FTW, 2.25.2021

1) This morning, the Texas state legislature -- specifically, the State Affairs and Energy Resources committees -- begins hearings into the failure of the Texas power grid during the recent winter storms. Temperatures started dropping the weekend before Valentine's Day, and by Wednesday, they were lower than they'd been in the state since 1989. Snow fell and stuck. Here in Fort Worth, a catastrophic highway pileup involved 130 vehicles and killed seven. Pipes at gas wells froze, making it impossible to move the fuel from its sources to the power plants that needed it. (Governor Abbott initially tried to place the blame on wind turbines that froze because they weren't winterized, but they were only expected to provide about 10% of the state's power in an emergency.) 

The Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the body that operates the state's electrical grid (which is separate from the two other national grids), directed rolling blackouts which in practice resulted in four million Texans being without power, some for four or five days or even longer. People shivered in their homes, some died. Many were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning after attempting to heat their homes with devices meant for outdoor use only. Water pipes froze, not only in homes but also in municipal water systems, some of which have still not been fully restored as of this date. Even after water service was resumed, people were instructed to boil their water to kill bacteria that entered the water system through damaged pipes. Grocery stores ran out of food before roads were cleared and delivery trucks could run on schedule.

There is plenty of blame to go around. The state's historical unwillingness to regulate power utilities left them free to operate on the cheap, neglecting contingency planning. After winter storms in 2011, the state legislature approved measures that were never implemented to protect against occurrences like we experienced this week. Hoping some meaningful measures can be taken, because in the face of changing climate (that many in the state deny), it's not a matter of "if" this will happen again...it's "when."

2) We had it relatively easy at mi casa. Only lost power for about an hour after four days, so were able to keep water pipes from freezing and bursting, then had a boil order for a couple of days. Typically of houses here, ours isn't well insulated, so keeping the thermostat set to 68, I had to wear two shirts and two pairs of socks to bed for the first time since 1980. Some people were putting on every stitch of clothing they owned and lying down under every blanket in the house. Apartment complexes around town are still without water. There was an unprecedented number of breaks in the city's water lines, many of which are still being repaired.

The Trout Mask Replica guitar project is in kind of a lull as I await some guitar strings I ordered via Amazon (so evil, so convenient) that were delayed by the storm. (Metal fingerpicks are apparently hell on wound G strings.) Currently working on "Wild Life," which is the most challenging Beefheart song I've yet attempted. I have the Antennae Jimmy Semens part (which includes a long rest) down, have another 30 seconds to go on Zoot Horn Rollo's -- perhaps the most complicated individual part on TMR -- which I'll finish when I can restring the Epiphone (need a cutaway to hit some of the notes). Then I'll loop Zoot's part and play Cotton's "live" for the video.

When the storm hit, I was in the middle of yet another Dylan binge. I found Renaldo and Clara, Bob's widely reviled 1977 movie, streaming online, and realized that as stilted as some of his "story" was (and really, it was no worse than, say, Godard's political allegory in One Plus One), the performance footage from the Rolling Thunder Revue is the most compelling live Dylan I've ever seen, bar none -- even more than the '66 tour with the Hawks. In trying to recreate the communal spirit of the Greenwich Village folk scene ca. '61, Bob created a setting -- unlike the "star performer with backing band" format of his '73 tour with the Band -- that allowed him to enjoy performing, and take risks. 

The white pancake makeup probably helped; the mask frees a performer, as I realized the time the li'l Stooge band played at the Moon and Ray came straight to the gig from a Halloween party, with his face painted, and gave the best performance he had up till then. "Isis" and the blues-shuffle "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" in particular are stunning, the best performances of these songs I can imagine (which maybe, if Paul Williams' Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1975-1986, which I'm re-reading, is to be believed, just shows the limits of my imagination). Bob's an actor in these filmed performances, his facial expressions and physical movements as key to the songs' impact as his singing and playing. And I finally understand what Mick Ronson (and his phase shifter) were doing in the Rolling Thunder band.

My appetite whetted, I had to see Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story for comparison. The good news is that the performance footage is well presented, and my favorite bits (including "Isis" and "Hard Rain") are preserved (although Marty gets docked a notch for editing Joan Baez's dance to "Eight Miles High"). The only footage of Bob's I really miss is David Blue's pinball-game monologue, and some of Bob's onstage nonverbals with Bob Neuwirth. What's curious is Scorsese's (or Bob's) introduction of bogus characters and situations that add nothing to the narrative, but I suppose the wheat-to-chaff ratio is still higher in RTR:ABDS than in R&C. Besides the onstage stuff, my favorite scenes in Scorsese's film are Bob and Joan in the bar (his discomfort when she scolds him for getting married without telling her is palpable) and Joni Mitchell showing Bob and Roger McGuinn "Coyote" at Gordon Lightfoot's house (she's the best songwriter in the room, and everyone there knows it).

Things we like: Tyshawn Sorey, Marco Oppedisano, Eric Klerks

The pandemic has changed the way we disseminate and consume music because, well, tours are cancelled and music venues are closed (and where they aren't, there's risk from gathering in the time of new, more communicable strains of the virus). From professional quality livestreams to sophisticated home recording setups to camera video uploaded to social media, creatives from around the world continue to shout to the Universe, "I'm alive!" Here are some of the ways music has been helping me get through this "time like no other."

This past weekend, we caught a livestream from NYC's Village Vanguard, that venerable jazz joint where Coltrane, Rollins, Evans, et al. once made records. Tyshawn Sorey, my pick for musician of the century (so far), was filling the Paul Motian slot behind the traps in a trio with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. From the mid-'80s on, the trio's music was marked by spaciousness (no bass, lots of melodic unisons) and watercolor lyricism, but with a sting in its tail. In this context, Sorey still thinks like a composer, attacking his small Gretsch kit with a variety of implements (sticks, beaters, brushes) for maximum timbral variety, exercising admirable restraint in the quiet places, making an abstract blues swing, upping the ante to freedom music/erupting volcano levels where Lovano has no choice but to dig in and leave some blood on the stage. Best music I ever heard on my coffee table.

Early on in the pandemic, Queens-based guitarist-composer Marco Oppedisano (whom I first heard on guitar compilations like The $100 Guitar Project and Clean Feed's I Never Metaguitar, Four) posted a series of improvised solo miniatures, often played at the end of virtual lessons, that were an object example of how to be endlessly inventive while sitting down. They were a source of inspiration and a reminder that you can be creative wherever you are with what you have available. During the pandemic, Marco got certified to teach music in NYC public schools, and started a career where he was forced to improvise under suboptimal conditions. But he continued with his work in electroacoustic composition, using only an electric guitar and bass. His latest release, "Klang," appears on the second installment of a five-volume anthology, Walk My Way, curated by Nick Vander, that's intended to showcase "the incredible musical range of the guitar, as well as the imaginative possibility of guitarists around the world." Marco's piece exemplifies these traits, using chiming harmonics as a percussive element, overlaying layers of texture, sighing volume swells, and sounds that highlight the instrument's physicality, weaving a skein of psychedelic-sounding modality through the mix.

Finally, Eric Klerks is an LA-based guitarist and bassist with a jazz background (he once worked as a personal assistant for Charlie Haden!) who played in the last incarnation of the reunited Magic Band, performing Captain Beefheart's music with John "Drumbo" French. His YouTube vids (included in my YT Beefheart video playist) were a great help to me in getting started on the Trout Mask Replica project, as were his thoughts on practice (basically, that you're not shooting for any particular goal or achievement, just spending time with the instrument in the moment where you are today). He's also been conducting guided mindfulness meditations that I've found useful via his Facebook and Instagram pages. Eric plays in Android Trio with former Magic Band members Max Kutner (who was in the last Grandmothers of Invention lineup we saw at the Kessler) and Andy Niven, and they have a record in the works with ex-Frank Zappa multi-instrumentalist Mike Keneally that I can't wait to hear. He also has a solo project, La Sirene, that covers the whole waterfront, from jazzy explorations to swamp blues, as exemplified by this eponymous track.