tejano polka

when that's what you wanna hear, nothing else will do. i wish i could remember the name of a song i first heard latin express play at my airforce buddy's wedding in '85.

antony hegarty

this guy has such a freakishly beautiful voice. this clip of an encore from the lou reed berlin dvd shows, among other things, why it was a good idea for lou to let him sing this song.

tatsuya nakatani

sxdojo

expat fort worthian marcus lawyer of top secret fame is promoting a couple of showcases during sxsw at dominican joe coffee shop (515 south congress) that are heavy on fort worth talent. lineup follows.

Friday, March 20
The Orbans Ft. Worth Texas 2 pm
The Migrant Copenhagen Denmark 2:45pm
Bad Veins Cincinnati Ohio 3:30pm
Chatterton Ft. Worth Texas 4:15pm
Bobby Zanzucchi Ft. Worth Texas 5pm
Telegraph Canyon Ft. Worth Texas 5:45pm
Jennifer Concannon Edinburgh Scotland 6:30pm
Birds and Batteries San Fransisco Ca 7:15pm
Clint Niosi Ft. Worth Texas 8pm
Kristina Morland Ft. Worth Texas 8:30pm
Wonky Tonk Neverland Kentucky 9pm

Saturday, March 21
Kevin Aldridge from Chatterton Ft Worth Texas 1:30pm
Deadman Denton Texas 2pm
Clint Niosi Ft Worth Texas 2:45pm
The Theater Fire Ft Murder Texas 3:15
Bobby Zanzucchi Ft. Worth Texas 4pm
The Migrant Copenhagen Denmark 4:30pm
The Eaton Lake Tonics Ft. Worth Texas 5:00pm

listening

...to coward, the new overdubbed solo alb by nels cline (my fave currently working gtrist along with michio kurihara) which i'll review in an upcoming fw weekly; x-aspirations by the aussie punk band x, which has been stuck in my player since i reviewed it for the most recent weekly; and catch-wave, 1975 album by japanese experimental composer takehisa kosugi, much beloved by julian cope, that's become my fave music to listen to late at night when my sweetie's gone to sleep.

dove hunter @ the ginger man?!?!?

wtf -- so now it seems that dove hunter is playing at the ginger man sat'day along with great american novel. it's a texas independence day chili cookoff and bene for kids who care. the novel boys hit at 3:30pm, so i'd reckon dove hunter plays after that.

signage

here's the sign my sweetie made to announce the change of venue for no idea fest.

chad rueffer @ pearl's tonight!

fans of hardcore honky tonk be advised that the cd release party for chad rueffer's new cd be where you are now is on at pearl's dancehall at 302 w. exchange st. tonight. cover's $10 for thatun.

pete seeger

i don't know why i woke up with this song in my head. but i did.



the first time i heard it was on cbs tv in 1968. was thinking the other night about how much music i first heard on tv when i was a kid: not just the stooges at cincinnati and pink floyd at pompeii, but also mingus, ornette, albert king, sonny terry, stockhausen. lucky me that my mom was a pbs watcher.

bob mould int

...from the daily swarm.

no idea festival pics @ meezlady.blogspot.com

my sweetie just posted some of her no idea festival pics on her photo blog -- last set only, because she was kinda distracted earlier on (as explained in my earlier post). click on 'em to make 'em big and leave her a comment, why doncha?

bobby zanzucchi @ lola's stockyards sat'day

singer-songwriter bobby zanzucchi, whose cd with sleepy atlantis was a fave spin in the van with nathan brown way back in 2004, has his first gig in two years, opening for 100 damned guns and the tejas brothers at lola's stockyards (105 w. exchange blvd). i, of course, will be playing the ridglea with stoogeaphilia that night, but if you prefer well-wrought acoustic songsmithy to noisy psychedelic punk, you know what to do.

johnny cash woulda been 77 today

james clay tribute @ arts fifth avenue, 4.9.2009

jhon kahsen sends:

An event entitled "Remembering James Clay" will take place Saturday, April 4, 2009 at Arts Fifth Avenue in Fort Worth.

The great tenor saxophonist passed away in 1995, yet this will be the belated first tribute to one whose musicianship has been highly praised by such famous artists as Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, David Newman, Dewey Redman, Billy Higgins, Ray Charles, Hank Crawford, and others. He's the tenor player Miles Davis reportedly sought through an ad in Down Beat magazine just before hiring John Coltrane. (I'd love to know if this story is true - Clay was an "inside" player who rightly earned the nickname "Heavy", and he always played from the heart.)

Wow! I'm very excited to be part of this, as I was always privileged to gig with him. His widow will attend the concert and featured performers will include multi-instrumentalist Roger Boykin: guitarist Clint Strong; drummer Duane Durrett, vocalist Sandra Kaye, trumpeter Willie T. Albert, myself and a bassist yet to be determined. Lots of memorabilia will be on display. Clay's recordings will be heard at intermission and before the concert. Musicians and friends will share their memories during a spoken segment of the program.

looking fwd to this. clay worked with my friend brian quigley at the dallas record distributor's warehouse that brian managed off and on while he was getting his master's. we saw him play one gig while he was "retired" from music. my other friend jim yanaway recorded return to the wide open spaces with clay and david "fathead" newman live at caravan of dreams and released it on his amazing records label in 1990.

also noticed that arts fifth will be presenting a performance by thelonious, gtrist sam walker's monk tribute band (including joey carter on piano, rick stitzel on trumpet, and dave williams on tenor), on saturday, march 14th. tickets are $15 for that one.

No Idea Festival @ Lola's Stockyards, 2.24.2009

I finally made it to one of Brian Forella's new spots in the Stockyards -- the little one, downstairs from the Star Cafe, where I used to go for lunch when I worked down the street a couple of years back -- but surely not the way I expected.

It started out early Tuesday evening, when my sweetie came up to see me at work. She'd gotten a call from Lee Allen at Lola's 6th Street, where the No Idea Festival was scheduled to go down that night. No Idea's an international festival of improvisation, masterminded by Austin percussionist Chris Cogburn and promoted locally by muso-impresario Aaron Gonzalez's Inner Realms Outer Realms (who recently brought Eugene Chadbourne to Dallas).

"They're shutting us down," quoth Lee-boy, the "they" in question being the city's health department (for some water heater issue that Lola's wizard o' sound Andre Edmonson says should be resolved quickly). "Somebody needs to know!" My sweetie got on the horn to Aaron and word spread via the grapevine quickly enough that all the interested parties were able to make it to Lola's Stockyards, situated on West Exchange, just west of Main Street amid all the touristy western-themed junk.

When I got home from work, she was on her knees in her paint-slinging room, making a big sign to re-direct folks (especially the out-of-towners) to the new venue (including the j'int's phone number) and li'l map (which I rushed her out of the house before she could label the streets on; I suck). After a quick stop to hang the sign on the gate at Lola's 6th Street, we headed up to the Stockyards.

It wound up being a pretty good turnout -- especially for a Tuesday night with a change of venue. There were maybe 40 people there who weren't performing. A few were bar regulars or clueless barflys (like the kid who asked me what the drinks specials were and evaporated not long after I told him, "I dunno, son -- why doncha ask yer bartender?" A number were doubtless improv aficionados who'd made the trek from Dallas or Denton.

Whoever was controlling the music made sure that the out-of-town musos (besides Cogburn, Berliner Annette Krebs, Zurich-based L.A. expat Jason Kahn, and Japanese-born, Pennsylvania-based Tatsuya Nakatani) got an authentic Texas experience, spinning the kind of "Texas country" that sounds like music for pickup truck commercials.

When Krebs started her strangely subdued and tentative performance, the conversational level at the bar was actually louder than the music, which mostly consisted of barely audible tones from her electric guitar mixed with static and random snippets of radio transmissions in German and English. Kahn and Cogburn's duo was similarly low-key, with Cogburn coaxing sounds from a variety of instruments, including bowed cymbals (a recurring theme of the evening) while Kahn manipulated the sounds electronically. (Other Arts impresario Herb Levy had warned me up front that "some of the best stuff you'll hear will be by the people who are doing the least.")

The second set started out with a group consisting of Krebs, occasional Zanzibar Snails participants Sarah Alexander (voxxx, electronics), Michael Maxwell (kalimba, electronics), and an oboist I was unable to identify. I dug the interaction between the four musos. At one point, Lee Allen dropped in and exclaimed, "I didn't know KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN was going to be in the house tonight!" And indeed, a noisy interaction between Kahn and head Snails Michael Chamy (electronics) and Nevada Hill (violin and electronics) managed to summon the shade of the 20th century master composer and arguable father of psychedelic music.

My attention was somewhat distracted during the second set by my sweetie's realization that she didn't have her wallet and subsequent attempts to locate it, which included her leaving the club to retrace out travel route and search the house, in vain, for the missing item. (It later turned up at home. Hooray! This is why it's never good to rush when you're steppin' out.)

Most visceral and exciting set of the night was definitely Nakatani -- the most fluid of percussionists -- with trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez, bassist-promoter Aaron Gonzalez, and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, AKA Yells At Eels. Nakatani employed a lot of the same techiniques as Cogburn had earlier (bowed cymbals, scraping cymbals against drum heads) and added a few of his own (blowing on cymbals, humming against skins) in the context of a freewheeling four-way blowout with the Gonzalezes careening into orbit like late period Coltrane (Dennis was even whooping into the mic at times), the four players listening and responding to each other at a whirlwind pace. They left more blood on the stage than any of the performers that preceded them, which was a good way to end the evening.

Kudos to the No Idea folks and to Aaron for bringing this event to the Fort -- proof positive (if anybody's paying attention) that there is and audience for experimental music in this town. Here's hoping this will be the first of many more such nights to come.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

read reviews i penned of aussie punk band x's x-aspirations and dallas singer-songwriter iris leu's hushaboo in this week's paper.

yoko ono: a feminist analysis

i'm not kidding.

the eastern dark

speaking of great obscure aussie bands from the '80s...

chinese bluegrass

hey ash

this lolcat is kinda like that "album cover face" thing:

thurston moore and nels cline "in store"

x

no, not that one. the orstralian one.

in kind of a lull

trying to hustle some dates for the stoogeband so we can replenish our beer/pizza fund. hoping to do some more improv stuff. have a bunch of rekkid reviews i've submitted to the weekly, but those are the last things that go in the book, if there's room. waiting for another couple of things to eventuate.

charles grodin mad-libs

i find this wfmu post inordinately funny for some reason, altho its subject is not.

slow news day

both the i-94 bar and crawdaddy! got facelifts. hooray!

just for shits 'n' giggles

...vote for my "fourth dtr's" vid (see the first post) to help her get a job in orstralia. she's a badass photog/web designer and likes to travel.

black flag through the years

...on youtube. by carducci. from arthur.

bands at the ginger man?

apparently so, altho they're not listed on the website. great american novel is playing this sat'day, 12.28, at 3:30pm. and louis from the panther city bandits told me they're playing there on st. paddy's day (3.17) at 7pm.

ghostcar @ iloveftw.com

a review i penned of the new ghostcar cd is online now at iloveftw.com.

patti smith "dream of life" on dvd

ben franklin was right ADDENDUM

oh yeah. my son-in-law found my parker cd's.

they're as busy as always. going to missouri for a friend's wedding over spring break.

the groom just re-enlisted for four years to get an assignment to germany and a transfer from the infantry to the military police. the bride might be going to medical school. her parents are a little freaked that he's going away for like two years after the wedding.

i told my dtr, "yeah, but i was gone for 18 months right after your mom and i got married."

"i know," she said. "and look what happened."

oops.

dopamine

liles flows spiel over surf and skate footage in this aussie flick. cool soundtrack, too.

neil is for real

yanari/PFF(F)T! and terry horn @ meezlady.blogspot.com

my sweetie uploaded some of her pics of the yanari/PFF(F)T! improv gig and terry horn video installation at meezlady.blogspot.com. click on 'em to make 'em big and leave her a comment, why doncha?

you can't blame the youth

me-thinks on vinyl?

the mighty me-thinks just finished recording two songs at the echo lab for a split 7" on indian casino with their pals one fingered fist (with whom they share drummer trucker jon simpson). the fist recorded theirs in weatherford with matt hickey (PFF(F)T!/ex-fellow americans) twiddling the knobs. next step: mixing. looks like summer for the release date.

...but not as good as these guys

eating good

for lunch today, my sweetie's fixing shrimp, scallions, basil, and gruyere rolled up in philo dough, and pounded-flat herbed chicken breasts. yum!

this is some funny shit

constipation blues

everybody playing

last night, yanari/PFF(F)T! played at the firehouse gallery. the boom boom box and nathan brown played in dallas. akkolyte and urizen played (separately) in denton. and stumptone played in austin. hooray!

ADDENDUM: my sweetie took lotsa pics at the firehouse, some of which will appear on her photo blog in the fullness of time.

sxsw

my buddy dan sez that if you can't find something you wanna hear at sxsw, you just don't like music.

this yr i'm going on the fw weekly's largesse, primarily to see the nervebreakers at 5pm friday and 7pm sat'day, and to have a burger at my friend casino's bar.

looking at the music sked for friday, it makes me sad to see two bands playing before green river ordinance at mother egan's (715 w. 6th st.) whom i first saw in '76 (scott kempner, who was then a member of the dictators, opening for jeff beck) and '79 (willie nile, who was opening for the who). however, since mod brit-turned-austinite ian mclagan & the bump band are also on that bill, that may well be where i wind up spending friday night post-nervebreakers.

then again, the wfmu/aquarius records showcase is at spiro's amphitheater (611 red river st.), and the gunslingers are playing there at 1am. by that time, show-hopping will be a wishful-thinking waste of time, and the folks at wfmu and aquarius generally have trustworthy taste. so maybe i need to rethink it.

sat'day looks like it might be a good night to park it on a stool at casino's. but we'll see when we get there.

no idea festival @ lola's, tuesday, 2.24.2009

the untouchables

no idea festival: focus on tatsuya nakatani

aaron gonzalez sends:

NO IDEA FESTIVAL 2009 Fort Worth
Tuesday, February 24
Lola's Saloon
Ft. Worth, TX
Doors 8pm; $10
www.noideafestival.com

FOCUS ON:
Tatsuya Nakatani:
Percussionist (Osaka, Japan/Eastman, Pennsylvania)

On the Tuesday Feb. 24th, Tatsuya Nakatani will play an improvised collaboration with Dennis Gonzalez (trumpet), along with his sons, Aaron (bass) and Stefan (drums), who make up the family-oriented avant jazz combo Yells At Eels. This will be the third of the evening’s three sets of music.

Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. In 2006 he performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD.

He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

In addition to live solo and ensemble performances he works as a sound designer for film and television. He also teaches Masterclasses and Workshops at the University level. He also heads H&H Production, an independent record label and recording studio based in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was selected as a performing artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Artist on Tour (PennPat) roster as well as a Bronx Arts Council Individual Artist grant.

microaudiotellarevolution

you have until sunday to catch christopher blay's microaudiotellarevolution: from the prc to the trc at gallery 414. anthony mariani gave the show some ink in a fw weekly "online exclusive," because there weren't enough pages in this week's book, i guess.

buck pets

here's liles on the buck pets in the dallas observer blog.

the last art show

kris swenson sends:

Event: Firehouse Art Gallery's LAST SHOW!!!

InfoHost: Firehouse Art Studios and Gallery
http://firehouseart.net/
........
Time and PlaceDate:
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: Firehouse Art Studios and Gallery
Street: 4147 Meadowbrook Drive
City/Town: Fort Worth, TX

The Firehouse Art Studios and Gallery last art show.
Music by: John Nitzinger, YANARI/Pffffffft, and Dirty Water Disease.
Art by a lot of local artists.

I have a multimedia/assemblage piece in this show and there are tons of artists and killer art work, and its FREE so come out and enjoy the last show at Firehouse Gallery!!!

ADDENDUM: nitzinger cancelled, and YANARI/Pffffffft -- which using hembree's protocol should be PFFF(FFF)T!, i suppose -- is us.

no idea festival: focus on jason kahn

aaron gonzalez sends:

NO IDEA FESTIVAL 2009 Fort Worth
Tuesday, February 24
Lola's Saloon
Ft. Worth, TX
Doors 8pm; $10
www.noideafestival.com

FOCUS ON:

Jason Kahn
percussion, analog synthesizer, computer (Zürich)


On Tuesday Feb. 24th, Jason Kahn will play a duo piece with Austin percussionist Chris Cogburn, followed by an improvised collaboration with Zanzibar Snails’ Michael Chamy (electronics) and Nevada Hill (electric violin, electronics). This will be the second of the evening’s three sets of music.

Jason Kahn began as a drummer in Los Angeles-based alternative rock and avant-rock bands in the mid-’80s. The most important was the Universal Congress Of (featuring Saccharine Trust’s Joe Baiza), with whom he recorded three albums for SST and toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe.

When he relocated to Berlin in 1990, he turned resolutely toward free improvisation and later to the micro-sound scene, incorporating electronics to his percussion work. He spent the 1990s between Germany and Japan, playing in Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings; with Toshimaru Nakamura as the duo Repeat; and collaborating on-stage and on record with improvisers like Günter Müller, Dieb13, Otomo Yoshihide, Evan Parker, Sainkho Namchylak, and Taku Sugimoto.

He composes for electronics, acoustic instruments and environmental recordings. For larger groups of directed improvisation he has devised a system of graphical scores. Kahn creates his sound installations for specific spaces. The focus of these primarily non-visual works lies in the perception of a space through sound. In 1997 Kahn founded the independent label Cut, producing to date twenty-five CD's, both of Kahn's own work and other artists.

makoto kawabata, tatsuya yoshida, keiji haino

apparently there's a whole dvd of this...there are six excerpts on youtube. kawabata (playing the strat) and haino (on the sg) sound almost beefheartian in places here, and yoshida is just a force of nature.

augie's fortunes

got home last night from prac for this sat'day's firehouse gallery improv gig and made an amazing discovery.

a few days ago, we were having chinese takeout and augie the russian blue stole my fortune cookie. my sweetie discovered the remnants of the cookie last night. it contained not one, not two, but _three_ fortunes, which read as follows:

An interesting musical opportunity is in your near future.
You would be wise not to seek too much from others, at this time.
There are lessons to be learned by listening to others.

it was a good prac, too, btw. seemed to be good chemistry and we played a shifting, changing piece that lasted 52 minutes. hickey's electric gopichand was a big hit and mark cook sez he wants to have a big band to play crazy, zorn/sun ra-influenced jams. sounds good to me. (hope i see marcus brunt's g-f in the market soon, so i can ask her when marcus will be back in town. mark and terry horn dug him when they saw him play with PFFFFT! at our very last gig.)

in fairness to augie's mentor and preceptor midnight, i should also mention that he called the presidential election. in 2007. remind me to tell you about it sometime.

new ghostcar cd online

you can download the peripatetic improv wonders' latest opus here, except for three tracks that were too grande and can be heard on their myspace thingy.

carpe penis?

one of our fave foat wuth characters, trumpeter-raconteur-technocrat brian sharp, is presenting "blue eyed porno funk" under the unfortunate rubric carpe penis every second and fourth tuesday at lola's 6th street (except next tuesday, when it'll be the no idea festival of improvisation) and every third thursday at the flying saucer. yeah!

jay clayton @ the modern 2.21 / no idea fest @ lola's 2.24

herb levy of other arts sends:

Just a quick reminder that singer/composer Jay Clayton will be performing works for voice and electronics from her recent album: The Peace of Wild Things - Singing and Saying the Poets; as well as other compositions for voice and instruments with pianist Randy Halberstadt and bassist Paul Unger this Saturday night, Feb 21st at 8 PM in the auditorium of the Museum of Modern Art. Tickets are available at the door, $15 general admission, $10 for students and seniors.

Jay Clayton's career as a vocalist boldly spans the terrain between jazz and new music, with more than forty albums recorded with such artists as Muhal Richard Abrams, Gary Bartz, Jane Ira Bloom, George Cables, John Cage, Jerry Granelli, Fred Hersch, Lee Konitz, Kirk Nurock, Gary Peacock, Julian Priester, and Steve Reich. Clayton was also co-founder of the group Vocal Summit with fellow interdisciplinary vocalists Urszula Dudziak, Jeanne Lee, Bobby McFerrin, and Norma Winstone. She has performed new music, jazz originals and standards throughout North America and Europe. In addition to serving on the faculty of the Jazz Program of the New School in New York City and the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Clayton frequently presents workshops and masterclasses for jazz singers and other improvisors, based on her book "Sing Your Story" (Advance Music, 2001).

Also, I'd like to tell you about an unusual run-out performance, the first ever in North Texas, of the annual No Idea festival. Four of the musicians who are performing on the festival in Austin and San Antonio will be playing at Lola's, 2736 W 6th Street in Fort Worth on Tuesday night, Feb 24th, along with several North Texas new music performers. The evening will be a great chance to hear a wide range of new music that we don't get to hear in Fort Worth as often as we should. Tickets are $10 at the door and based on reports, I expect the music to start about 9 PM. For more details on all of the participating artists and the running order of events: http://www.noideafestival.com/fort_worth_24.shtml

darrin kobetich

da kobe remains one of my gtr heroes. cop his cd's here and here.

o.p.m.

...can be weird when it's "your" music they're listening to.

last two nights i came home from work to find my sweetie listening to a beefheart mix i'd made in itunes, and neil young's time fades away.

felt kinda like when my middle dtr was still living with us and co-opted bobby bland's two steps from the blues and the third velvet underground album.

nice.

danny kalb

speaking of which, from crawdaddy, an int with one of the idols of my yoof -- blues project gtrist danny kalb, a "commie kid" turned greenwich village folkie and pioneering psych-blues-rocker who spent years struggling with bipolar disorder. the blues project was a kind of young-rascals-meets-the-paul-butterfield-blues-band with jazzy and folkie influences added. if you have any fondness for '60s spuzz, you owe it to yourself to hear their '66 masterpiece projections.

how rock communicates

from paul williams' outlaw blues.

r.i.p. louis bellson

born luigi balassoni. duke ellington called him "the world's greatest musician." you gonna argue with the duke?

reading

...james traub's the devil's playground: a century of pleasure and profit in times square, courtesy of mckeever, because i share josh alan friedman's nostalgia for places i remember that no longer exist as i knew 'em.

i also just ordered a book from amazon for, um, research for a "real" (e.g., non-music related) story i _might_ be writing for the fw weekly.

remember the fellow americans?

hickey just uploaded a compendium of remixed tracks from all three of their cd's to his defunct band's myspace thingy. hal welch and their old rio grande babies drummer rickey chewning are talking about making another band, if they can find a guitarist and singer. quoth hickey, "i hear sammy hagar is available."

remember the buck pets?

if you do and have stories, hit up jeff liles, who's writing a piece about them for his excellent dallas observer blog.

fahrenheit 451

wfmu's blog has a piece on my fave bradbury book and truffaut film. i love the book people.

this one's for hembree

...and carey wolff: steve earle's son justin townes earle, singing "can't hardly wait." a song from my fave replacements alb that will forever be woodeye's, at least in my mind.

ben franklin was right...

...when he said "neither a borrower or a lender be."

i mean, i love my son-in-law -- really! i think that he's an outstanding young man -- but i wish the fuck i hadn't let him borrow my charlie parker dials and savoys, which i found for cheap at hpb and which subsequently disappeared into the bowels of his parents' house. feh.

just like i wish i hadn't lent some dude who shall remain nameless the peter laughner cd on tim kerr that i later found out is worth big bucks on ebay, besides being worthwhile for the toonage. the first stooges alb that i let him borrow at the same time showed up in my mailbox a coupla days later, but not the laughner. bahstid.

the me-thinks cats have been generous to a fault in letting the cats in stoogeaphilia use their gear, but when it comes to actually giving up custody of said gear, i've had bad experiences. like the time i went to korea and left my beautiful tweed deluxe (no 'verb; best tone i ever had with an sg) in the hands of my late ex-brother-in-law (r.i.p.), who was going to electronics school at the time. when i came "back to the world," i discovered that he'd stripped it down to the chassis and had no earthly idea how to get it back together.

or the bassman 50 head and ridiculous cabinet with two 15s, built by some insane greek in my town, that i had right before i left long island. i let the bassplayer from the last band i was in there use it while i used the other gtr player's brother's super reverb (with a tele, just like scott morgan!). when he (bassplayer) got word i was skipping town, he conveniently became incommunicado for a coupla months before i left.

and there was a guy i usedta work with in austin who managed to forget to return my first edition of david henderson's jimi hendrix bio when i was leaving to go to colorado. it was a pretty shitty book, actually, but it's the _principle_ of the thing.

then again, i'm not without fault in this area my damn self. right before i moved to austin, i visited my buddy jay in dallas and borrowed his then-girlfriend's copy of burroughs' cities of the red night, which i carried with me to austin, aspen, and back to fort worth, where i wound up selling it to hpb. i suck.

dinner last night

my sweetie took a meh pork roast that we got for real cheap at target, added some chinese five spice powder and fennel seeds, broccoli, carrots, celery, an egg and some soy sauce and came up with a pretty righteous chinese-style fried rice that i actually think makes my gringofied po' folks variety look pretty shabby (and is healthier to boot). spices: since time immemorial, ppl of limited means have been using them to make mediocre food taste yummy. three cheers for allrecipes.com!

god bless haltom city

Firehouse Gallery, 2.21.2009

I'll be playing an improv gig at the Firehouse Gallery on this, their penultimate Saturday ("The Last Bad Ass ART Show"). Lineup is as follows:

Mark Cook - Warr guitar
Bob Fisher - sax, flute
Matt Hembree - bass
Matt Hickey - electric gopichand, synth
Terry Horn - turntables, laptop
Ken Shimamoto - guitar

We'll play at 7pm, outside. Rock legend John Nitzinger plays an acoustic set, inside, at 8pm. And Dirty Water Disease playeth at 10pm. Y'all come on out and bring the kids, why doncha?

vijay iyer

first japanese rawk, now indian-american jazz?

vijay iyer (emphasis on first syllables, please) is an indian-born, new york-based pianist. the way the jazzcrits go on, you'd think that thelonious monk, cecil taylor, and andrew hill (not to mention bud powell and mccoy tyner) had a lovechild, and it was him. (that would be a _good_ thing.) he's made a bunch of rekkids, including collaborations with "jazz power trio" fieldwork, saxophonhist rudresh mahanthappa, and hip-hop/spoken word artist mike ladd. i will find out more.

no idea festival: focus on annette krebs

zanzibar snails sends:

NO IDEA FESTIVAL 2009 Fort Worth
Tuesday, February 24
Lola's Saloon
Ft. Worth, TX
Doors 8pm; $10
www.noideafestival.com

FOCUS ON:

Annette Krebs
guitar, mixing board, tapes, objects, computer, de-/composition (berlin)



On the Tuesday Feb. 24th, Annette Krebs will play a short solo piece followed by an improvised collaboration with Mike Maxwell (electronics, kalimba) and Sarah Alexander (voice, electronics). This will be the first of the evening’s three sets of music.

Guitarist Annette Krebs is a key member of a young group of Berlin musicians who emerged in the late 20th century with a new, radical, and influential musical aesthetic. This group of artists, sometimes called the Reductionist school, mix composition and improvisation to form a music for which silence is as potent as sound. Dynamics are important, and part of the aesthetic involves extremely quiet gestures that draw the listener in, focusing the ear on subtle detail. Juxtaposition is a key component, as the expected and the unexpected are deftly employed elements of composition. Krebs, a master of musical texture, may seem more like a sculptor than a guitar player. A classically trained performer, Krebs has radically reinvented the guitar to suit her music.

She lays the guitar—an amplified one—flat on a table and precisely carves out sonic shapes and colors from a variety of objects applied to the instrument. The result is fascinating. A window between action and sound is made clear. Process and composition are revealed. Through amplification, microscopic sound is enlarged, as with a magnifying glass, to become the material for music-making.


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"what is the avant-garde?"

...asks jazzcrit howard mandel, from miles ornette cecil: jazz beyond jazz. (one answer: "it depends on cheap rents.")

hickey's electric gopichand

matt has apparently built himself this bizarre instrument (also known as an ektara, but without the humbucker) to play at the firehouse gallery next sat'day. from this and what i've found online of IMPRoVISED SILENCE cat terry horn, this should be an interesting gig indeed.

sonic youth book review @ i94bar.com

speaking of which, a brief review i penned of stevie chick's apparently brit-only sonic youth bio psychic confusion is online now at the i-94 bar. de yoof gots a new alb, the eternal, out on june 9th. watch the matador records website for a "buy early get now" oppo with some bonus material.

here they are with ig when he was kinda sucking, doing his "dog, i wanna be yr."

listening

...to sonic youth's a thousand leaves (courtesy of mckeever, who just mailed me a shit-ton of interesting oddments that it's gonna take me weeks to sift through) and daydream nation (not the deluxe remastered versh w/lotsa bonus tracks, altho i applaud such releases, as they cause real fans to divest themslves of the old, obsolete artifacts, allowing bottom-feeding scum like yr humble narrator of events to pick up their leavings for cheap via hpb or the internet).

last night we watched touch the sound, thomas riedelsheimer's doco about deaf scottish percussionist evelyn glennie, an intriguing muso we've been quite inspahrd by lately. also listening to lotsa music by john zorn (a guy i dunno why i never got motivated to check out until recently) and lsd march (whose new cd i reviewed in the most recent fw weekly).

as jon teague correctly pointed out to me a coupla weeks ago, my perspective about music has changed quite a bit since i originally stopped writing for the weekly four years ago. part of that has been a result of my bumping up against ppl like jon, frank cervantez, and herb levy, who continually pull my coat to new, interesting shit. part of it also reflects the way i live now. with the economy in the state it is, and with my sweetie 'n' me trying to reduce our debt, i don't go out nearly as much as i used to, and most of the live music i see, i see when i'm playing out myself.

as a result, over the years (um, four) since its inception, this blog has evolved from an attempt to chronicle local music to a place for me to think about different kinds of music and other things that interest me. after finishing the indian casino story for the weekly (and the haltom city story, which my sweetie is in the process of binding as we speak), i dunno if i really have anything left that i want to say about music and community. typically, when i reach such an impasse, something new always suggests itself. we'll see...

tabletop guitar

and here's a blog by a cat that plays prepared guitar.

loco gringos

beloved of jeff liles and the mighty me-thinks, behold dallas' own loco gringos.

an exceptionally busy day

...at the market yesterday, especially the meat and fish counters, perhaps indicating that more folks are eating in than dining out for today's hallmark holiday. interestin'.

tim buckley

...woulda been 61 years old today.

now this is clever

music as "a reflex subconscious expression"

here's kyle gann on charles ives, the famous yankee insurance man and composer.

new "how's your news"

hot diggity! there's a new episode of how's your news? (vice mag doco series about a crew of otherly-abled folks who travel around interviewing ppl) viewable here.

giggage

looks like matt hembree, matt hickey and i will be playing an improv gig with warr guitar master mark cook, reedman bob fisher, and turntablist/laptop op terry horn at the firehouse gallery at 8pm on saturday, december 21st. sadly, the firehouse will be shutting its doors a week later. doesn't seem right some how.

also, stoogeaphilia will be returning from our li'l sort-of hiatus the following saturday, february 28th. the fellas from addnerim generously invited us to join them at the ridglea theater on a card that also includes rivercrest yacht club, prophets of rage, and merkin. we're dedicating thisun to ron asheton, since it's our first time on the boards since his untimely passing. so come on out, why doncha, and stand within 50 feet of the stage so we can see you in that big room.

pee wee marquette

tales of times square/black cracker scribe josh alan friedman sent this pic of pee wee marquette, the diminutive "voice of birdland" whose introductions graced a number of blue note recordings from the '50s, famously sampled by us3 on "cantaloop (flip fantasia)" in 1993.



last year, some nutball released a compilation cd of pee wee's spiel, entitled every night at birdland: the lost introductions. could be the greatest thing to hit wax (or shiny silver disc, whatevah) since having fun with elvis onstage. you see one of these, you let me know.

one hundred second dash, vol. 2

...is out on friday. curated by ben rogers and tony ferraro and downloadable from their website, it'll feature short, sharp shocks of sound from these bands:

American Werewolf Academy
Best Fwends
C. Jonhson
Clint Niosi
Darktown Strutters
Darth Vato
Drug Mountain
Eat Avery's Bones
International Colouring Contest
Jukebox Royalty Club
Like Birds on a Wire
Lordan Dale
Marl Carx
No Babies
Orange Coax
Paardje en Vogel
Peter and the Wolf
RTB2
Spindrift
Sunless
Tame..Tame and Quiet
The Tiniest Lightbulb That Destroyed the Sun
Ugly Smile
The White Gloves

jack black and charlie haden at the grammies

i still think jack black is a douchebag (altho i was at least as obnoxious as his high fidelity character when i was a teenage rekkid store swine) but i give him credit for at least _trying_ to get the tv shitheads to notice his father-in-law, charlie haden, who was actually nominated for his country alb rambling boy.

the amboy dukes

sure, typical ted's an asshat -- that's beyond question. but i still dig this toon from '68, before he fired everybody else, when they let the acidhead write the lyrics.

house of the rising sun

hey, hickey -- i've got a better one. watch when eric, hilton, and chas start strolling around the set. i first saw this clip in a midnight showing of kentucky fried movie when i was, um, experienced, and almost pissed my pants laughing.



speaking of the time before days, when i was in elementary school, i read this morning that the beatles' first alb (minus four songs that had appeared on singles) was recorded in ten hours. it certainly give one pause, dunnit?

ADDENDUM: oh duh, it was andrew wot posted that animals clip, not matt. nevermind.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

this week there's a cover story on indian casino records and a review of lsd march's new under milk wood cd. the first time i had a cover, i made the mistake of sending the whole paper to my dear ol' grey-haired mom, whose response was "KE-E-E-EN! there are ads for _prostitutes_ in this news-pay-pah!" in any event, once the check comes and we figure out how much of it goes to uncle, my sweetie 'n' i are going to have a real nice dinner. or something.

darkness, darkness

say what you will about the hipi-"get together" youngbloods. i first heard this song on a mott the hoople album and i still think it's boss.

r.i.p. orlando cachaito lopez

the buena vista social club bassist left the planet yesterday, aged 76.

how not to fail at life

hembree sends. (you may have to click on the thumbnail to make it big.)

this morning

recorded another song for my kids on a beautiful jumbo epiphone acoustic frank cervantez lent me. will probably do the last two while i'm off tomorrow.

a potential stoogeshow on 2.13 sleeps with the fishes due to pablo/me-thinks conflicts; the 2.21 improv gig with mark cook at the firehouse gallery (closing the end of february; wtf?!?!?) looks like a go, awaiting confirmation from mark tonight.

i've been listening to lsd march's uretakumo nakunarutorika (crazy japanese krautrock) and john zorn's tokyo operations '94 (a version of his cobra "game piece" with traditional japanese musos along with a three-piece rock band that sounds like a more episodic versh of don cherry's eternal rhythm; a good thing).

realizing now that the haltom city book is close to being in the hands of the folks for whom it was intended and the indian casino story is set to run in the fw weekly tomorrow, i have nothing else i want to write about.

marc ribot

this cat has played with john zorn, tom waits, and elvis costello. here he is with his regular trio ceramic dog and his albert ayler tribute band spiritual unity (featuring bassist henry grimes).

mo' lsd march vid

stoogestuff

the barman ran a pic of james williamson in his current incarnation as corporate exec/slack-key gtr enthusiast.

hembree sez he's had thousands of downloads of stoogeaphilia recordings from his website...from china. i'm a-thinkin' that prolly the government there has blocked access to "real" download sites, but hasn't gotten around to katboy.com yet, so desperate chinese stoogeaphiles are resorting to downloading our versions. this raised the possibility that perhaps somewhere in china, someone is manufacturing fake "stooges" bootlegs using our mp3's. we discussed the possibility of touring china (have to save lots of bottlecaps first) and ratsamy suggested that we "rawk in the jungles of laos." i told him we would...only if he pedals the bicycle that powers the generator.

waiting to see if i can book some shows with suiciety and the bastardos de sancho. feel like we haven't had a gig in forevah.

melvins live @ amoeba in s.f., 7.15.2008

you can watch the whole show here.

tonight's the night

zorn on improvisation vs. composition

Pure improvisation is going to be different from pure composition, you know, in terms, of a day-to-day approach. Improvisation has a broader palette that it draws from, but ultimately it's the same piece over and over. And composition is literally the same piece over and over, too. But when you mix the two, you get the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds, depending on the way you go about it.

The one difference between improvisation and composition is that one is spontaneous and one is a little more thought out beforehand. But that's not much of a difference because when you improvise you have a concept that you live with — a way, a style. That's like your composition, in a sense.

Technology

John Frum texted me around 4am today while he was reading the Haltom City book. Did you know that if you don't have a cellphone and somebody texts you, they have a voice that reads the message over Masterpiece Theater music?

stooges on head heritage

the seth man pays trib to RON with some scrawl on the seemingless endless skid of williamson-era bootlegs.

mo' lux and RON

here's a compendium of vid 'n' ints on/about the late lux interior, bootlegged from watt, who posted some sweet lines from walt whitman's leaves of grass for RON.

it's a haltom city weekend

a piece i penned about indian casino records will be the cover story in this week's fw weekly. this weekend, my sweetie is binding the very limited edition (20 copies) of the haltom city nights book i finished last july. and last night i got a call from work asking me to open instead of closing today, so it looks like we'll be able to make it to the bbq at riverside after all. hooray!

weird things i dreamed lately

1) the night of the last stoogeprac, i dreamed i was at practice and on the last song, i broke my B string. (the prac before that, i broke my high E on the last song.)

2) yesterday morning while i was dozing, i dreamed i was in the kitchen of the house we live in now. lee allen was there, and the milk was spoiled. i had to hold my breath while i dumped it out to keep from gagging.

3) earlier tonight, i dreamed i was drunk and lying on the floor of my old room in the house i grew up in. i had the "plantation owner's hat" that my middle dtr brought back from south carolina a few years ago.

christgau on mott the hoople

recently reread thisun in the dean's any old way you choose it, but remembered it from fusion, where i originally read it around the same time my unruly high school claque used to play air guitar to mott (even though by then some of us could actually play). and realized that it first ran in our hometown daily, newsday.

the cats of mirikitani

last night we watched the cats of mirikitani, a doco about jimmy tsutomo mirikitani, a california-born japanese-american artist who grew up in hiroshima, returned to the states and was locked up in world war II internment camps, and was living homeless on the streets of new york when filmmaker linda hattendorf met him in early 2001. mirikitani's art includes images of the camp in tule lake, california, where he was incarcerated during the war, and the 9/11 attack on the twin towers. as of april last year, at least, he was still living. thanks to calvin for sharing this with us!

king crimson - lark's tongues in aspic

...with insaniac jamie muir on percussion.



ADDENDUM: drummer extraordinaire bill bruford announced that he'll no longer tour effective the first of this year. his autobiography will be pubbed in march. to read the first chapter, use the link from his website.

zorn

since i started writing for the paper again back in december, i haven't been writing (as opposed to posting links) much on this blog, possibly because writing has started seeming more like work to me (which is not a bad thing; _effort_ is not a bad thing).

i've been investigating some of john zorn's music. zorn's another artist (like sonic youth) that herb levy would probably be surprised i'm not more familiar with. darrin kobetich mentioned naked city when i told him i was doing PFFFFT!, but aside from the segment in the bbc documentary about improvisation that showed zorn conducting one of "game piece" cobra, i hadn't heard much of his stuff.



watching zorn in action put me in mind of the way zappa used to "conduct" the mothers of invention, but in a more premeditated or rule-governed way. listening to naked city, i'm hearing, if not echoes of fz, a parallel universe in the way both z-men like to cut up and recombine disparate musical elements: just substitute zorn's obsessions with film soundtracks, grindcore, and ornette coleman for zappa's for varese, doo-wop, and guitar slim. similarly, reading about how zorn was affected by witnessing performances by members of the black artists group while he was attending college in st. louis in the early '70s reminded me of iggy's response to interacting with chicago bluesmen as a wannabe drummer in the mid-'60s: basically, "i dig this and want to replicate it, but i can't be part of it."

even though i hadn't listened to a lot of zorn's music, i was already a fan of a couple of his co-conspirators: trumpeter dave douglas, who first came to prominence in zorn's ornette-and-klezmer-fusing masada quartet, and guitarist bill frisell, who played in the punk-jazz "compositional workshop" naked city. and zorn's great jewish music: burt bacharach, which hits the same way as hal willner's tributes to monk and mingus, was a fave at mi casa. (willner's amarcord nino rota predated zorn's breakthrough morricone tribute the big gundown by four years.)

zorn's a composer who delights in confounding audience expectations. he pulled the plug on naked city when fans started shouting for their favorites. with masada, he composed a repertoire of 200 tunes, which he subsequently re-recorded with chamber ensembles under the rubric bar kochba -- to these ears, a more satisfying way to hear the tunes and a probable influence on both douglas' charms of the night sky (another fave rec of mine) and frisell's elvis costello-bacharach homage the sweetest punch. jazzcrit francis davis wrote in like young that he once considered suing zorn over the volume level of the muso's ornette tribute project spy vs. spy, but as yells at eels reminds us, "free jazz is thrash, asshole." zorn's massive discography is a deep well i'm going to enjoy dipping into more (if not fully immersing myself).

cornelius

frank cervantez pulled my coat to this guy, whom i guess you could say is the japanese beck. plus he's named after a character from planet of the apes. interesting pop music, he makes.