will have to listen to it again. No problem! Any excuse!

“Blue Melody” is third, another perfect ballad from Troubador 1969.

Blue Afternoon concludes with “The Train,” a chugging (what else?) 7-minute sprawl wherein the raving-but-drowning promise of Happy/Sad’s “Gypsy Woman” and Lorca’s “Nobody Walkin” is entirely and at long last fulfilled. The glory is no longer ragged. It is just. There. Solid and indomitable. You can not argue with “The Train.”

There is not a thing wrong with Blue Afternoon. That, oddly enough, has been the key to its obscure doom. Surrounded by such strange, striking and painfully forward-looking discs as Happy/Sad, Lorca, Starsailor, the pop promise of Buckley’s early career and the bizarre twists of its end…

Blue Afternoon - a polished-but-still-rough, more-skill-than-accident, flashing river’s eddy of a record - didn’t have a chance.

I was in Hollywood’s Amoeba Records with Z last night. We were on our way back from an excellent birthday party, having declined the barwalk portion of the event, and we unexpectedly found ourselves driving past Amoeba. “Halt!” shouted I, and in we went. Who knew, record stores in Hollywood are open til 11, even on a thursday!

So I was all running around looking for SERIOUS music. Got the Akron / Family record, hope the promo doesn’t turn me off before I get to enjoy (or not) the music contained within, nevermind that the name of the label is in MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger type than the name of the band. Or the crap on the tag about it-doesn’t-matter-which-if-any-of-these-four-genres-this-music-is. Although I respect the efforts on the part of the label to shove this bunch of weirdness down the throats of at least those at the edges of mainstream culture, I don’t expect or want the music of Akron / Family to change my life in any major way. I don’t expect it to be any further out there than anything else I listen to (I’ll report back on that). I just want it to be GOOD. I am no neophyte or media-victim. When I need my perspective realigned I will take care of it without the help of advertising copy.

And, “Smart” is CERTAINLY NOT the new “Sexy.” Spbbbttttt.

Anyway…

Got a copy of John Cale & Terry Riley’s Church Of Anthrax. I felt the need to own some Terry Riley, Cale is at least familiar (and I like his approach to collaboration: wait til the other guy leaves then do exactly what you want, a born producer), it suits my current set of interests and it was on cheap vinyl. Sold.

Picked up for $5.99 a copy in decent shape of Kilimanjaro, the first record by The Teardrop Explodes. Yay!!!

All of these, I gotta add, are on records, not cds.

SERIOUS.

So Z comes up with three compact discs in large ugly plastic cases from the “Used” rack (but they aren’t actually “Used”) with white covers bearing each one a sole piece of some kind of fruit - one has a red pepper, one has a peach, one has something I can’t remember or pronounce but Z wants me to try eating one someday. “See,” she says, showing me the picture on the back of the disc. “You peel it!”

One disc says, “China.” Another says, “Japan,” the third, “West Africa.” Each also claims: “The greatest songs ever.” They are on Petrol Records. Each disc includes a recipe.

I think (SERIOUSly): Holy shit, these look ridiculous. I mean, a recipe?

But she bought ‘em, all three. Hey, they were only five or six bucks apiece.

On the way home we continued to listen to Streets Of Lhasa, a SERIOUS world-type-music compact disc recording from the Sublime Frequencies label, which is run out of Seattle, Earth, by one of the Sun City Girls. (Serious.)

The track we are listening to is of a 3-year-old boy singing, first by himself (Z wants to cop the voice) then with his dad to the music of an erhu.

SERIOUS.

We got home and chilled out with Manson The Cat for a little while. When he took off from Z’s lap, she opened up “Japan: the greatest songs ever.” The one with the peach on it. I had a moment of precognition when I saw that the discs are designed to look like little records. Then we stuck “Japan” in the ancient funky top-loading CDwalkman and hit play.

You know, it wasn’t bad.

The music is less frenetic than J-Pop, but shares some of the cooler features of early Japanese psychedelia: lush strings and horns with bits of spazzed-out fuzz guitar, choruses of harmonizing singers going “bop bop oooo,” ladies in echo chambers crooning saccharine melodies that don’t cloy in strange languages (well, Japanese). I don’t know how I could like music that sounds like this, but I do. All I can figure is it’s what happens when a society that knows how to make use of an aesthetic idea when it sees one (Japan) runs into a set of sounds that was never meant to be anything but commercial.

The vocal arrangements (tho not the tones) on track 1 remind me of an old disc of the music of Trinidad that I once heard, which included a traditional version of “Sloop John B” which was almost identical to the Beach Boys vocal arrangement, but swingier. The musical setting of track 1 is sorta big band country-funk-hop. None of these things is more or less than a subtle and seamless element of the whole production.

Twenty minutes into the disc and I haven’t freaked and shut it off yet. Not bad. So I opened up the booklet and read the following:

“The Japanese are at the forefront of technologies and breaking inventions.”

It hit me so odd… Every time you go and invent something, here come the goddam Japanese and break it!

I skimmed ahead through stuff about the quirky foresight of the Japanese (sure, I can see it); traditional music, kabuki, tea houses, Geishas (all this in half a paragraph); karaoke bars and pantie-vending machines, flashing billboards spitting electric disco-soul, a futuristic Petrol-Japan-CD-listening-party plan, and a list of some recent Japan-related pop culture items (“Lost In Translation,” manga, etc).

Weird.

Still diggin the music. The sound is really good, warm and clear.

I skimmed the song titles, but they didn’t tell me much. The first band is called “The Peanuts,” which is appealing. Otherwise not much to see. A string of unfamiliar Japanese names, two or three English titles or subtitles: “Flowers For Your Heart,” “One Rainy Night In Tokyo,” “Tokyo Kid.” One French subtitle as well. I don’t know what it means (Z does) despite several years of French in elementary and high school, because I am a stupid American. I am not proud.

I was hoping for some kinda historical or cultural background to some of the tunes - I like that shit - but, oh well, so what else is there to see? Oh yeah, the recipe! That ought to be a hoot…

The Japan disc includes actually three short recipes. They might go well together. They are: Japanese Kabuki Cocktail, Prawn Tempura, and Salmon Sushi. I like my fish cooked, so I am most likely to experiment with the tempura. The recipe even states that it can be generalized to include things other than prawns - “just use your imagination!”

Where’d the cat go? I want to dip him in tempura batter.

I’ll chill out now, but let me close by saying the African one is so good I didn’t want to go to bed so I could listen to it. (Only got to track 4 and gave it up). I’m up to track 11 now, first thing the next morning, and the only bummer for me is maybe track 10 which wasn’t so much to my taste but good for what it was. None of this is raw Africa-funk like I usually dig, not enough guitar for my taste, but there are elements of that, and there’s the complex rhythms and rising melodies you expect from African music without any of the shit pop.

I don’t know if any of these are “the greatest songs ever,” but I didn’t expect them to be. So, no let down.

Howling Hex XI
by The Howling Hex
2007, Drag City Records

I’m going to do for this record what I never did (but should have done) with Pound For Pound: I’m going to play it a lot. Right now I’m going to play it for the second time in an hour, and never mind that the vibrations from typing are making the speakers cut in and out.

The record I am listening to now is called Howling Hex XI, and it is the somethingth record by Neil Hagerty’s current band, The Howling Hex. Somethingth because there are a lot of them, and because it is sometimes hard to distinguish The Howling Hex’s “official” releases from limited editions, vinyl only or CD only editions, solo records and so forth. I would call this album #7. I think.

I like this record. It is simple but not simplistic, chill but intense. It cuts through from that other dimension that only Neil can see but it does not drown in the thick and heavy atmosphere. This music is not pretending to be, or even trying to be, anything.

It feels like rocknroll played in hot, dry weather. It is crunchy and driven, but only driven so far. It is nice that they bothered to write songs, however beautifully casual those songs may or may not be. “Lines In The Sky” is the first one to stick in my mind, the title popping up as a joyous, desperate refrain at the end of each verse of this bumptious shuffle.

But it would have been OK if they hadn’t written songs at all, witness the previous disc Nightclub Version Of The Eternal, which consists mainly of 7-minute jams based around simple hooks and propulsive rhythms.

Nightclub Version Of The Eternal, by the way, sounds great when you are driving through rural Idaho.

Howling Hex XI, which may also be called Out Of Focus or Monster / Bird or SkullHat or something, consists of shortish, begrooved but gritty rocknroll songs, plus a spoken-word-type-thing which is not to be taken unawares. The way the instruments relate to each other is at times reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time electric double-quartet, at other times more like a slightly angular post-everything 2-guitars-bass-drums-horn rocknroll band (although there is only one guitar). Think Voidoids for example. You could move to it in a club, you can dig it at home, it works in either setting. Howling Hex XI holds up to close scrutiny and also keeps you moving while you cook. You can cook with it.

Neil Hagerty plays bass on this record. He was on his way there already, playing baritone guitar on Nightclub Version Of The Eternal. I am only aware of him ever playing guitar in a performing band before this, although he has played many instruments in the studio. He wrote only four of the twelve songs on this record. Perhaps these things reflect the evolving democratic nature of The Howling Hex. Neil had stated years ago that democratic was what he wanted, as opposed to him with a backup group. The democracization was at that time taking longer than he had hoped. So it goes.

The guitar sounds on Howling Hex XI are ragged and clipped but not actually jagged or painful. The vocals are much the same. The bass playing is mostly subtle and solid, unless it is distorted and soloing loudly. Sometimes there are congas.

Some of the band members, but not all of them, have played on other The Howling Hex releases or performed live with the group.

Pound For Pound was the final album by Neil Hagerty’s prior band, Royal Trux. It’s an amazing record in many of the same ways, from instrumentation to sonic approach. I think I only played it twice, for fear I would begin to understand if I listened any more. I need to keep some mysteries open for myself, lest I get bored.

I am not concerned, here, that I will understand anything, except maybe how not to worry about if I understand anything. And if I don’t get that far, that is okay.

In or around the year 2003, when I was still very new to the city of Seattle (or to cities at all) and when the Internet was just beginning to reveal itself to me as a resource for new and exciting music, I stumbled onto Julian Cope’s ecstatic review of Monoshock’s epic double-LP “Walk To The Fire.”

I hadn’t yet realized that all of Cope’s reviews are ecstatic, and that his level of infatuation is not the best way to judge one’s own interest in the music he writes about… But in this case he was Rite On, and the tiny black and white picture of Monoshock’s alleged mainman Grady Runyan (tinier and even vibier on the album sleeve proper) captured my imagination and caused me to feel what I would have to call a legitimate resonance, a future echo of some kind.

I tried Limewire to no avail, then checked out record stores around Seattle until finally Easy Street on Queen Anne Hill coughed up a copy of “Walk To The Fire.” It was gnarly and strange, but it was just what I needed in my life.

I have to say a few things more about that album:
1) Don’t listen to side one when yer high on mushrooms, unless you have a strong constitution or enjoy self-abuse.
2) The elegaic title track is as beautiful as anything on, say, “Exile On Main Street,” “Velvet Underground Live 1969,” “Kind Of Blue,” Les Rallizes Denudes’ “Live ‘77” or Royal Trux’ “Thank You.”

I don’t know anyone else who has ever heard of let alone listened to Monoshock unless I played it for them. And I don’t play their album a lot (it’s a commitment!) but I am always glad when I do, and I am thankful for its presence in my life.

But Rite Now I am listening to “The Bad Trips,” a more recent album by Grady Runyan and friends. Grady runs an eponymous record store in Ventura, CA, and from time to time The Bad Trips get together there and jam it out, heavy style.

Once again, Julian Cope’s site pointed me in the Rite Direction. But in this case it was a brief posting on the Unsung discussion forum, pointing out to all and sundry that Runyan was still up to something and where to find out about it. I went and found about it.

There’s an MP3 at The Bad Trips website (www.thebadtrips.com) which is worthy of attention, and after hearing it (even through my tinny little built-in computer speakers) I wanted to order the LP. It is only available in hand-silk-screened limited edition vinyl. Almost too cool to be cool. And anyway, I don’t have a credit card.

So I called up Z-Licious at the Los Angeles office and she went to The Bad Trips’ website (www.thebadtrips.com) and attempted to order the record via the online-ordering link.

It didn’t work, so she called the store. They were happy to give her a hand, but their credit card machine uses the same line as their telephone. Could she leave her credit card number and call back?

She took the leap of faith and was eventually rewarded, although she had to call back twice because an intervening phone call had mooted their first attempt to ring her up.

The record arrived timely and securely, and I am listening to it now for the 3rd or 4th time. Track 1, “War On Drugs,” is chugging distorto lag-tempo post-Miles-ian scooge from Heaven. It’s eleven-and-a-half minutes of bliss, like “Funhouse” without Iggy but plus an extra guitar… “War On Drugs” is followed by the weakest link on the disc (though by no means weak), the strangely amorphous “As You Were,” so titled for the only spoken words on the album, the only human voice on the disc, which words open the track. I like shapeless electric music, but this one doesn’t quite cut it for me - yet. I’ll give it a year or two before I make up my mind.

…Had to get up just then and turn up the volume, I’m into the last track on side two and it’s GOOOOOOD!

Side Two kicks off with more bliss, the vaguely surf-styled psychomatic “Miracle Of Marsh Chapel,” followed by the piano-saturated “If If” and the truly ecstatic, ultimo-climactic (now playing) “First Priority.”

The credits state that this was all recorded live to 2-track cassette, specifically a Sony TC-160, in Grady’s Record Refuge in summer 2005. It doesn’t sound bad, tone-wise, and I am picky about my tone. (Whoops, it just ended, damn, what do I do now? Turn it over and start again?)

The disc is dedicated to Arthur Lee (from Love, y’know) and Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr who helped end the carnage at My Lai in Vietnam.

I don’t know you, maybe, and I don’t know your taste… But if you like what I like, you’ll like this record. A lot. And it won’t be around forever, and besides, no one you know will have it or even have heard of it so you can feel real cool laying it on them. Plus, as far as I can tell, Grady’s alright and he deserves your money way more than whoever else’s record you were going to spend it on.

Today is Friday, which is my Saturday. Although my truck has just failed to pass the Washington State Emissions Test (”sell it,” sez Marc, which may or may not be a helpful observation) I am in fair spirits as I know that all that must happen is that a certain and probably fairly small amount of money need be tossed around in the right set of directions (mechanics, dontchaknow) and I should be again roadworthy

Last week on this day, Friday, my Saturday, I woke up and took some chill time to myself, did much what I am doing now, which is listening to Jimi Hendrix, drinking green tea, indulging the appropriate herbs to suppress my cold (the infamous Seattle Guanch) or at least my awareness of it, and studying on Christian Peet’s incredible book, The Nines

I believe you can still get it here. If that doesn’t work out, try Tarpaulin Sky which is the Literary Webzine that Christian has spawned. He doesn’t print his own work there, which is ethically hip but aesthetically unfortunate… Anyhoo –

I read The Nines with gusto, glee, and a certain amount of healthy trepidation. Maybe even a trepannation. I read it with determination and willful ease, I breezed through it, I read pages again and again, I talked to myself out loud and shouted and smacked the mattress and suppressed the urge to call my friends and read at them, to shout choice phrases out the window (it doesn’t face the street, sadly) or even to run down Market Street in nothing but a pair of Jimi Hendrix boxer shorts (”Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire!” … really) crying to passersby: “Let us sketch pictures and diagrams of our neural pathways and generate alternative perspectives by scrutinizing these images!”

and

“How long has it been sive I’ve eaten anything but the odd fungus?”

The odd fungus, indeed… and even:

“Renoir suspected what veterinarians and linguists have since confirmed, that recognition of such landforms is a necessary prerequisite to an animal’s ability to ‘cry’ — just as recognition of the stall, or the water trough, or the prey, is a necessary prerequisite to other kinds of animal behavior, whether that of the marmot, pigeon, Australian dancing glow-monkey, or common barnyard swine.”

And I swear there’s cooler stuff than that in these astonished pages. Well, the Australian dancing glow-monkey is pretty cool…

The cat’s freakin’ out, I gotta go

11/9/06

That’s a line from a song by Mr James Whiton, a song called “Bus Driver.” He sings and plays it on the upright bass with his band, The Downtown Apostles. It is on their first CD, “Live At The Eastside Club Tavern.” A better way to hear it is to go and see them play.

Last night I went to see James Whiton & The Downtown Apostles play their music at the Tractor Tavern, a venue in which every instrument is an acoustic instrument, a venue which, on a good night, will resonate like a church for a humble instrument.

James and the band sounded real good…

They started off with some solo upright bass from James, the uprightest of bassists. Even an amplified upright bass - even one that is, like his, a solid-body instrument which produces its tone primarily through a magnetic pickup rather than through air moving through (in this case the absence of) a large hollow cavity in its huge wooden body - can sing without self-consciousness or fear of rebuke in this room. And James is just the man to help it.

The drummer, J Jascot, joined in with delicate semi-temporal accents, then Bill Patton on the geological-disturbance electric Telecaster guitar through a smallish Fender amplifier (another sound that the Tractor seems to like), and finally John Fricke on an electrified trumpet that could not always be distinguished from the guitar. Even when you were looking.

After some brief sonic exploration - designed perhaps to examine what the room and the meager but enthused audience would allow, or maybe just a way of settling in - a few things were played which could be easily identified as “songs” - chords, melodies, interspersed with improvisations that were largely jazz-derived with a hint of funky r&b, the group interplay gradually heating up until Patton delivered a ridiculous (by which I mean good) solo, holding his pick in his teeth and creating reflective harmonic ringing tones by brushing the fretted strings with the fingers of his right hand, overtones and refractions flying like shards of quartz crystal, the kind of thing that obscures your vision if you look at it too high.

It was one of those solos where everyone in the room feels compelled to cheer and then scream when it’s over, and the group responded not with more solos but with a shift of gears to full-on group-mind Beam-channelling and took it a level higher and a few deeper and for so long that the tune (Charles Mingus’ ‘Haitian Fight Song’!) had escaped my memory when they brought it back around days later.

The effect is comparable to the sonic wash wrought by a heavy band like Kinski, but The Downtown Apostles get at it from a different angle. They come up from underneath, and the Beam meets them halfway.

They played us a few heavy, heavy jams with odd & shifting metric foundations, then James showed us by way of application how to out-tap Uncle Les on an electric upright and in the process set out the rapid syncopated line that is the main groove of ‘Bus Driver.’ He continued to play this impossible line for a long, long time, singing and talking while he did so. The groove never bent or wilted.

Everyone in this band is a freak, in the best possible sense, from Patton’s bigfoot guitar, to Fricke’s banshee trumpet, to J Jascot the “sanitary and attractive drummer,” all of them bringing dignity and passion in the face of a small audience to tunes ranging from rootsy-gospelly-folksy to full-on rhythmo-sonic assault and dance-funk on the side. Go and see them today.