#Nels Cline Singers

[tatano0501]

音楽をきちんと聴く/買うレコードリスト

1. SKY BLUE SKY / wilco

2. LARGO / BRAD MEHLDAU

3. SHARE THE WEALTH / NELS CLINE SINGERS

買うレコードリストを作るのはとてもいい遊びだ、心が明るくなるし、少なくともリストを作るのにはお金はかからない。図書館の棚を眺めているのと同じ気持ちだ。ものすごく久しぶりに渋谷のHMVに行ったら、上の2枚は在庫があった。買って帰ろうかと思ったけれど、とりあえずwilcoのcousinだけ買って帰った。これをきちんと聴いたら、次を買っていいということにした。しかし、きちんと聴くなんてものすごく難しい。少なくともアッサリした音楽ではないし、この絡み合いやノイズをきちんと聴くなんてぼくの耳には無理だ。

そもそも、音楽をきちんと聴けているかというのは自分の生活においては誰にも試されることがない。音楽に携わっていないし、同好の士も基本的にいない。だから音楽をぜんぜん聴けていないという可能性も大いにある。個人的に、音楽をちゃんと(よく)聴く、というのは各パートをぜんぶ歌える、みたいなことだという方針で音楽を聴いているのだが、それがよい聴き方なのかもわからない。まず、ぜんぶのパートを歌える曲/演奏がない。または、和音も進行も聴き取れないに等しいから、一生ちゃんと聴けていないということも言える。

なのに音楽が好きとか言っていて我ながらちゃんちゃらおかしいのだが、しかし真剣に耳を傾けた音楽を真剣に言葉で表現したとき、それをいわゆるライプレポートだったり、ミュージシャン本人のインタビューと比してみるとそこまで的外れじゃなかったりする。でも、すごく大切なことに気づいていなかったりする。

ぼくはいったいなにを聴いてるんだろう。wilcoの新譜も真剣に聴いてるんだけど、どうもうまく聴けていない気がする。どの曲もどの曲も、ギターのアンサンブルのすばらしさ、ドラムのよさ、ジェフの歌の切実さにうっとりしていたらただ通り過ぎていってしまう。

しかも、英語もできないから歌詞カードを見てさえ文字としてそこに存在する歌詞すら理解しきれていない。

ぼくはマジでなにを聴いてるんだろう。でも音楽が好きだしレコードを聴いて、ただ聴いている時間にとても心が安らぐ。

ご飯もなに入ってるかわかんなくてもおいしいってこと？そんなのおもしろくないなあ。でもおいしいから食べちゃう。もぐもぐ。

[nonesuchrecords]

Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky is now available in a limited-edition two-LP, sky-blue vinyl release; you can get it here. The Gold-selling album made year’s best lists from Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, BBC Radio 6 Music, and more. “Near perfect,” said Spin.

Featuring the band that was assembled after the release of 2004’s A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky was the first studio album from a lineup that has remained the same to today: guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, percussionist Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and guitarist Nels Cline.

[burlveneer-music]

Nels Cline Singers - Princess Phone - an Electric Miles-style track on the new album Share the Wealth

On Nels Cline’s 3rd Blue Note release Share The Wealth, the sonic explorer and guitar renegade delivers a potent and provocative program of spontaneous, uncompromising, and ultimately compelling music with an expanded edition of his long-running project The Nels Cline Singers featuring saxophonist and punk-jazz iconoclast Skerik, keyboard marvel Brian Marsella, bass powerhouse Trevor Dunn, longtime collaborator and drummer Scott Amendola, and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. Together they revel in swirling, evocative soundscapes brimming with ferocious skronking and uninhibited stretching on this dynamic double album.

[cbcruk]

The Nels Cline Singers - Beam_Spiral

[thedallasmusicmansion]

Jeff Tweedy - Live At NPR Music's 10th Anniversary Concert

NPR Music recently celebrated their ten year anniversary. During that ten years, Jeff Tweedy visited the legendary Tiny Desk no less than three times. It is only in this recent concert that the Wilco frontman managed to run the gamut of his celebrated career. From his beginnings as a slack, alt-country rocker (playing Uncle Tupelo's "We've Been Had") and A.M.-era Wilco (with "Passenger Side") to his recent turn as Mavis Staples' producer and songwriter (on "Jesus Wept") and later, Nels Cline-era Wilco ("Locator").

Setlist:

"Bombs Above" "We've Been Had" "Locator" "Jesus Wept" "Passenger Side" "I'm The Man Who Loves You"

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of D. Boon(27 Club) who Died: December 22, 1985 in Tucson, Arizona

Dennes Dale "D." Boon was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Boon was best known as the guitarist and vocalist of the American punk rock trio Minutemen. In 1985 he was killed in a van crash at the age of 27.

Dennes Boon was born in San Pedro, California, on April 1, 1958. His father, a navy veteran, worked installing radios in Buick cars, and the Boons lived in former World War II barracks that had been converted into public housing.

According to childhood friend and future bandmate Mike Watt, Boon was unfamiliar with popular music and had grown up listening to Buck Owens and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Watt introduced Boon to Blue Öyster Cult and The Who. Urged by Boon's mother, Boon and Watt began to learn to play instruments. They learned to play by copying songs from their favorite bands' records. Boon took a few lessons from local teacher Roy Mendez Lopez who taught him rock as well as flamenco and classical.

As a teenager, Boon began painting and signed his works "D. Boon", partly because "D" was his slang for cannabis, partly after Daniel Boone, but mostly because it was similar to E. Bloom, Blue Öyster Cult's vocalist and guitarist.

Boon formed his first band with Watt in 1978, The Reactionaries. The band's members were lead vocalist Martin Tamburovich, Boon on guitar, bassist Watt, and drummer George Hurley. The Reactionaries existed for most of 1978 and 1979, practicing regularly but rarely if ever performing live.

After only seven months, Boon and Watt broke the band up feeling that the traditional frontman-style band was "bourgeois".

Boon formed Minutemen in January 1980 with Mike Watt on bass and Frank Tonche on drums. Tonche was soon replaced by former Reactionaries drummer George Hurley. Their best-known album is Double Nickels on the Dime.

The Minutemen continued until December 22, 1985, when Boon was killed in a van accident in the Arizona desert on Interstate 10. Because he had been sick with fever, Boon was lying down in the rear of the van without a seatbelt when the rear axle broke and the van ran off the road. Boon was thrown out the back door of the van and died instantly from a broken neck. He was 27 years old. Boon’s death caused the band to immediately dissolve, though Watt and Hurley would form the band Firehose soon after. The live album Ballot Result was released in 1987, two years after Boon's death.

Since the first Firehose album, Mike Watt has dedicated every record he has worked on – be it Firehose, solo, or otherwise – to D. Boon's memory. A song on Watt's semi-autobiographical 1997 album Contemplating the Engine Room, "The Boilerman," is about D. Boon; on the recording itself, guitarist Nels Cline plays one of Boon's last Telecaster guitars, which Watt is in possession of. Watt also mentions his fallen friend in Firehose's "Disciples of the 3-Way" (Mr. Machinery Operator) and his own "Burstedman" (The Secondman's Middle Stand).

Boon has been paid tribute by American alternative band Stigmata-A-Go-Go with the song "D. Boon," from its 1994 album It's All True, Uncle Tupelo with a different song "D. Boon" from its 1991 album Still Feel Gone, and Centro-matic's song "D.Boon-Free (A Ninth Grade Crime)" off The Static vs. The Strings Vol. 1. His story is also told in the documentary We Jam Econo.

In 2003, former D. Boon roommate Richard Derrick released the CD D. Boon and Friends, a collection of jam session tapes he recorded with D. Boon, and rare Boon solo performances, as the first release on his Box-O-Plenty Records label. Mike Watt authorized the release and provided technical assistance and liner notes.

He is #89 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time: David Fricke's Picks.

In his review of the band's last album, music critic Robert Christgau described the death of Boon as "a rock death that has for wasted potential Lennon and Hendrix for company," adding that "after seven fairly amazing years he was just getting started. Shit, shit, shit."

[stan-fm]

The Nels Cline Singers - Macroscope

Sounds like?

modern jazz with rock and free jazz ethos

Moods

Accessible experimental jazz for guitar shredders

Thoughts

Lots of guitar here. Earlier tracks are loaded with face-melting jazz guitar solos, with Cline coming out swinging; enlivened by percussive pushes. Middle tracks like 'red before orange' showcase his sweet tone.

Later tracks break away from structure, becoming more textural with bits of percussion and electronics. Really like the track 'seven zed heaven' which starts off with a swinging thing that turns into a tension building piece (Cyro's on this! Awesome weird percussive textures for this not familiar (see Hairy Mother intro).

Great album that rewards repeat listens.

More Info

https://www.discogs.com/The-Nels-Cline-Singers-Macroscope/release/5631195

Listen!

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoVY6M8fTXc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzQCQbso-dY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixk6zST2nM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZXAIbKNA0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF2PaUA79ao

Spotify

[expojeff]

New Review on www.expose.org. Can’t wait for Wilco to play in Spokane in a few weeks! Enjoy! 

[nonesuchrecords]

Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky will get a limited-edition two-LP, sky-blue vinyl release on September 1. “Near perfect,” said Spin. You can pre-order it here.

Featuring the band that was assembled after the release of 2004’s A ghost is born, Sky Blue Sky—which made year’s best lists from Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, BBC Radio 6 Music, and more—was the first studio album from a lineup that has remained the same to today: guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter Jeff Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, percussionist Glenn Kotche, keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, and avant-jazz guitarist Nels Cline.

[burlveneer-music]

Takuro Okada - Betsu No Jikan - some more of that “ambient ecstatic jazz” I was on about a while ago; opens with a fascinating interpretation of “A Love Supreme” with Sam Gendel on sax

In 2013 a new kind of sensation began to make waves in Japan’s Indie Rock scene known as “Mori Wa Ikiteiru”. Formed by a group of university students, the precociousness and sound of “Mori Wa Ikiteiru” captivated many fans then– likening the band’s sound to a modern-day “Happy End” (Haroumi Hosono, etc.) until the band broke up after its second album. Despite the band’s split, the band left its legacy and its leader with new direction– Takuro Okada began his solo career with the release of two original albums, “Nostalgia” and “Morning Sun.” Exploring his musical prowess in the following years, Okada became not just a singer-songwriter but a sound producer, film composer, guitarist, improvisational musician, with undoubtedly more to come as he continues to develop. Challenging what contemporary pop meant then and today, Okada releases his first album in two years. “Betsu no Jikan” since his 2020 masterpiece “Morning Sun.” Through this time of Okada’s own discovery, he questioned what it meant to be “musical” in this day and age— “Betsu no Jikan” to be released this coming summer, is the culmination of this two-year exploration. Improvisation with the likes of drummer Shun Ishiwaka, Jim O’Rourke, to name a few, were revived and collaged into “Betsu No Jikan.” The album features artists from both within Japan and abroad including Shun Ishiwaka, Carlos Nino, Sam Gendel, Jim O’Rourke, Nels Cline (Wilco), Marty Holoubek, even Japanese legends like Haroumi Hosono (Happy End, Yellow Magic Orchestra), etc. The improvisations and collaborations of artists with such range into Okada’s contemporized musical pieces were selected and captured by such talent because of their unique approach to technique and interpretation. Okada’s own techniques has given the work a unique treatment that emphasizes each note in its contrast, highlighting the sound of each note. This method echoes that of the “postmodern pop” sound, an engineering method similar to that of the older “sampling music” sound. Similar to the improvisational sound of Miles Davis Group, it seems to follow the great success of Davis’ collective improv, skillfully restructured by Theo Macero who highlighted the texture of each note. “Betsu No Jikan” opens with a cover of Coltrane’s “Supreme Love,” interpreted in this Macero-like approach. From his time with "Mori Wa Ikiteiru” up and through “Betsu No Jikan,” Okada’s ambition and curiousity intersecting with his evolution as a musician have led him to this question at the crossroads– “what is pop? credits

[brokenbuttonsmusic]

Eleni Mandell: L.A. Singer-Songwriter with Smoky Chrissie Hynde Vocals and a flair for Tom Waits’ Influenced Experimentation

This post is a near- transcript of the Broken Buttons: Buried Treasure Music podcast (episode 5, side A). Here you’ll find the narration from the segment featuring the L.A. singer-songwriter, Eleni Mandell, along with links, videos, photos and references for the episode.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, Anchor or Mixcloud.

Have you ever bought the wrong record? Like, you intended to buy something that sounded like one thing and you accidentally grab something that sounds very different. 

I don’t know if this happens anymore, but I believe it was quite common years ago. Imagine hearing an artist on the radio and being blown away. You go to the record store, find the plastic divider with the name of whom you’re looking for, but you can’t remember the name of the album, or even the song. Remember, you don’t have a tiny computer in your pocket. You’re too nervous to ask the store clerk for fear of looking stupid. So you roll the dice. 

“I know it was someone called Neil Young, but there are a thousand Neil Young records here.”

“Hey, this pink one looks cool.”

That exact scenario didn’t happen to me, but that album, Neil Young’s Everybody’s Rockin’, happened to be the most played Neil Young album in my house growing up, so for years I thought Neil Young was a rockabilly revival act. In reality, that was one of several oddball records Young released during a tumultuous period with his record label to fulfill his contract demands. I still love that record. 

Eleni Mandell did live out the scenario of buying the wrong record though. She shared the story during a segment of the show Bullseye with Jessie Thorn, where she describes seeing Tom Waits on MTV late at night—back when MTV still cared about music. It was either 120 minutes or IRS’ The Cutting Edge. This would have been around 1984 or 1985, so right around the time of Wait’s masterpiece Rain Dogs. When she went to the record store though, she picked up the 1976 Tom Waits’ Asylum release, Small Change instead. Now Small Change is still a great Tom Waits album, but it sounds nothing like the drastically reimagined sound and musical approach he had begun to employ starting with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones. Something Tom Waits called his “junkyard orchestral deviation.” The spare, off-kilter percussion. Moaning trombones and muted trumpets. Marimba. Plenty of marimba. Experimental instruments mixed in everywhere. Megaphones and CB radios. Trash can lids. 

This is the sound Eleni was looking for. 

Instead she got lush strings. Delicate piano. Cinematic swells and a melancholy wail. 

She got this.

Still awesome, but not the same. She credits the experience with changing her life. She grew to love both sides of the Tom Waits coin. The jazzy piano man in the smoky, whiskey-drenched nightclub and the eclectic, experimental carnival barker that she had her first encounter with on late night MTV. 

You can hear that deep appreciation and influence for the full Tom Waits spectrum injected and swirling through Eleni Mandell’s own spectacular catalog that spans more than 20 years now. 

She’s got plenty of experimental Waits, especially in her early catalog. 

And quite a bit of the jazzy nightclub vibe.

There’s also plenty of folk-y Eleni mixed in, and even some country.

You’ll notice that Eleni’s voice doesn’t sound like Tom Waits though. Did you notice that? It’s less of a deep, gravelly howl and more of rich Chrissie Hynde croon. Spin compared her to Chrissie Hynde and PJ Harvey. Rolling Stone compared her captivating melodies and witty lyricism to early Elvis Costello. 

While she doesn’t have the Tom Waits’ wail, she does specialize in his particular brand of character song-study. Like this first song we’re going to hear. The first track off of Eleni Mandell’s second album Thrill. Released in the year 2000. This is Pauline. 

Pauline, from Eleni Mandell’s second record, Thrill. So how did this remarkably unique singer-songwriter get her start and pull together so many interesting influences to create the sound we just heard.

Eleni grew up in the Sherman Oaks region of the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. She started playing music when she was just 5, beginning with the violin and then piano. Eleni didn’t love playing either, but continued to take lessons until she was thirteen. She remembers wanting to learn to write songs early on, but didn’t have the first idea of how to approach it, especially on violin. She jumped from violin and piano to guitar as a teenager. Her parents exposed her to a variety of musical styles. Her mom would take her to musicals and her dad, a serious record collector, played her Hoagy Carmichael and plenty of jazz standards. She loved the Beatles and remembers Diana Ross making an early impression. 

Another early life changing moment came when she discovered the Los Angeles punk band X.

X were huge in LA, and their first album (called Los Angeles) was the first record Eleni ever owned. Or maybe the first she asked to own. The first record she was ever given was Shaun Cassidy’s greatest hits for her 4th birthday. The first she ever purchased with her own money was X’s third release, Under the Big Black Sun. She tells a story of when she was out record shopping at a place called Aron’s Records, located on Melrose, and to her utter befuddlement came face to face with John Doe, lead singer of X. He was shopping for records too. She quickly snapped up a copy of the band’s third album and asked John to sign it. He did. She still has the signed album, which reads “Yours” complete with a big X “-John Doe.” That was the last autograph she ever asked for. It was not, however, the last time her path would cross with that of the band X. 

When she was a little bit older, she met Chuck E. Weiss, songwriter, rock n’ roller, beat poet and peculiar Tom Waits associate. Also the subject of the song, Chuck E.’s in Love.

Yes, that Chuck E. Weiss. Waits was in a relationship with Rickie Lee Jones. Waits, Jones and Weiss all lived at the seedy Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles. One day Weiss up and left out of nowhere. Some time later Chuck E. called the apartment where Jones and Waits were living. He explained to Waits that he had moved to Denver because he had fallen in love with a cousin there. Waits hung up the phone and announced to Jones, “Check E.’s in love. Rickie Lee Jones liked that so much that she it turned it into the song we just heard. 

Who is this episode about again? Oh, right. Eleni Mandell. Anyway, Eleni Mandell met THAT Chuck E. Weiss when she was not yet 21. Still, she had a friend who was able to get her into The Central, a Sunset Strip club that would later become The Viper Room. This would’ve been around 1990. Weiss was playing there every Monday. 

Here’s how the write up on Eleni’s original website describes her first encounter with Weiss.

“The first time she ever saw Chuck E. Weiss perform, he walked right up to her and smiled like a cross between The Cheshire Cat and an escaped mental patient. She met him a month later at Musso and Frank’s.”

Eleni says she was at the famous Hollywood restaurant and recognized Weiss. She worked up the courage to approach him and told him how much she loved his show. He asked if she wanted to accompany him to meet up with a friend at Canter’s Deli. She agreed. When they settled into one of the landmark eaterys iconic red, vinyl booths in walked her hero. Tom Waits. What a night. Tom asked Chuck how he and Eleni had met. 

“Hebrew school,” he declared. 

Here’s a tune from Eleni’s debut album, Wishbone, released in 1999. This is Sylvia. 

From Eleni Mandell’s first album, Wishbone, that was Sylvia. 

Under Chuck E. Weiss’ mentorship, produced by Jon Brion and self-financed by Mandell, Wishbone, as well as her next several records, received strong reviews and drew comparisons to Waits and PJ Harvey in style. 

Before Weiss mentored Mandell, he hired her as a door person at his club. She said he would test her to see how tough a door person she was by trying to grab money out of her hand. Weiss would continue to mentor Eleni over the years and they’re still friends to this day. 

For her fourth album, Mandell shook things up by diving into traditional country. A mix of covers and originals, 2003’s Country For True Lovers is an exciting update to her sound. And one of her life changing moments came full circle. Weiss introduced her to former X guitarist Tony Gilkyson, who produced the project. She also stacked the sessions with all star players, including Nels Cline from Wilco, and another X hero, drummer D.J. Bonebreak. 

Eleni continued to mix and mesh genres on her next release, 2004’s Afternoon. 

From the No Depression review of that album:

“Last years Country For True Lovers found Los Angeles chanteuse Eleni Mandell turning her sights on twang rather than her previous more PJ Harvey-oriented material, and she received plenty of critical acclaim in the process, sharing the LA Weekly 2003 songwriter of the year award with the late Elliot Smith.”

“On Afternoon, her fifth album, Mandell combines her love of various genres, including country, pop, jazz and rock, to stunning effect. Produced by Joshua Grange, who also lends his considerable talents on guitar, pedal steel, Hammond organ and piano, Afternoon mostly takes the slow and sexy approach. I’ve Been Fooled and Can’t You See Im Soulful give Mandell the chance to show off her breathy but passionate alto, which can devastate in a heartbeat.”

“Mandell does rock out from time to time, as on Easy On Your Way Out, which has a grungy Elvis Costello-gets-on-with-Liz Phair feel to it. I wanna be your afternoon/I want you coming back for more, Mandell sings on the sorta fun/sorta sad title song.”

She can also write catchy singles. Like this song from Afternoon, “Let’s Drive Away.”

That was Let’s Drive Away from Eleni Mandell’s fifth album, Afternoon, released in 2004. That song was also featured on the TV show, Weeds.

And here comes the challenging part of covering an artist like Eleni Mandell, who’s put out consistently solid albums for over two decades. There’s not enough time to feature all the good stuff she’s produced, but trust me, over her eleven albums, she always delivers. From the diverse shifting sounds of Artificial Fire [play clip] to the smooth and breezy Dark Lights Up [play clip], Eleni whirls a magical combination of jazz, folk, pop, country and rock, with just enough experimental twists to keep everything fresh. 

She’s also branched out from her solo artist gig to release two albums with her band The Grabs. The Grabs allows her to exercise more of her pop side and features Eleni on vocals, Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison, and Silversun Pickups’ drummer Elvira Gonzalez. 

And, she’s also released records with the Andrews Sisters inspired supergroup, The Living Sisters, with Inara George, Alex Lilly and Becky Stark.

I’d recommend checking out all of this. 

So now that we’ve established that the Eleni Mandell road is paved with the goods, let’s skip ahead to focus on her most recent album: 2019’s Wake Up Again.

Here’s what Eleni and her website have to say about the latest release: 

“For two years or thereabouts,” Mandell says, “I taught songwriting at two colleges and a women’s prison.”

The prison gig came about via Jail Guitar Doors, the organization founded by Wayne Kramer, guitarist of the vaunted Detroit band MC5, in partnership with English musician Billy Bragg. “I don’t know why exactly I was drawn to that work,” Mandell says. “But I had a family member who had been in prison in the 1940s. He wasn’t around when I was growing up, but that sort of fascinated me and I was always curious about what kind of person disappears and what kind of person commits crimes — what are they thinking?”

Working with the inmates also provided many epiphanies for her as a person, and proved fertile for her as an artist, as captured in the 11 songs on this album, her 11th studio release. In many ways it’s the culmination and fulfillment of all the strengths as a writer and performer going back to her start under the tutelage of Chuck E. Weiss, Tom Waits and other top chroniclers of people in the shadows.

“I really enjoyed it,” she says. “I was inspired by the stories, and surprised by the laughter I heard there. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, by how many different kinds of people were there: teachers, lawyers, nurses, and also people who grew up in poverty.”

Here’s a song about one of the woman she met during those songwriting classes she taught. This is Evelyn.

Evelyn from Eleni Mandell’s most recent album, Wake Up Again. Another great addition to her expansive, impressive catalog. The album is filled with rich character studies and deeply personal self-examinations.

Her early Tom Waits inspiration continues to ignite and propel her, even after 11 albums. Only now she can call Tom a longtime friend. 

And she went from obsessive punk rock X fan to counting a member of X as a member of her own band. What a cool, thrilling ride she’s had so far. Eleni Mandell. 

References and other stuff:

Eleni interview with Luxury Wagers

Eleni interview with Mr. Bonzai

Eleni interview with Tyler Pollard on Timeline

The bio from Eleni’s current website has a great write up on her most recent album and I quote from it in the episode.

No Depression review of Afternoon that I quote in the episode

Here is the original bio from Eleni’s old website that is now archived. I also quote from this

Eleni has been featured on NPR segments over the years. I did not use anything directly from these, but they are good and informative

Pop Matter review of Dark Lights Up

Good L.A. Times article about Eleni teaching songwriting to female inmates and her latest album

[jefferyryanlong]

FEEL with DJ Jeff Long - February 24, 2021

there ought to be clowns

Darkest Light - Lafayette Afro-Rock Band Suicide City - Lee Morgan Pinocchio - Miles Davis Salvation and Reminiscing - Rahsaan Roland Kirk Rahsaanica - Rahsaan Roland Kirk Unyazi - Nduduzo Makhathini Rainbow Sign - Ron Miles Haresah* - Steve Grossman P. P. Phoenix - Elvin Jones Headdress - The Nels Cline Singers  Night Crawler - Bob James Love Song - Ramsey Lewis  Wizard of Finance - Parliament One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) - Frank Sinatra ‘Round Midnight - Betty Carter  Send in the Clowns - Cleo Laine Spring Is Here (live) - Hampton Hawes Watermelon Man* - Herbie Hancock Mizrab (live) - Gabor Szabo Dance of the Semites - Herbie Mann Pele* - Dizzy Gillespie Theme from Love Story - Hubert Laws  Suicide Is Painless - Johnny Mandel M*A*S*H* Theme - Ahmad Jamal Power of Soul* - Idris Muhammed Angela (Theme from Taxi) - Bob James Power of Soul - Idris Muhammad You’ve Got to Learn to Let It Go - Sam Waymon

* - by request

KTUH - 9.1 FM Honolulu, 91.1 FM North Shore, ktuh.org

[daggerzine]

Early DC hardcore gent Rob Moss tells us what it was like then....and now.

When I became friends with a Rob Moss on Facebook a year or so back I knew the name sounded familiar. Then, I’d heard he was a musician (as well as an author) and releasing a new record under the name Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin. Hmm….very interesting band name. I then began digging a little deeper and found out it was the same Rob Moss who had been in the Washington, DC-area pre-Marginal Man band called Artificial Peace and had later played in Government Issue for a time.

Apparently Rob hadn’t played music since those old hardcore days, but was now back in the saddle and living in Portland, Oregon (where he’s lived for several years). With Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin he put together an interesting concept, a different guest guitarist for each song. Some of the names you will definitely recognize from the punk rock days and beyond. It’s certainly a unique sounding record (and I reviewed it here on the site a few weeks back).

I wanted to ask Rob about the old days and have him bring us up to the present and everything in between. He was more than happy to oblige.

You’re on Flex Your Head and were in two iconic Washington, D.C. hardcore bands, were you born and raised there?

We moved from Boston to Wheaton, Maryland in 1966 – I was three – and to Bethesda a year later. The Bethesda I grew up in had a downtown of mostly old two- and three-story buildings, and there were cows in the field across from Walter Johnson High when I went there. I’ve not lived in the D.C. area since the fall of 1983.

Do you remember your earliest exposure to music?

My first memories are my dad playing records, like Edvard Grieg’s Hall of the Mountain King and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. I think he chose them because that kind of music’s so visual. In the mid 1970s I discovered WPGC, a Top-40 station. I had a Radio Shack cassette deck that I’d put up against the radio to record stuff like The Night Chicago Died (Paper Lace) and Blockbuster (Sweet).

How and when did the punk rock bug hit you?

The how and who was Marc Alberstadt (original drummer in Government Issue). We’ve been friends since kindergarten and went to Hebrew school together. We used to hang out at his house and listen to his older brother’s records. Like Can’t Stand the Rezillos, the first Generation X album and the Sex Pistols. The when was 1978 or ’79.

Back then, Kenny, Marc’s brother, would sneak us in to see bands at the Psyche Delly and at the University of Maryland. There were no underage shows then. We saw the Slickee Boys, the Bad Brains, Tina Peel, Sorrows – bands like that.

But as far as really getting bit by the bug, it was when I saw how much fun the Slickee Boys had on stage. I had to start my own band, even though at that point I didn’t play a guitar or anything. This was before the Teen Idles, Dischord, or any of that.

When did you first pick up an instrument?

Marc was already playing drums, and Brian Gay played guitar. They convinced me to get a bass. Brian and I started getting together at his mom’s place in 1979 to write songs. They were pretty crude, we were taking our cues from the :30 Over D.C. compilation album.

How did you meet the Artificial Peace guys?

Let’s go back further. I was away for two weeks in the summer of 1980. And during that time, Government Issue had formed with Brian on bass and Marc on drums.

Brian and I already had a bunch of songs, and he still wanted to play guitar. So we formed another band – he played in both. We knew Mike Manos from school and learned that his brother had a drum set. Mike didn’t really know how to play. Marc gave him some tips, the rest was on-the-job training.

But we still needed a singer. This new wave-looking girl, named Sandra something-or-other, appeared in our school. She’d just moved from New York. None of the other girls at school looked like her. We asked her to sing. We called ourselves The Indians – it was supposed to be ironic.

Our first show was at American University with the GIs, S.O.A. and Youth Brigade. But it got cancelled at the last minute. So everyone met up at Roy Rogers. Fifty, maybe seventy-five, punks walked into the place within a few minutes of each other. The manager came out from behind the counter, he thought we were up to no good. But all we wanted was something to eat and to come up with a plan-B.

We ended up playing that night in the basement of a house in D.C. It was the first time we actually got to hear Sandra sing, because she’d kept pulling a no-show to our practices. John Stabb said she sounded like a dying parakeet.

After that we replaced her with Steve Polcari, who we’d known since junior high school, and changed our name to Assault and Battery. We played some shows like the infamous Pow Wow House gig, which I had set up, and recorded a demo a few months later.

But at the end of the summer of 1981, Brian went to art school in Chicago and I started at the University of Maryland. That meant the GIs needed a new bass player and we needed a new guitarist. Minor Threat had just broken up for the first time, and Brian Baker joined the GIs on bass, he later moved to guitar. Red-C had also just disbanded, so we welcomed Pete Murray to join us.

Artificial Peace was the name of one of our songs. I don’t know if we’d played it with Brian, I may have written it after he left. But we felt like we needed a new band name. We became Artificial Peace.

What were some of Artificial Peace’s most memorable shows?

Opening for the Bad Brains at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City. H.R. called the number he had for me, which was the pay phone down the hall from my dorm room in College Park. We drove up the day of the show, unloaded our gear and discovered H.R. gave me the wrong date. It was the next day. The show itself was terrible! The soundman screwed us. There was nothing in the monitors, we couldn’t hear a thing.

We played another show in NYC at the A7. The first band went on at midnight, we went on around five in the morning. Cheetah Chrome played that night, all I remember was that he was pretty messed up.

We also opened for Black Flag in Baltimore on their Damaged tour. We played well, but the power went out twice during Black Flag’s set. Henry recreated the Damaged album cover and punched out one of the mirror tiles that edged the stage. Lots of blood. How punk rock (laughing)!

As far as D.C., we played some shows at the Wilson Center, which were probably our best. We also played a talent show at the high school that Mike, Steve and I went to. We’d graduated the year before – I don’t recall how we got on the bill. A lot of punks showed up, it was pretty funny.

Only known color photo to exist of Artificial Peace. Wilson Center, 1982. Photo by Davis White.

How did the band end?

Pete called me on the phone, telling me that he and the guys didn’t want to play anymore. It was a surprise. He gave no reason. A few weeks later I heard about Marginal Man. I guess they couldn’t be straight with me.

Was G.I. next? How did that happen? Stabb was my first D.C. hero that I ever met (1985 in Trenton).

Before I joined the GIs, I got together a few times with Kenny Alberstadt, who’s a fantastic guitarist, as well as a female guitarist, whose name escapes me. She looked like Joan Jett and played great! But it didn’t go anywhere.

Then Mitch Parker left Government Issue in the spring of 1983, and I got a call asking if I wanted to join. I played on the GIs summer tour. Our first show was at CBGBs. We had John’s dad’s Buick and a U-Haul trailer full of gear. Just us, no roadies. Tom and I did nearly all the driving. John never got a license. We’d let Marc drive only if Tom and I needed a break. We’d crash at people’s houses after the shows. Some nights it was at nice place and we got to do laundry. Other times, it was more like a squat. Tours were grueling then.

Marc Alberstadt, Tom Lyle, Rob Moss, Tuffy. Outside Shamus O'Brien's, South El Monte (Los Angeles), 1983. Photo by Jordan Schwartz.

 John Stabb and Rob Moss, Sun Valley Sportsman's Hall (Los Angeles), 1983. Photo by Ted Ziegler.

How did your tenure in G.I. end? Did you stop making music?

Around the end of the tour I heard that my transfer to Boston University got accepted. I told the guys. Tom, understandably, was not happy. Once I moved, I stopped playing. And by that time, I felt the scene wasn’t fun anymore.

How did Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin come about? Had the idea been brewing for a while?

I’d always wanted to do something more in music. About three years ago I picked up a guitar, started writing songs and posted a few on Facebook. Dwight Reid asked if I wanted to record them at his home studio. He’d play bass and we’d find a drummer. That’s how it happened.

Why did you get a different lead guitarist for each song?

I can get by playing rhythm guitar and singing, but not leads. And I wasn’t ready to commit to forming a touring band. Under those circumstances it would’ve been too big an ask to interest a great lead guitarist to get involved.

But what if, instead, I asked a different guy to play on each song? So I called up old friends and friends of friends, and nearly everyone agreed to help.

What made it such an incredible experience for me is how many musicians I’ve long admired said yes. In your question earlier, about when the punk rock bug hit me, I told you about seeing the Slickee Boys when I was 16 and hearing the first Generation X album. To have guys from those bands – Marshall Keith and Bob ‘Derwood’ Andrews – play on my new album is tremendous. I feel the same about Nels Cline, Don Fleming, Franz Stahl, Stuart Casson, Billy Loosigian, Dave Lizmi, Saul Koll, Chris Rudolf, Marion Monterosso, Spit Stix and everyone else who took part.

How’s the response to the record? Are you happy with it?

Many people comment on the song quality. That even after hearing the album once, they find themselves humming the songs. The earworm thing. To me that’s the best compliment.

What’s also made me happy is hearing from the guys who played on it. That they really like the album as a whole, not just their work on it.

Did you consider recording a hardcore album?

Listening to proto-punk and pub rock made me happy as a kid. And when I speak with friends who were there, many say the same thing. That’s why I make that type of music now, not hardcore.

With all that’s going on, isn’t hardcore still important?

As protest music? I suppose but it seems like preaching to the converted. Bob Dylan’s entire career is protest music, but he grew as an artist to express himself and reach more people. When he went electric in 1966, the folkies booed, they called him a traitor. They expected him to play the same Woody Guthrie songbook forever.

It's the same with hardcore. It had its place. I’m glad to have been part of it. But I no longer want to play it. Still, plenty of my new songs contain the kind of messages I wrote when I was in Artificial Peace. There’s also humor, like Ugly Chair and A Maltese Falcon. Or humor and tragedy, like Got My Ass Stuck in a Tree. Some are about getting older (Tony Alva’s Pictures) or being a kid (Life at 33 1/3 RPM).

How do you discover new music?

Recommendations from friends, mostly. But when I lived in Manhattan in the mid-‘80s to early ‘90s, I had a neighbor in the music business. He’d set down stacks of albums, mostly promo copies, by the trash. I saved what I liked and traded the rest.

That’s how I discovered a band I missed growing up. Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band. They were incredible, should’ve been huge! The intro to Rock & Roll ’78 still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  

Years later I met the guitarist from that band, Billy Loosigian, through Facebook. And now he’s played on one of my songs. Experiences like that really made the album special to me. I hope it does for everyone else.

What’s next? More music in the future?

Anything’s possible.

 https://skin-tight-rock.bandcamp.com/

[5-star-songs]

“Levitate Me” – THE PIXIES

While they’re lauded most for their soft/loud dynamics, and the gloriously noisy guitars in the latter half of that formula, The Pixies got just as much energy from singer Black Francis’ instinctive understanding of how and when to twist his voice for maximum effect.

This song is pretty much a master class for rock singers in how to command attention: though he’s pleading to be levitated higher by an elevator lady, and could conceivably leap to falsetto on any of the words related to being lifted up, he waits until the word “please” to reach for the top of his range, and the effect once he does so is profound.

Semi-related: I just re-watched the excellent Wilco tour film, Ashes of American Flags, and there’s a moment when guitarist Nels Cline mentions that his goal when performing is, “to levitate.” Even when he’s not literally singing about floating off the ground, Black Francis’ best songs make it sound like he’s doing exactly that.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Desertion Trio - Twilight Time

Guitarist Nick Millevoi’s Desertion Trio is back with a crackling collection of covers. The songs here are drawn from an eclectic array of sources -- Santo & Johnny, Sun Ra and Les Baxter among them. Each one is attacked and reimagined with relish, Millevoi’s quicksilver guitar darting over bassist Johnny DeBlase and drummer Kevin Shea’s clattering, controlled chaos. There are also tasty guest spots from singer Tara Middleton and keyboardist Ron Stabinsky -- but it’s the core trio that provides the most thrilling fireworks. Twilight Time can sit comfortably beside similarly styled recent records by Nels Cline and Julian Lage -- guitar-centric music that isn’t quite jazz, isn’t quite rock but is all awesome. And hey, Nick passed along a few recent Desertion Trio live jams (featuring Cline and radical trumpet player Jaimie Branch!) to check out too ...