Enshohma's Corner: Progdawg

Showing posts with label Progdawg. Show all posts

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Marc Tucker Reviews: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - Once Upon a Time in South America

EMERSON, LAKE, & PALMER - Once Upon a Time in South America
4-CD Set, 2015 / Rock Beat
Review written by Marc Tucker - May 16th, 2017

ELP went through a number of phases. Essentially the New Nice, the threesome carried on Keith Emerson’s progressive and neoclassicalist visions much more thunderously, making the trio a byword for progrock, launching the group in the upper reaches of the prog stratosphere. One cannot even mention progressive music without referring to ELP and a couple dozen other bands. Keith was one of the three greatest keyboardists rock ever engendered, the others being Jon Lord and Rick Wakeman, all now sadly passed on. It was a shocking day when Emerson committed suicide, but this epic release, a four disc set of a nearly 25-year old reunion tour is one of the keys to his story. I’ll tackle that first.

ELP peaked with Brain Surgery Salad and then began a slow elegant quasi-neoclassicalist decline with Works, Vols. 1 & 2 (1977), bombing disastrously only a year later with Love Beach (1978), a wretched collection of opuses, followed a full 14 years later (1992) by Black Moon, an attempt to crawl back from the Beach and onto dry land. I know what happened, as do all sensible prog-hedz: the lads had tried to expand into the pop arena, where the real money was. Genesis, after all, was beginning to turn the trick (of the tail) into what would be a huge success, but Keith and the lads should’ve spoken to Gentle Giant, who’d tried and died on the same grounds. From Beach forward, ELP would never again attain to its erstwhile primacy.

What’s rarely mentioned, certainly not in this generous release’s weak liner notes nor anywhere else, is that, after this south-of-the-border tour, Keith was forced to take a year hiatus due to an unidentified form of arthritis similar to “writer’s cramp”. His bio, Pictures of an Exhibitionist, tells of a surgery that finally allowed him to, in 2002, regain full use of his hands, playing to strengths, once more. However, less than a decade later (2010), a colonoscopy revealed a dangerous lower-colon polyp. By the time of his death (2016), it was found he also suffered from a heart condition and depression aggravated by alcoholism.

The muses can be exceedingly kind to artists for a while…but they’re also notoriously fickle bitches, disdainful, vengeful, sociopathic.

That all said, we’re now prepared for the music on this sprawling nearly-5-hour previously unavailable diary of a too-brief three days (April 1, 5, & 16, 1993) in Santiago (Chile) and Buenos Aires, (Argentina). Think of Once Upon a Time as a very well recorded bootleg, something the group and label were refusing to issue for whatever odd reason until now but which you’re now suddenly slaveringly privy to. Think of it in line with Yes’ recent Progeny and King Crimson’s Road to Red and Starless box sets, but much later in time, as, like that trio of gems, it contains many repeated songs, and that’s precisely what we bootleg fanatix tremble for!

The 16:17 melange, “Fanfare for the Common Man / America / Rondo” (disc 4) is a long drink from the Nice’s fountain-of-youth apogee harking back to its incredible Elegy (released in ’71 but recorded in ’69) rendition of “America”, still one of the most riveting cover opuses prog can boast of, a cut I aver John Cage and Karlheinze Stockhausen must have heard and smiled upon (if not, I’m sending ‘em the YouTube extract via a couple of rogue angels I know). This carries into “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression, Part 2” and then “Hoedown” with a completely different mutation of the Dick Hyman “Minotaur” lift that blew my mind on Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends. The extract continues on “Lucky Man” as well.

Even the songs I’m not nuts about in the studio renditions (WAY too sugary!), that post-’78 period, come across nicely here, more refined, often with somewhat differing arrangement, as evidenced by “Paper Blood” (disc 1) with its flashy jazz-rock organ solos, and, yes, it and its brethren are frequently powerful but not as in days of olde, as with the original Tarkus LP (and the “Tarkus” track recurs 3X through this set). “Black Moon” plods a trifle, but “Close to Home”, a solo piano piece, is, if you want to look at it that way, a continuo on the Nice’s Five Bridges Suite and Pathetique explorations. “Creole Dance”, a solo work with a debt to Ginastera, just about Emerson’s fave composer if not the, continues his virtuosity, showing, though an absence was ominously impending, he still had highly impressive chops. Once again, we’re dancing on the golden bridge from the Nice to ELP’s inauguration. The crowd, by the way, goes NUTS!!

Greg Lake is his usual self, bass and guitar work more than satisfactory though his voice comes close to cracking many times. Was he suffering from a cold? Had his pompous haughtiness caught up with him? Carl Palmer of course has always demonstrated perfection in percussionistics and this gatherum is no exception. That guy is indefatigable and never makes wrong choices.

Now for something a tad different: on the back cover of Edward Macan’s behemoth and definitive volume on ELP, Endless Enigma, you’ll find a quote from my OpEdNews days: “The gargantuan Endless Enigma emerges as the first and last word on ELP while echoing the entire genre as a contextual backdrop; no music aficionado of any stripe should be without it”. That, however, was not the whole quote, which originally read this way:

“Despite the treacley gushing of progrock crtics, who tend exalt anything even vaguely progressive no matter its massive deficits, there are those who write with clearheaded and well-researched vigor, and Edward Macan is one of these rare individuals, so rest assured you’re in good hands. The gargantuan Endless Enigma emerges as the first and last word on ELP while echoing the entire genre as a contextual backdrop; no music aficionado of any stripe should be without it”.

Eddie and Open Court Books decided to delete that first passage because it was feared I’d render offense to other critics. Oh heavens!! Well, good grief, of course! I’m a critic, not a pom-pommette like 99% of my “compeers”. Regardless, I cite the incident to mention that the individual who penned the notes to Once Upon a Time is too frequently way off base, and I advise consumers to ignore it lest their sanity suffer irreparably. Progrock has first and foremost suffered from its critics, not its fans, and there are damned few truly comprehensive, very well-written, and exhaustive treatises in the genre, but, if you dig proglit, after listening to Once Upon a Time in South America, grab that mammoth museum of artifacts. Clear your calendar for a week or two, you’ll need it, and Once Upon will serve as soundtrack, so you’ll never even notice the time passing.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Mister Tucker Reviews: Steve Slagle – Alto Manhattan

Anything that alto saxist (and excellent flautist) Steve Slagle’s involved with, the moment you hear it, ya can’t help but blurt out “Now that, goddammit, is JAZZ!” The guy was born to the mode and gets better with each passing year; quite a feat considering he’s been top notch for decades. And when Joe Lovano teams up with him on tenor? Good God! Add the dynamic Bill Stewart on drums, Lawrence Fields on a piano switching between be-bop and Evans/Ellington picturesqueness, Gerald Cannon on a smokin’ hot bass, and then Roman Diaz’s congas tossed into three cuts, and you have a band so integrated they might as well have been welded together as a mobile of kinetic musos.

Slagle’s as pre-eminant a hornsman as any you can name, as is Lovano, and the appearance of one, the other, or both in any endeavor is a guarantor of quality, not to mention no respecters of boundaries, taking from many infra-styles while firmly positioned in the grand tradition. Steve’s work both reifies the sometimes elusive basic nature of jazz and then projects forward, not far, not 'fusion' as it’s commonly known, but enough past the studio doors to look to the stars while walking around the neighborhood.

Doesn’t matter if it’s his own work, as the lion’s share of comps here are, or someone else’s (three great covers splash in), everything carries the saxist’s sterling imprint. It’s one thing to ape the fare of the greats, as classical musicians do, but quite another to breath even more life into them via one’s own cognizances, aesthetics, and interpretations. Check out his take on Johnny Green’s “Body and Soul”, and you’ll see what I mean. That’s the solemnest section of the CD, everything else a blow fest, celebration, and seminar in what makes jazz jazz. But, man, that Stewart…a cross between Jack DeJohnette and Carl Palmer! No wonder a galaxy of jazz estimables have inducted the guy into a very impressive catalogue of releases. And if Steve Slagle’s a Samuel Johnson, Stewart’s his Boswell, setting everything on this disc firmly into indelible sonic quarto editions.

RELATED LINKS: Steve Slagle's Official Website

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Mister Tucker Reviews: Cojones – Resonate

Monday, January 16, 2017

Mister Tucker Reviews: Andre Dinuth - Here With You

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Carbe & Durand - A Bridge Between

If you're familiar with the World fusion band Incendio, an top-caliber ensemble on a level with Ancient Future, not to mention a concert dynamo boasting a string of best-selling albums, then you already have a clue, as that's where Carbe & Durand hail from. Add to that the fact that Liza is a student of Jorge Strunz, one of two blindingly brilliant guitarists composing the untouchably virtuosic Strunz & Farah, and the icing goes straight on top of the luminescent cake. I more than once, however, was reminded of Peter Kraus and Mark Byrd and their Satie for Two Guitars (good luck trying to find that one!), a particularly cherished piece in my huge collection. Carbe and Durand are meticulous in their labors, intimate in their leads and comping.

More than that, the two produced, recorded, and mixed the affair, catching every note and chord in full in a warm atmosphere making one feel as though listening right there in the studio. Do not for a moment, however, imagine any hint of metal or pop-charting here despite the eclectic selections, just heavily Spanish-inflected instrumentals that'd sit well amidst a high society soiree…if, that is, the attending bourgeoisie was hip, well read in modern rock, and would not be put off by such whirlwind treatments as "Paint It Black", cravats, spats, and lace catching fire. Likewise, don't let A Bridge Between near the louts who frequent bars and know the tunes from jukeboxes; you'll just wind up gritting your teeth and dumping saltpeter in their drinks. No, invite only sophisticated intimates and have a bottle of chardonnay to hand when you do. Better yet, two or three bottles, and put on some Yepes, some Tarrega, and the aforementioned Strunz & Farah on afterwards. Summer's coming, time to start getting used to hedonism again.

RELATED LINK: Carbé and Durand Official Website

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Maria Takeuchi - Colors in the Diary

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Luis Mojica - Wholesome (2016)

The following music review comes courtesy of friend and writer Marc S. Tucker, carried over from his newsletter VERITAS VAMPIRUS and is NOT of my doing despite being featured on my blog - please keep this fact firmly in mind for future reference.

LUIS MOJICA – Wholesome (2016 / no label cited)
Review Written by Marc S. Tucker

Weird. I like to bitch about how horribly, horribly, HORRIBLY (!!!) mistreated I’ve been under the aegis of editors (o woe and horror, that such a flock of albatrosses should us plague seraphic critics!!), except of course for FAME’s Dave Pyles, because I’m obliged to. It’s sez so right there on my License To Criticize and is in fact a grand tradition among writers, yet only now have I come to realize that the gig’s actually been evolutionary (no thanks to same editors).

Starting with my debut in Sound Choice (mid-80s) on up to this very moment, the river of CDs I’ve received has constantly increased and improved to the point that, now that I’m independent of overseerage and ensconced in my own private gig, the submissions have been ridiculously excellent. I can’t decide whether this is because the aesthetic levels in this country and in the world have ratcheted up so steeply, and they certainly have, or mayhap, in my dotage, that I’ve just come to dig the hell out of everydamnthing. Both perplexing and immensely pleasurable while simultaneously worrying, as my one-time beloved status of Cynical Shitheel Bastard stands endangered. CDs like Luis Mojica’s only “aggravate” my "problem".

Luis hails from one of the several female-fronted and/or all-women bands I’ve dug over the years (and so’s we’re straight on the subject, Lita Ford, Joan Jett, and all the radio mercantile mediocrity facsimiles were never in the running): Melora Creagar’s Rasputina. That group indexes with such acts as The Cocteau Twins, Shelleyan Orphan, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, and others whose art is decidedly eccentric, oft with classical bases by way of Elizabethan, Victorian, and chamber wonts (tho' Spires was a good deal more psychedelic than the rest, more Meredith Monk-y, vaguely Comus-esque). I say all this in order to prep the reader for Mojica’s music, which requires refined aesthetics and discernment and is damn near a new wrinkle in the sonic territory wedding chamber classicalism with progressive rock…yet sports a wide assortment of populist devices: beat box, pop, neojazz, and etc., everything informed, luxurious, and almost sinfully hedonistic.

Wholesome defies easy categorization – resists any attempts at pigeonholing, actually - but follows in the grand tradition of 70s genre-bending heard in the earliest works of Arthur Brown, Bowie, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Gentle Giant, the quiet side of King Crimson, etc. brought up to date, and is, I strongly suspect, influenced by the gaggle of classicalists who impressed those ensembles: Ravel, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Satie, the Romanto-Impressionists. The degree of sophistication is both ravishing and intriguing. Mojica’s possessed of a smooth, clear, lucid voice with a good deal of acreage, sliding easily from mid-range to falsetto, heard right from the opening “Conquered”, a composition residing in a cappella and chorale.

Then there are his keyboards, autoharp, glockenspiel, and percussives. I don’t know if 1) the gent’s academically trained, sure as hell seems like it, or 2) if the paganistic wont he embodies (the CD cover is festooned with three wild images, including an Ophelian-esque / Dalinian Dia de los Muertos back photo), a manifest of spirit that’s intellectually driven even above its spiritual ways, or 3) having spent the last four years in the mountains account for the depth of composition in every bar and measure, but it hardly matters; the mere appearance of work on this level is justification and explanation enough.

There’s a very strong high-level degree of cabaret present, not Chicago or Chorus Line but rather what Weill and Brecht were doing in Weimar Germany…in a much different time and much different context, though the title cut’s indeed quite Weill-ian. The degree of literacy and intelligence places this disc in the RIO (Art Bears, etc.) and 4AD camps, but, I’m tellin’ ya, an exceedingly flavorful and gorgeously austere version of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Ziggy release pervades as well. Don’t expect Mick Ronson, Mike Garson, or Tony Visconti, though, as Mojica already has that covered on his own.

His sessioneers, Creager among them, were extremely well-chosen and then ceded the democratic ability to arrange their own participations within the compositions, resulting in a ne plus ultra degree of artfulness as kindred minds and spirits cross-collateralize so tightly that a stellar degree of cohesion is achieved. I must note that this song-cycle collection is so extraordinary that it’s so far captured the #1 spot on my year’s-end Best Of list, a status I’ve only ever awarded once in 31 years of reviewing, to a Kevin Kastning / Carl Clements’. Should something better come along, it might knock Wholesome off the pedestal, but, frankly, I don’t see that as even vaguely possible. The disc in fact de-throned the only other possibility: the hideously cool, high-spirited, heart-warming collection of kidz mania, Andrew & Polly’s way bitchin’ Ear Snacks - another extremely unique gig - down to the #2 position (something I’ve never awarded otherwise). God himself would hafta release a gatherum for any dimmest chance of…oh wait, I’m still way pissed with that asshole, so, no, f’geddabout it!

Monday, September 19, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: All Things Must Pass (2016)

The following film review comes courtesy of friend and writer Marc S. Tucker, carried over from his newsletter VERITAS VAMPIRUS and is NOT of my doing, despite being featured on my blog. Please keep this fact firmly in mind for future reference.

EXCLUSIVE VERITAS VAMPIRUS DVD REVIEW

COLIN HANKS - All Things Must Pass (DVD) (2016 / MVD)

The title is George Harrison’s, the film is Colin Hanks’, but the story is Russ Solomon’s. The legendary Tower Records is the subject. I make no secret of my love for rock docs, especially in an age where what was, rightly or wrongly (mostly the latter), once the bastion of rock and roll journalism, Rolling Stone, is now a combination of Esquire, GQ, Maxim, and People magazine…with a speck or two of non-mega-flog sell-through regarding a CD or a concert when space occasionally needs to be filled here and there…and don’t even get me started on Spin, Sonny Boy Guccione’s crass and fumbling whatever it was. Film is now the medium most reliable and most vital when it comes to getting the inside and outside dope on the history and evolution of the banging, clanging, and noisily haranguing world of rock and roll.

Am I helping put the last nails in the coffin of rock criticism, working myself out of a job? I hope so.

Tower Records was not the alpha and omega of record shops in America, but it was far and away the most the most spectacular single feat in the rise and fall of such brick and mortars, and it’s pretty much assured we’ll never see its like again. Though Hanks never quite makes that evident, he makes it more than clear that the chain’s insane success was due to owner Russ Solomon’s innate sense of socialism – well, insofar as such a wont could ever properly exist in America anyway. No profit-sharing occurred, but the apprenticeship process and meritocratics were there and Solomon’s hands-off mentality when it came to letting the creatives among his workers prevail was the foundation for the yellow and red bannered stores’ wild popularity.

No one has yet, however, stumbled to the fact that the dramatically prolonged history of album sales in America was predicated on the aftermarket, the practice of the once-taboo merch-flogging of used records. New LPs were the rooster in the hen house throughout the 30s, 40s, 50s, and most of the 60s, but when certain mom ‘n pops started popping up, a gaggle of almost-clandestine stores heretically vending pre-owned discs along with the shrink-wrapped variety, that was when rock-shop viability went through the roof. In my area of SoCal, Crane’s Records was hole-in-the-wall Mecca in Inglewood. I lived in Hawthorne, and, before them (Hawthorne eventually got one, but it quickly perished), LPs could be purchased only at Thrifty Drug Store, Hogan’s House of Music (mainly instrument sales), and other businesses where licorice pizzas were stocked no differently from lipstick, frozen chickens, stationery, and galoshes.

Once, however, people could afford to buy more slabs for the same amount of money, the desire to collect became a consuming passion to a degree never before witnessed. I should know: I have 50,000 LPs, CDs, cassettes, reel-to-reels, and, yes, 8-tracks (no longer playable but I’m an irreconcilable fetishist), and every record store owner from Hollywood to Long Beach would smile when I walked through their doors in the late 60s through the 90s. I worked in aerospace, I could afford to buy a lot of records. And I did. So did a whole lot of other drooling slavering fanatics like me. And who, you might ask, could’ve been the seed of all that? It was Solomon’s dad who owned Sacramento's Tower Cut-Rate Drug Store flanking the Tower Theatre whence the record giant cribbed its name.

One day, Solomon senior, an enterprising soul in his own small-town way, hit upon the notion to sell the used 45s from the jukebox to kids nuts about popular music. He couldn’t have been more visionary. Mr. Solomon approached the juke jobber to buy the plastic circles for 3-cents each and sell ‘em for 10. They flew out the door. When the theater went out of biz, Solomon knocked a hole through the wall and started up a record shop. Son Russ, however, had visions of his own and, ‘ere long, went from shop clerk to buying the business from pop. That was how Tower Records began. Not from the multi-millionaires and billionaires who funs such enterprises as 99-cent Store, Dollar Tree, and such, but a father and son who looked beyond the sales of gum and shoes to emerging possibilities. From the moment Russ Solomon took over that adjunct of the family store, he did nothing but well, very well indeed, never making a wrong move…almost.

I guess you could say Russ was a hippie, a skewed and head-scratching example, sure, but the guy was definitely not a Brooks Bros. suit-wearing robo-clone, and he extended his personna, a rather free-wheeling carefree one, to his employees. Tower never for a day had a dress code and always hired knowledgeable people, individuals who loved music and knew much about it. In the capitalism's typical exploitationalist wont, they were underpaid but loved their jobs, and All Things Must Pass is told exclusively orally, first from the people who manned and ran it, and then from Elton John, Bruce Springsteeen, and celebs who loved the joint. Voiceovers are absent.

One day, Bud Martin waltzed in and never left, the partner Solomon hadn’t even known he’d been looking for, a true businessman, a hidebound conservative (well, Republican anyway; the U.S. has almost never had true conservatives aside from David Cay Johnston and a handful of others) and the guy who likely could’ve saved the colossal chain but didn’t (he, heh!, was forced out for being too sensible [and kind of an asshole]). Martin was schooled, Solomon wasn’t, but the combination of book savvy and street smarts worked to greatly benefit both. ‘Ere long, Tower, which had been a West Coast phenomenon, went East, to New York and elsewhere, and then further, to Japan. Wherever the migrant bird landed, it never failed to do well. It was pretty damned incredible.

Russ Solomon had the Midas Touch, and Bud Martin was his conscience - albeit, gain: a typical Republican (All Things more than hints at his hiring women he could screw, being an dipdhit drunk, and etc.) - but, along the way, Solomon encouraged employee input, listened to it, and then acted upon it. Everyone started at the bottom in his chain so that all knew intimately what was going on at all points, and it’s surprising to discover that his people succeeded to ever higher positions because Russ often forced them into better jobs in order to benefit one and all - himself most of all, of course. Marx would’ve embraced this guy as a fellow spirit. Solomon, without even knowing it, was using the apprenticeship system and profitting wildly…because that’s the most optimal business mode available to human beings, despite all the psycho bullshit capitalists blather on about. The guy was acquiring huge capital (at one point, Tower earned a billion dollars in a year) by being socialistic. Bernie Sanders, not Bud Martin, shoulda been his partner.

But Solomon fucked up when he ignored Martin’s and others' advice not to overreach. Instead, he delved into Latin America and elsewhere, and the meltdown began. He was over-leveraged in debt, and the banks came sailing in. Ragnarok was knocking at the door. Many co-factors are considered – the advent of CDs and such – and David Geffen makes a VERY cogent observation, one I’ve been yodeling about since my days at E/I, Progression, and OpEdNews.com: “They should have made records cheaper”. Absolutely! Because the cheap-ass electronic distribution of music is now killing everyone. Few foresaw that; all they cognized was cost reduction. CDs engulfed the market, Napster arose, and the game was afoot.

In ’98, Solomon had an 8-way heart bypass (!!!), and son Michael became CEO. That was a huge mistake as well. Throughout the film, Mikey comes off as a boggle-eyed naïf lacking the essential ingredient: unlike everyone else, he started at the top, not the bottom. He was a trained lawyer but not terribly impressive in the film, not coming off as all that intelligent, apparently a by-the-book kinda gent, very unlike his dad, but, really, the demise of Tower was not his but rather a concatenation of events, as is usually the case in all businesses.

A buddy of mine worked at Tower Sacto, was a book-keeper there, and he remarked more than once, a couple years before the crash, that something fishy was going on but that he couldn’t determine what it was. None of that is mentioned in All Things nor, curiously, were any customers ever filmed, people who could have enthusiastically attested to the popularity of the chain. As other crits have noted, this film is a tribute, not a journalistic inquiry, so let me end out with a personal anecdote.

In my mid-teens, I became a devoted record collector, and, one day, while sweeping the floors at my job at a used book store run by a miserably failed opera singer, I heard Barclay James Harvest’s “Dark Now my Skies” over the radio (I’d talked the bastard into allowing an hour or so of rock over the shop radio rather than non-stop Puccini, Verdi, Rossini, Wagner, etc.). Already a huge Moody Blues fan, I was transfixed by the cut, had to have it, but no one carried it or would order the LP except for Tower Sunset, which, when I called, informed me it had multiple copies…except…the store was 17 miles away! I had no car, and this was before me and my buds used to haunt the Whiskey a Go Go just down the street from TR. What to do, what to do? I had to have that LP!!!!!

Finally, I could stand it no more and one night, putting my cross country and track athletics to good use finally, hopped on my 10-speed, taking La Brea Avenue in the late evening - Tower was open until midnight - arrived at Hollywood shop, bought the LP, and biked back home. Now, I hafta look at that as crazy: I had no repair kit, no money for a taxi should a tire go flat, and the ride was a bear amidst traffic, hills (Stocker Hill is a pain in the ass both ways), and South Central, but Tower was THE place when you couldn’t find what you wanted anywhere else, and that’s where I went. I was crazed, I’d traversed territory Dante might’ve included in his trilogy, all for the sake of just one LP, but, when I got home and threw on the disc, I blissed out. To quote Goethe, collectors are happy people; a little soft in the head but happy.

At its height, the chain boasted 182 locations and money was pouring in, but we know the way of all flesh, and, like every empire known to man, the magnificent experiment rose and fell. There are presently 85 Tower stores in Japan but, in America, no replacement venue even close to that (FYE fucked up royally – though, um, I made good use of it while it was around - and I don’t count shitholes like Sam Goody’s multi-hundred site mega-octopus corporate labyrinth at all, ever; I never bought a single record from SG and never will [it’s all but dead anyway]). In California, the Amoeba chain of 3 stores - San Fran, L.A., and Berkeley - wised up and sells huge quantities of both new and used records, CDs, videos, and other merch from gigantic paradisical locations, but it will never expand like Tower. It’s impossible any more. Ah well.

Though I may seem to have herein encapsulated the DVD, I haven’t. Much of what I’ve written is commentary, and the film is a very well made fascinating chronicle of what one rebellious indomitable character could do in America in a certain era. The virtue of the film medium is that it can convey one hell of a lot more than a simple written review could ever muster. It’d take a very long essay to convey all the elements of All Things Must Pass, maybe a small book, and even that wouldn’t replace seeing the film footage, the interviews, the juxtapositions of events, and so on. This doc is a must for record collectors and for aficionados of the whole panoply of various histories in rock and roll, not to mention the value of presenting an alternate business model that succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. Would, o Gawd Almighty!, that someone would come along and follow in Russ’ footsteps.

Oh, and to show the kind of enthusiasm people have for projects like this, 1,686 contributors Kickstarted All Things into existence, trusting implicitly in Hanks’ work. That’s amazing and yet another socialistic business model that should be more widely covered in our society…but that’s another topic altogether, and my meta-anarchist keister is already in enough trouble with too many candyassed so-called "Left" organizations (the Pacifica radio chain, OpEdNews.com, etc.) to breach it today.

RELATED LINKS OF INTEREST:

Official Website for ALL Things Must Pass.
Good Bad Flicks Video Review for the Film.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: The Refusers - Wake Up America

A little anecdotalia in harmony with this disc, so it please the court:

In the early 00s, reviewing for OpEdNews.com (OEN), I got quite a few rebellious CDs by politically oriented musos, every so often with behind-the-curtain scenarios that took a while to figure out. I finally located the problem, though, in cats like David Rovics, Jefferson Parsons, and a few others. Turned out they weren’t really Lefties after all, instead scurrying about in the muck of the Weenie “Left”: Centrists, small ‘d’ Democrats, big ‘D’ Dems, “progressives”, “liberals” (odd choice: a synonym for ‘insane’ in Economics), basically musicians looking for a seat on the Dem gravy train. Some found it (Rovics, f’rinstance), some didn’t (Parson, f’rinstance). Everything had to do with backroom deals, networks, nepotisms, and allegiances.

OEN is captained by Kapitalist Kretin Rob Kall, an “ex”-Republican (apparently also an ex-Bircher, in alignment with chum Thom Hartmann). His brand of “Leftism” is whatever the Dems tell him it is, and thus CDs were sent his way for PR if they were in tune with the patrons. That’s part of how the train’s wheels are greased. Along the way, we’re told and especially by apparatchiki like Hartmann, all and sundry want to change the Party from within (riiiiight, like the chieftains don’t see ‘em coming a mile away, hm?), but, well, you might want to look at who empatrons figures like Kall, Hartmann, Brad Friedman, Cenk Uygar, and a legion of others. Within all that, musos were warned away from my anarchistic rear end. There was reason for that.

In political commentary, I’d also started investigating shenanigans within Air America (it soon croaked), then Amy Goodman (nasty financial mischief ‘twixt her and the Pacifica corporate radio chain now flushing itself down the toilet), Arianna Huffington (involved in shady recent deals with, and now departed from, her HuffPo), and so on. That sort of inquiry was reallllllly taboo and always has been. I was soon ousted for being “too Leftist” by Mr. Kall, whose gargantuan site is now likewise diving to the bottom of the shitter.

Are we getting the drift here? Ya hafta be wary in music and political dimensions. There are lots of toads and backstabbers, fakes and frauds, hucksters and homunculi, so I swiftly learned to detect pseud-Leftists and “Left-leaning” Righties (Libertarians, Tea Partiers, gorillas escaped from the zoo, etc.). Fortunately, when I began critiquing CDs for FAME, I ran into cats like Grant Peeples, a no-nonsense ear-to-the-ground Leftie, Paul Mark, a cynical philosophically-grounded spectator reporting on spectrum madness, and others. Now I’ve got this Wake Up America disc from The Refusers, their name a play on the old radical ‘refuseniks’ tag.

Are ya longing for the days of the Fugs, the MC5, and then a hell of a lot more? Well, Bunky, ya gots it right here in this holds-no-punches 15-cut orgy of blood, spite, venom, bile, spleen, and other intoxicatingly keen pleasures charging WAY too far into truth-telling territories to ever be accepted by the “Left” or the Right, the two being nowadays almost identical, especially in view of the MadMan/MadWoman scenario playing out in the presidency-run by sibling reptiles Clinton and Trump. As the asylum looks on (Bush, Cruz, Wasserman-Schulz, Lieberman, Carson, Palin, Romney, Hayden, Franken, Reich, and, sweet unholy Jesus!, most especially the recently uber-demented Alex Jones, once a savvy conspiracy researcher), we now have the soundtrack.

And so’s ya don’t at any point think The Refusers is an aggregate of pontificating wonk dullards, the disc opens in the crunchy “Born to Rock”, a strident preface to what comes after. Dig these titles: “Hang the Bankers”, “Go Back to Sleep”, “Big Pharma Pimp”, “Bubble People” and others. The predominant tone here is rooted in 60s power rock and its successors: the Dictators, some Blue Oyster Culty spookiness, old Damned / Stranglers snottiness (“Go Back to Sleep”, almost a pomp-n-circumstance cabaretic: “Go back to sleep / You silly little sheep / And do what you’re told”), a bit of Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies (“Backlash”), power pop (”Information Junkie”), and a ton more, including a jazz-drenched rip on the famed New York Times ("You Won’t Read It in the New York Times”) once worshipped by a “Left” that now can’t back quickly enough away from the damnable rag.

Plutocrats, crony capitalists, the One Percent, and an entire unwholesome array of the devils, djinns, and demons running America (and the world) comes under the axe, outed and gored with grit and glee. I can already hear David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger getting the CFR, TLC, Davos-ites, Bilderbergians, and God only knows how many other publicly clandestine outfits together to decamp to Mars and wait things out as the globe rapidly wakes up under the assault of such revelations as this compendium of shock-and-awe disclosures vends in rebel/rabble rousing music.

And to square the circle, bringing matters back to the opening paragraphs, it just so happens guitarist-singer-composer Michael Belkin underwent an apotheosis not all that dissimilar to my own: a grad from UCB’s Haas School of Business (gasp!) and once a Wall Street wizard (double gasp!), then an L.A. studio guitarist, he got caught in more than a few dirty dealings in those spotty realms and clawed his way out, barely escaping with mind, spine, and genitalia intact, vowing to spill the beans on the whole damn shebang.

Well, he sure as shit does, abetted by cohorts Steve Newton (bass),and Joe Doria (keybs.), with Brendan Hill contributing drums beneath the trio, not to mention unidentified sessioneers on horns and such. Now, if he and they will choose to apply their apocalyptic laser vision to the music industry, then, whoo-eee!, we’ll be in for a roller coaster ride like no other. Ray Davies tip-toed into the swamp, as did Frank Zappa, but we’re still awaiting a magnum opus…and while we hold out collective breath, this is a helluva hackle-raiser that’ll have ya spittin’ nails, ranting like a cranked-out speed freak, and manning the barricades, ‘cause, once y’all emerge from Wake Up, you’ll know exactly what to expect no matter who wins the onrushing Psycho Farrago in November.

RELATED LINKS:

The Refusers' Official Web-Site
The Refusers; Official YouTube

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Giulia Millanta - Moonbeam Parade

Moonbeam Parade is a 13-act play ranged on an appropriately spare and scattered stage focusing down on the emotional raggedness of our times and wonts. Track titles such as “Shaky Legs”, “4th & Vodka”, “Play with Fire” give more than a few clues what to expect, with Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide” putting the knife in. Millanta’s tone is alternatingly dreary, cynical, sympathetic, and exasperated. As with all such artists: in the end a Humanist sentiment informs everything but not before a great deal of tough love, doubt, anxiety, and frustration pervade the panoply. In 2016, with world economies collapsing, interpersonal relationships disintegrating, disaster capitalism more vicious than ever, and two lunatics running for the presidency of the most powerful country in world history, that is: a fulsome catalogue of human madness trotting by our eyes, what on Earth should we expect? The arts reflect the times.

A native of Florence, Italy, now resident in Austin, Texas, and a multi-lingualist (she speaks four tongues), as well as a guitarist and…ukelele-ist (what the hell’s the proper term for that, anyway? ukelelian? ukelovian?), Giulia appears to be more than a little the restless and discontent soul, which is all to the good of course, making for a more acute witness to the baboon circus we call life. At the ringing down of the curtain, though, there’s always hope and the locating of signal acts fitfully promising better days. Ironic, then, that the cranky, dissatisfied, and moodily mannerist musical compositions are usually the most resolutely realpolitik, no?

Charlie Sexton (solo, Dylan), Hunt Sales (Paris, Tin Machine, etc.), and Gabriel Rhodes (Willie Nelson) appear as sessioneers along with others, so there’s no steady base unit save for Millanta herself, the chameleonic rosters making for interesting shifts in emphasis, everything sewed together nicely by Millanta’s lyrical, compositional, and arranging hand. This is her fifth release, and the artist’s growing fan base exponentializes each time out, listeners hungering for work well beyond the hideous mainstream corporate machine, here sated…temporarily, until turning into a hunger for the next collection.

One criticism, though. Millanta's working against herself in the art department. Her 2014 Funambulist carried the only liner cover giving the consumer a strong indication and taunt of what might lie within (yes, ‘taunt’, as good marketing either hits you in the face and dazes or teases and seduces), a marvelous piece of atmospheric German Expressionism depicting a phantasmic tightrope walker in greymist. The photo for Dropping Down wasn't bad, a pic of her plummeting thru a dark space, but Dust and Desire featured an amateurishly executed Steadmanesque doodle and this disc, Moonbeam, touts puzzling junior high pencil drawings by the esteemed Rhodes athwart a Laurie Andersony pixie punkette photo of the chanteuse leaning against a wall.

What we’re supposed to get out of that, I haven't a clue nor would anyone browsing CD racks…which is my whole point. Music this good should not go underrepresented any jot or tittle. One of these days, I'm going to publish a pamphlet to help musos who don't understand the graphic arts, the better to get their deserving musics more readily in consumer hands. There's more to that craft than people realize, and it's a good deal more easily accomplished than licensing images from Salvador Dali or Richard Avedon, but, until then, I think I'm going to have to satisfy myself with being exasperated with poor illustrative choices for music warranting much much more, which is my way of prolixly saying: don’t let Moonbeam Parade’s cover fool you. It whispers “amateur” but is waaaaaay past that.

RELATED LINKS OF INTEREST:

Giulia Millanta’s Official Web-Site

Friday, August 26, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Holon – The Time is Always Now

The following music review comes courtesy of friend and writer Marc S. Tucker, carried over from his newsletter VERITAS VAMPIRUS and is NOT of my doing despite being featured on my blog - please keep this fact firmly in mind for future reference.

HOLON – The Time is Always Now
2016 / Autumnsongs
Review written by Marc Tucker - 08/25/2016

Jesus, Joseph, Mary, all the djinns, and all the dakinis…this one starts off with everything!!! But wait, let me begin with a history backcheck:

Many among we proghedz have been anxiously concerned about the progressive rock mode as an eternally too-evanescent style now perhaps in its terminal phase. That’s kinda appropriate: the old guard fen are composed mainly of a buncha dinosaur Boomers in our last years, hopefully two more decades of ‘em, heading for the tar pits but wistfully rich in nostalgia, having been witness firsthand to one of the most magnificent bloomings of musical intelligence in history: progrock. Though I personally plan to live to 238, having way too much hell to stir up, far more than a mere 8 or 100 or 150 years could accommodate, what, me and the greybeards wonder, will happen after we’re gone? It’s a quandary.

After all, as I never cease to brag, I’ve seen Hendrix, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Focus, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, the Strawbs, Mountain, Uriah Heep, Iron Butterfly, Blue Oyster Cult (hey, those first 3 LPs are metal prog, goddammit!), Gypsy, Pink Floyd, Alan Holdsworth’s I.O.U., Renaissance, Camel, and more progsembles, semi-progsembles, and fusion groups than I can possibly remember - drugs may be delightful, but, Gawd almighty, do they ever fuck with long-term memory! - and many of them multiple times. After that, I can brag of sitting enthralled as a shitload of big-time progressive others in rock, jazz, and neoclassical went to town: Led Zep, Deep Purple, Philip Glass, Towner & Abercrombie, Oregon, Weather Report [w/Jaco], Al DiMeola, etc., etc. etc., ad infinitum, so many that I literally could fill an entire page with names. So I and compeers know from whence we speak, weeping bitter Cassandran crocodile tears as we mumble and wail.

In the meanwhile, ‘twixt the 70s acid daze and now, a number of dynamite groups have risen and fallen, always too few in number and a little too often a bit too wanting (as in the whole “neoprog” gig, ugh!) and thus a tad unnerving, saved only by the fact that there actually is FAR more great music overall now than ever before, and succeeding generations have been extraordinary in their hybridizations. The Net and all the alt distribution gigs (meaning: anyone and everyone) are now a wonderland of highly intriguing work, more than enough for several lifetimes to absorb in all genres…but… but…a granite-solid Old School prog band is still a very rare thing, especially when it comes to hapless overachievers receiving any shard of decent exposure and the hopeful viability that connotes.

Porcupine Tree’s one, Fish made any number of semi-stabs at post-Marillion re-evocations but settled for melodic hard rock (bitchin’ stuff, too, so hoist a stein in his honor), Saga’s been weaving back and forth (ya gotta love everything they do, but…), and so on. Exasperating! Worrying! Ah, but now comes a major new heavy hitter: Holon, a Norwegian juggernaut that not only revives the 70s but finds new back alleys and carves out fresh porticos in hallowed territories.

“Overture: The Belly of Being” commences in Between’s Carnatic wont, then crafts Gong’s Time is the Key era ostinati evolving Schroeder/Schonwalder cum Paul Brett serialities just as waves of Crimson thunder erupt within what increasingly becomes apparent is an elongated Oldfieldian exploration. A Subtonicky electronic chaos suddenly rises, the wave crests, and everything collapses into an A.J. Charron/Anthony Phillips acoustic interlude with Tull flute floating above.

But don’t relax just yet, ‘cause the song again courses into a melodic pounder, Ronny Pederson’s guitar ripping through the environment as the group chants “Who are we? Where are we?...What are we? Why are we?...Are we playing an untold story?” gently but plaintively, and so existentially jarring that I had to check the liner notes to assure myself the members hadn’t been involved in some dark voodoo shenanigans resurrecting Sartre.

As things continue to wend their way, a definite Flower Kings vibe sets in. Pederson’s leads again slice the clouds, Rhys Marsh’s basswork (democratically shared with Pederson) is a constant throb and his keyboards are atmospheric and generative (lotsa mellotron thru the disc, y’all!) as Geir Johansen’s drums clatter everywhere. Chaos and order ride side by side, competing for the post position and gold ring, the listener frequently white-knuckling while rhapsodic.

Aphrodite’s Child’s vocal work and epic nature (recall the wondrous 666) comes through clearly in “Dancer in the Sky” as backing vocalist Kari Harneshaug shares the foreground with Marsh, who tackles just about all lead vocals during the disc’s entire…70 minutes!, soon replaced by Silje Leirvik in a beautiful set of encantments on “Falling”, Marsh dueting once more. They both drop out, the band ramps up, and we’re back into magisterial refrains, mellotron rising and rising. Harneshaug returns, sounding like Annie Haslam in the throes of deep besetting awarenesses and barrier-crashing, and the tune ends. Whew!

I’ve only covered the first 3-1/2 songs, believe it or not, and, as said, Always Now (a very zen/tao ideation) is well over an hour long, gloriously exhilarating, and so intense so many times that if you’re exhausted by the termination of the concept cycle, then: congratulations! You got it! All the way down to the marrow.

Up until I got this and the cooler-than-cool genius madcap Ear Snacks by Andrew & Polly, I was not going to compose a Best Of 2016 list now that FAME’s gone (those things really are a friggin’ chore, and I hate all the stuff I have to leave out, even with 30 selections), but, beyond those two releases, I’ve been receiving waaaaay too many mind-blowing CDs not to. ‘Sides, my gig at Perfect Sound Forever also favors that kinda thing. So let me reveal well beforehand that this CD will be on it. Sipo knocked my brains out in 2009 (Christ, has it been THAT damn long?) with his Year of the Rose, for me reminiscent of Aragon’s Don’t Bring the Rain for pure, unbridled, shattering passion. Now Holon has done the same, not in the perennially frenzied degree as Sipo – I don’t know how the guy survived those studio sessions – but in more a crazed academic / philosophical listen-think-decorticate fashion, synapses and neurons flowing out your ears and onto the floor.

I think that alone is enough of a recommendation. I mean, hell, you weren’t doing anything with your grey matter, were you? Of course not! Not with The Quadrennnial Lunatic Derby, America’s mad kingship race, this time a kabuki ‘twixt Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, two sides of the same bent psychotic coin, going on; no, you certainly weren’t. Best, then, that you give yourself over here and now to every scrap of art you can find and hope we survive it all…which, by the way, though not quite stated as I’ve done, is the entire point of Always Now, carrying a very hopeful poetic forecast alongside all the beautifully doomy threnodic realpolitik of much of the instrumental element.

RELATED LINKS:

Holon's Official Website

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Ally Venable Band – No Glass Shoes

Okay, so Europe’s got Ana Popovic – and Sweet Lord God Jesus Joseph and Mary, can that woman PLAY! – but we here in the good ol’ USA now have a very surprising wrinkle in Ally Venable, all of 17 years old and fronting a hard blues band that thunders and struts right off the starting blocks. Popovic’s a singer/player formidable to the Nth degree (when you can get 3-1/2 million YouTube views for a 3-1/2 minute song, you’re definitely doing something way right), but Venable just might start putting a sweat on her in this, her debut, ‘cause Ally’s a dynamically solid singer and a shockingly discerning lead axeslinger. By way of pipes, she reminds me of a Maggie Bell (Stone the Crows, solo) or Marge Raymond (Flame) who outdid themselves. At just under 18 winters, Ms. Venable sounds like a road vet of decades of dusty, roiling, hard scrabble experience.

Then there are the atmospherics of Bobby Wallace and his gutsy organ backing up the thundering Elijah Owens (drums) and blood-thick Zach Terry (bass). Popovic looks like a model off the runway (or, um, outta Penthouse magazine) where Venable could’ve been in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the two step outside their physiognomies to forward the work of both the great black blues singers (Etta, Alberta Hunter, etc.) and the pan-racial players in post-Chicago bluesrock. Ana may be more seasoned, but Ally definitely has an unquenchable fire in her belly flanking the sort of brash devil-may-care heedlessness the young greatly benefit by, a attitude saying “Fuck it, I don’t, care, I’m going for it, and good luck to anyone who gets in my damn way!”. She then reaches for the sky…and gets there.

I mean, how else do you account for such a hard-won sound, not only in her but in the professionality of the ensemble in whole as well? AVB’s timbre is solid 70s, and the band could easily have shared stages with Savoy Brown, Chickenshack, Ten Years After, Smith (Gayle MacCormick’s old gig), appearing at the Fillmores, the old Whiskey A Go Go, and etc. The cover photo to his CD’s a bit Cinderella goofy (my guess? no money for good art direction) and doesn’t convey the powerful work beneath it, so if, on that basis, you might think this band’s just another of the billion extent, think again.

Ms. Venable bears close attention ‘cause, given No Glass Shoes, she’s going to be THE woman to make Joan Jett, Lita Ford, and the rest of the gender get serious, the one players like Leni Stern and Mimi Fox will be regarding admiringly through the years as a contender to the throne. From the opening riff of “Trainwreck” to the take on the classic “Messin’ with the Kid”, one of Rory Gllagher’s all-time fave ditties, to the slo-burn and heat of “Love Me like a Man”, you’ll know you’ve been down to the crossroads once this collection of eight cuts winds down. Hopefully, before you’re able to catch your breath, another album will be following hard on its heels.

RELATED LINKS:

Ally Venable Band's Official Website

Ally Venable Band'S Official YouTube

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: Jeremiah Johnson Band - Blues Heart Attack

Whoa! Waitaminnit! “Jeremiah Johnson?!?!”, you ask, and, yep, his parents named him for the Clint Eastwood movie. Then lad took to St. Louis bluesrock at the tender age of 6, digging the hell out of Clapton, Hank Williams Jr., and one of my all-time faves: Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee (birthname, and I didn’t know this ‘til recently: Graham Anthony Jones). Catch “Flat Line”, “Get It in the Middle”, and others for great examples of Big Al’s influence – Stonedhenge, y’all! So it’s hardly surprising when Blues Heart Attack, Johnson’s fourth release, starts off heavy with “Mind Reader” and pretty much stays that way; not metal, mind ya, but weighty and solid, sincere, driving…and when it’s not, it’s jazzy jump blues a la the early-years TYA.

We all know the late, great, red-haired, pant-tassled Lee was a speed demon, at the time of Woodstock the guy to match, arguably the prime precursor to the latterday shred culture, but those of us who listened to the whole catalogue of the whizbang understand he loved, perhaps even more than the burn-em-up frantic-frets gigs, good full-bodied blues boogie too, tracks with well-chosen chords and much simpler but oh-so-satisfying leads, and Johnson dives straight into the same righteous groove all through his CD, a player favoring taste and lyricism over blurs of chops. No Yngwie Malmsteening going on here!

But the backstory doesn’t end there: catch the Dickey Betts flavors in “Skip that Stone”, and there’s a good deal of Johnny Winter in Johnson’s shout-singin’ (“Summertime”, ”Room of Fools”, “Sun Shine Through”), among other discernable ingredients, not to mention a very Michael Stanley-ish blue collar approach from start to finish…though the Elvin Bishopy “Everybody Party” tosses in grins and good times as the frosting on the blues-berry cake. The band’s a trio (Jeff Girardier – bass, b. vox.; Benet Schaeffer – drums) with a couple session cats in various places plus Tom Papa Ray playing harp on “Skip that Stone”, so the rockin’ ‘n bluesin’ is always straight ahead, gritty, and full bodied. Oh, and Johnson may be a Missouri boy head to foot, born and raised, but that dark indigo cover pic of his tattooed scruffy self under a leather cowboy hat is visual warning there’s a quite decent modicum of Texas Tornado in him as well. The Big Mo is only a stone’s throw from Tejas, and I have a sneaking suspicion he was crossing state lines more than a few times.

RELATED LINKS:

Jeremiah Johnson Band - Official Website

Jeremiah Johnson Band's Official YouTube

Monday, August 1, 2016

Mister Tucker Reviews: George Crumb - Voice of the Whale

The following music review comes courtesy of friend and writer Marc S. Tucker, carried over from his newsletter VERITAS VAMPIRUS and is NOT of my doing despite being featured on my blog - please keep this fact firmly in mind for future reference.

GEORGE CRUMB: Voice of the Whale,
A Robert Mugge Film / DVD
2016, MVD Visual
Review written by Marc S. Tucker - 07/29/2016

This is a re-release of film-maker Robert Mugge’s first venture (1976), and what better way could one have chosen to set into motion a debut and career than through the venerable Nonesuch label avant-gardist George Crumb? Voice of the Whale, or Vox Balanae as it’s more formally known, is as important a work as any of Crumb’s earlier masterpieces. I was turned on to the guy through Ancient Voices of Children (1970) and Makrokosmos (1972) after first being brain-whomped by Eric Salzman’s Nude Paper Sermon (1969) (http://www.acousticmusic.com/fame/p08323.htm), which ignited my ever-burning aestheticus acquisitivus lunaticus to search out every Nonesuch LP I could find. From that, tracking down Iannis Xenakis’ work and kindred psycho-active sonics was the logical next step - this was, after all, the 70s - among which Crumb’s LPs still stand out like confident beacons, siren songs in a field of scintillating illuminations…albeit sirens from Mars, Procyon, and dimensions yet undiscovered.

This DVD opens straight into one of a set of ongoing slices in a complete performance of Voice/Vox by the Penn Contemporary Players, commencing with an exotic flute solo bearing florid scents of gagaku, Jon Hassell (long before he was brought through the vale by Eno), Pacific Rim essences, whale song emulations, and, of course, pure imagination. The piano steps in Cage-ily, and, though the piece is of terran pensivities, we’re off for the Magellanic Cluster in spacily eerie atmospherics not dissimilar to the deeps of this planet’s oceans. Don’t ask me why, but the performers are masked; perfectly okay with me: we don’t question Harry Partch as to his eccentricities, and so we leave Crumb to his (‘sides, it makes for a great element of dark cabaret).

Then the composer is serially interviewed by Richard Wernick, and the exercise proves to be one of contrasts: the utter mundanity of the composer’s daily self enveloping a core of revelatory insights reaching well beyond his time (and we still haven’t caught up, y’all). George looks just like another of his surname, the famous cartoonist Robert Crumb, while sounding like a non-nasally, non-whiny, non-pretentious, non-asshole William F. Buckley; in George’s case: quiet, conservative in tone, not at all full of himself, a very pleasant contrast to today’s over-the-top rock-n-rolling interviews wherein everything in sight and earshot is predicated upon branding, merchandising, and upsell rather than art. My, how radically things have changed in just a few decades.

Mugge completely eschews MTV consciousness, not branding a damn thing, thank God, and is, in more than one sense, the Errol Morris of music films, not in Morris’ work as a journalistic filmographer per se but rather as a documentarian in exposures of different but similar nature: first of portraits of those working outside the mainstream and then of ongoing prolific preservations of sonic Americana, the side of the sphere that doesn’t get the sun it should. In the former, among those obscurer creatives you’ll find documentations of Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, and of course George Crumb before veering into the trad-cats ‘n kitties with Ruben Blades, Elvin Bishop, Robert Johnson, and Rosie Ledet amid a treasure trove of blues, reggae, zydeco, N’awleans, bluegrass, and other modes celebrated in concerts, modern histories, and tributes.

This DVD of Mr. Crumb is among the more crucial of Mugge's works, as visual imprints of a-v musics being performed are rare and invaluable…‘n, man o man, I’d love to see the score sheets the pianist is playing from!: they look bizarre as hell, something Wernick correctly cites as “calligraphy”. More, Voice of the Whale is an illuminating peek into Crumb’s personal life, which was as plain and Levittown as any blue collar workaday despite that famed psychedelic oeuvre: we see him playing Frisbee, in duet with cellist/pianist son David, his wife taking time away from the laundry and lunch preparations to speak about her husband, and so on. Mr. Mugge captured a moment that existed, my friends, in a much different time. Would that more had followed his example, we'd be much richer for the move.

RELATED LINKS:

George Crumb's Official Website

Robert Mugge's Webpage For The DVD