Cobb

Chris Bowen: First Trumpet

Jazz and the City

It has been a long time since I've heard any really good jazz and if I hadn't stopped spontaneously by Cleopatra's Needle in NYC this week, the time would have been longer. And you would have thought that wouldn't be the case considering the legends and veues I attended.

My first stop of the three was at the Village Vanguard to see Jeff Tain Watts. Tain has the problem all jazz drummers have, personality. Personality is supposed to be interspersed in the spaces between notes. But when it comes out ahead and behind accompanying musicians and tends to dominate, well that's not as musical as it should be. The evening was a lesson in virtuosity, of fast and furious energy - like when my son puts Guitar Hero on extreme and plays the fastest practice track. Sometimes it can be impressive, and that's what I witnessed. But it's a lot better if the music can be enjoyed.

I suppose I will always remember the evening by the expressions on Tain's droopy eyelids. Most of the time I watched the miraculous ability he has to drum up a perfect storm with an absolute Sphinx expression of emotionless dread. It was as if he had mastered the ability to resist the spirit within himself that moved his arms and legs around the kit. Percussion was happening around him, this Buddha, but he was somewhere else. Not tranquil but zombified sleep with eyes open. But then the magic would happen and in the moment of synchronicity Tain would come alive and do that thing, you know, that jazz musicians are supposed to do which is collaborate in the swinging mood. He would smile and then the cymbals would dance. 

The problem of course is that as soon as the horn guy got off the stage and it was time for improvisation, the bassist and the piano player dropped into the background functionally, struggling as they did with the printed music on pages in front of them. Hell is being Tain's piano player, and homeboy was in the seventh level. 

--

The Blue Note is another place, that for some reason I never got a chance to visit when I actually lived in NYC. But this time I had Rachelle Ferrell and chicken wings as she took the masses into the opiates of infinite possibilities.

I didn't know who she was. Now I know. She is the majestic aftermath of an emotional trainwreck, or perhaps shipwreck or better yet spacewreck. Imagine the matter-scatter of a collision between a gossamere solar powered butterfly-ship on kilometer long and a radioactive cobalt asteroid. What we watched was the slow motion spinning of the flinty splinters finding a new orbit and occasionally reflecting starlight. 

It's rather sad to see five men trying so hard to make waffles out of the spaghetti of Ferrell's soul. The woman refused to end the song as she squeezed every last possible intimate whisper on the final notes. After three painfully drawn out endings, the audience began clapping sooner, without waiting for the absent physical clues. After Tain, though, it was refreshing to groove in a familiar beat and have the comfort of listening to a song, rather than a physics experiment. 

Ferrell, whom I've never heard before - even her classics, has got the voice in the lower registers that I missed from NDegeOcello without the crimson political speech, but it too comes with its own gravity well of emotional baggage. It doesn't work. It's too late. Ferrell's mania would be appropriate for a wartime audience in a Blitz basement, but only serves as a soundtrack for the irony of smartphone protesters seeking healing. It was a night of moonbeams and invocations of spirits and unicorns for grownups. 

On my way out the door, I caught Ferrell and another woman in the sort of embrace usually reserved for funerals. It's too bad she didn't sing the actual blues. 

---

My cousin emoted the proper 'deep' and 'spiritual' refrain and the three of us (hmm now isn't that a mystery) headed uptown to Cleopatra's Needle which was convenient to my hotel. 

Now I know where jazz lives in New York. 

Perhaps it is because there is something ephemeral about the use of classical tools in the hands of youth, like inheriting at long last Dad's Mercedes that makes for the respect of the form. But a dozen anonymous young musicians just pwned all of the grizzled vet of the prior experiences with renditions of standards that just kick the self-serving sorrow of the elder two into the bottomless cistern. This Is Jazz! they proclaimed, and they made it so.

There were there were six at the level of outstanding. The first was the young lady in the green turtleneck who is on her way to reminding us what the vibraphone is all about. She plays it with a jazz piano sensibility that is uncanny and melodic. There is almost nothing to compare it to, what a fabulous invention.

The young singer has cloned off Ella Fitzgerald - and it is something she will hear the rest of her days so long as she only dresses like and is determined to have nothing else in common with Erika Badu but complexion. I sat there with my jaw dropped. The lady has power. I sat for 100 minutes with Farrell waiting for her to belt a note. I got two notes per hour. Here, it just kept coming, washing over us in velvet waves. You wish that there were somebody anywhere on the planet who could write her new lyrics. As well as she could scat, nothing could bring us closer to the truth of the torch than the ballads crying out to be carried on her voice. I must find and name this woman because we have not heard this voice in a generation. And my God she not only works the band but she works a pair of denim jeans like a super model. Everybody needs to know her before she becomes Irene Cara.

The piano player here with the bushy eyebrows and the dynamic shoulders remembers that jazz is a conversation best held by those who are not merely verbose but witty and wise. He has the of vocabulary and the humility not to make it about himself but man... smart fingers, smart fingers. He did what homebot at the Vanguard never once managed to pull off, switched up the tempo a measure and took us down a salsa path when the moment was spicy and off atonal when the groove required it, and yes echoed the melody. It's the interplay, that's what the swing is all about brother. Thank you. Thank you.

Sharp. Bright. And that incredible thing she does with her tongue. Take your mind to the kung fu ballistics of the first Kill Bill and the girl with the flying chain in the Tokyo nightclub and imagine all of the acrobatic martial art converted into a trumpet solo. The young lady who tore the house down wore red. Her energy is fierce dynamic precision. It is so distinct that it makes almost every other jazz soloist sound overblown and manic, sweaty and profane. Of all the performers passing through the jam session that Saturday morning, her style is the most complete. She is phenomenal.

And then there was the big bad wolf. At first I wasn't sure, but then I began to be convinced and then in a moment I knew it was true. The man on the sax was bored with the standard scale and did everything in the parallel off-kilter key AND improvized like Coltrane with chord changes in every arpeggio AND hit high registers with blinding speed and accuracy. The man was thinking so incredibly quickly that it was scary - when it worked. Lightning only has to strike once. Ouch.

The clarinet has been punked and we all know it. G Who Must Not Be Named now has a nemesis. Thank God for The Kid. He can bring the clarinet back to the front of a jazz band doing the straight ahead thing with the sort of omniverous competency of a true band leader. He plays all the angles swiftly, never much changing tempo though, and he too is thinking quickly. You could tell everybody's comfortable with him in the lead. Nicely done, son. 

There were more. The silky smooth trumpet girl in demin with the tone to match Clifford, the almost persnickety well groomed dude who reminded me of a younger me who had a bad night on his vintage trumpet, the dude on the 'bone who was doing something squeaky weird on the high notes and trying to make it into a style, the elbow flying drummer nicely banging, the competent bassist who did some mind-bending chord fingering, the redhead on the trumpet just slightly behind the beat who could do some really killer stuff when he gets his other training blended well into straight ahead. 

It was a remarkable night of music - one I will never forget. Much props to my cousin and R, for the suggestion to go uptown.

Tom Lehrer & Clinton Ford

Just listening. 

Jimmy Webb on the Rdio

I have just discovered this dude cruising the new streaming music service 'Rdio'. Rdio is making me qualify all of my previous praise for Spotify. Spotify is great if you know what you want, but absolutely lousy for streaming radio. Let me put it this way. I spent (wasted) two hours listening to Spotify's jazz radio yesterday and I heard about five different artists. (Norah Jones, Miles Davis, John Coletrane, Duke Ellington and Nat Cole). That's a 12 year old's list.

My old existential partner Cuda Lee Brown gave me the quick digits 'rdio > spotify'. Damn right!

So I Rdio some Sergio Mendez, and it's groovy. Some of Brasil 66' Beatles covers are a little tiresome but they have some delightful period music. Best hippie music ever - you can hear the sensibility of Pop Art just before it ran off the rails into delirium. Specifically, the hilarious 'Malibu U' and the elegaic 'The Island'. My favorite is 'Casa Forte' which sounds rather like early EWF with beautiful and uplifting vocal harmonies. You just don't hear men and women singing together anymore in America, unless you're in church. 

Then I hear 'Wichita Lineman' which I recognized by the chorus but never knew the name. So I check out the YouTube of Glenn Campbell and instantly I see this guy who strikes me as the superstar that might have been. Weird. How does it happen that I'm digging on Glenn Campbell? He's right on the edge of being pure commercial and something else, very original with a bit too much self-respect for the era. 

But it's the song of course, and it turns out that the author is Jimmy Webb. Hot damn. I didn't know 'Galveston' but I did know 'MacArthur Park' - hell everybody does. And then blam. I walk into his album 'And So: On'. There's a cut on it called 'Highpockets' that is just got me blown away and it hits me in a minute. 

Jimmy Webb is the inspiration for everything Steely Dan became.

'And So: On' variously sounds like the blueprint for Steely Dan, the precursor to Return to Forever's romantic stuff and like the soundtrack for Billy Jack. But Webb can actually sing so it sounds better than most of the 70s stuff I recall. Is this the reason the Fifth Dimension albums always disappointed me? Because all their best stuff was Jimmy Webb? Sounds like it to me. I'm wishing to get the lyrics for all of his stuff. 

 

Ponta de Areia

All my life until this moment, I thought this song was first and only recorded by Earth Wind and Fire.

#NowPlaying Milton Nascimento – Ponta De Areia on @Spotify

http://open.spotify.com/track/4QuauNSOi3VvHcVl3MPS1H

#NowPlaying Wayne Shorter – Ponta De Areia on @Spotify

http://open.spotify.com/track/241a7EFlsfQpggghbM6t28

#NowPlaying The Whiffenpoofs – Ponta de Areia on @Spotify

http://open.spotify.com/track/3O3g8IU3Rn0S3nqz7ER1xs

 

 

 

Back on the Block - The Gospel of 1989

An everlasting omnipresence is my present
State of being, seeing the unpleasant
Sight of righteous souls live like peasants
The mind stunts growth in adolescence
My insight enables me to enlight
The weakest of minds, and I put em in flight
As I transcend, a-scend or de-scend
Re-create, re-incarnate and re-send
The powerful spirits of our ancestors
For those that don't know how God blessed us
Because man messed up, the media dressed up
Lies perpetrated as truth, and it left us
Confused, but I've seen it all before
From Babylon to the Third World War
I'm more than a man, I'm more like an entity
Back on the block, and this time my identity
Is the Dude

I'm listening to this album and it strikes me as exactly the sort of thing that somebody like me took just a bit too seriously. Yeah I knew it was fun. Fun like coming out a Spike Lee movie and fronting. At this distance it marks the era properly - just a few years after the invention of the term 'African American' at the birth of multiculturalism and Afrocentrism and the death of Soul. Mark Anthony Neal writes of the Post-Soul Generation. I mark Back on the Block as the divider.

As a milestone this Quincy Jones album cannot be denied and I'm coming to think of it as the last 'black cast' event. The moment at which the baton was passed from the elders of the prior forms to the new jacks. The title track could stand as the last time that Jesse Jackson was literally given the last word. The album won album of the year and seven Grammys, reprised some popular cuts redone in the double cut percussion of the new jack swing.

I can remember the end of the Apartheid Era and the beginning of American gospel choirs singing as if they were in the cast of Sarafina! There is that bold new confidence in this album, this becoming emblematic of the potential of that thing we called the New World Afrikan Diaspora. I can remember wincing at the possible mispronounciation of Dizzy Gillespie's name by Big Daddy Kane in his introduction to the cover of Zawinul's Birdland, did he or did he not drop the baton? It had to have that iconic perfection. 

Alas poor Tevin Campbell. It was impossible for the kid to compete with the big boys in the market. It's a joy to hear that innocence, but despite the superstar backing, he couldn't compete with the new jacks coming out of Philly, the East Coast Family. 

But what an album.

Nick & Val

If you want to get married today, chances are that the romantic songs you want played at your wedding were written yesterday. Of course Mendelssohn's Wedding March was written over 160 years ago and Wagner's was written just a few years later. But most of the folk you and I know would like to include a bit of the music they fell in love to.

The passing of Nick Ashford doesn't prompt my usual deadpan. And yet I tried to love them as performers more than they deserved. They wrote great songs, some of my favorites for the Brothers Johnson, but their own productions all seemed to drag on too long. They were not the singers you wanted to be, they were the lovers you wanted to be.

Better than Peaches & Herb, better the Captain & Tenille, better than Patti Austin & James Ingram, better than Rick James & Teena Marie, Nick & Val were tops. The world has only produced two possibly superior duets and that would be Gaye &Terrell and  Flack & Hathaway.

Ndugu

Never to be ignored again.

Get Up & Do My Thang

There's so much I can say about this video; it captures the energy and spirit of a time when there was so much more healthy creativity in the pop world. I've been chasing down the original System (Don't Disturb This Groove, You Are In My System) and then moved down the timeline towards that renaissance in Hiphop that became the New Jack Swing. 1988-90 were the landmark years. Do The Right Thing. (Redhead Kingpin too). Bobby Brown. Robert Townsend. Magic Johnson. Robin Harris. Guy. De La Soul. Queen Latifa. BDP. Public Enemy. Kwame. Janet. EPMD. Beastie Boys. NWA. Eric B & Rakim. LL Cool J. Rob Base. Salt n Pepa. Self-Destruction. Soul II Soul. Tracy Chapman. Take 6. Biz Markie.

Reggie Watts

I couldn't make this up. What if you had an entertainer who was a combination of Bobby McFerrin, Robin Williams, Tay Zonday, Bobcat Goldthwaite and Stephen Wright? You'd have Reggie Watts on a bad day. This man is completely and totally spontaneous - even moreso than Eddie Izzard, but without Williams' mania. OK. Enough 'splaining. Just check this out. 

A Few of My Favorite Jazz Things

At some point I am going to redesign or slightly modify Cobb to take into consideration the two or three latest Epicurean interests, music, coding and reading. The reading thing is mostly done, but I hope to get something in Google plus that can make for instant book clubs. After all, I'm really only interested in what I'm reading now.

But this week I'm in a listening mood and am experiencing music in a magical way in the spirit of both Recovery and Discovery, thanks to the attorneys over at Spotify who have managed to get the music I know into the hands of programmers who can finally do the right thing we have been waiting for since the dawn of Napster. 

My first musical surprise came as I was listening to Billy Cobham. Now Cobham, if you don't know, is a jazz drummer who would be something of a star if it weren't for the superstars of fusion. He's at one remove, in my way of thinking, from Lenny White, but still better from my point of view than Alphonse Mouzon. I first encountered Cobham when I was about 19 or 20 and trying to get my first grip on jazz as a more serious listener. At the very same time, I was sucked into the vortex of Stanley Clarke. But Cobham had an album out there in collaboration with several other musicians I did not know called Alivemotherforya. And I did play "Anteres" to death on my newly purchased Walkman. So I'm looking for that album last night and I come across his top hits according to Spotify. First cut, meh. Second cut 'Red Baron', holy heart murmer. It's 'Words of Advice' from my favorite album of all time.  Stunning.

I leave it on the Cobham channel and now and then I get music that pulls me away from the work I'm doing. I listen to a lot of music while I write or code or eat or clean up my room or drive, and only rarely is it so dense and beautiful that I simply must pay attention. Now I have some Billy Cobham, an artist who is hard to know. 

I should say as well, that I was in the mode to chase down some Mahavishnu stuff. Just previously, on Thursday as a matter of fact, I found multiple versions of 'No Mystery' which is becoming my favorite song from RTF, even though nothing will ever replace 'Romantic Warrior'. And as usual, 'Birds of Fire' does almost nothing for me. So I'm thinking that there's a trend here. There is no doubt that if I look up Bobby McFerrin, the number one hit will be 'Dont Worry, Be Happy' which is about as unrepresentative of his work as possible. But let's forget Mahavishnu's orbit for a moment so I can give some due to Bobby. (Except to note the fusion connection with Chick Corea)

First of all, check out this video and understand the spirit of the man. If you did watch the entire thing, that's actually enough to give you a clue as to what his music is like these days. You'll hardly make a better musical investment than listening to Beyond Words, his breakthrough album of 2002 which completely blew my mind. 

For Christmas, I got *the* boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald live in LA back in 65 I think it was. Stunning performances. I wore out 77 tracks in a month and a half. Gotta bring that up again... 

 

The Rock I Don't Get

I grew up in an era called 'crossover'. It was the early 70s, before America's bicentennial when every public mural had different color hands shaking. The years presaged the Rise of Lionel Ritchie and all the mediocre goodness that ensued. At some point I might be forgiven for hanging out with the sort of kids that liked Jackson Brown and The Eagles, instead of Aerosmith and Foghat, but it all sounded foreign to the rhythms of my blues. 

Over the years, I have participated in what I call Recovery, which is essentially feeding my adult mind with those things that perplexed me as a youth. It's one of the dualistic aspects of a rather persistent memory. More often than not there are fine rewards to grasping the subtlety of some arcane bit of music that escaped my younger ears. Sometimes I discover that there is basically no sense to be made of that stuff. 

On the nonsense front we have matters like the lyrics of McArthur Park, the proferred profundity of Billy Joel and Stevie Wonder, and the all the greatness that is supposed to be the stylings of Eric Clapton.

Clapton is a real puzzler because I don't generally have the patience to listen to enough of his stuff to figure him out. And I've never heard him do any rendition of a standard that make me say aha. Cocaine? Please. I Shot the Sheriff? An insult to the great Bob Marley. Layla? It sounds just as good when Weird Al Yankovich does his version. 

At some point I will probably listen to an entire song by Jimmy Buffett, but probably not until I retire and have absolutely nothing better to do. 

Somebody did tell me that I would like Jethro Tull. The same person told me that I had the personality to appreciate a band called Rush. It turned out that Aqualung is probably my all time favorite song to play on RockBand. But Rush I have yet to hear out.

Sometimes it's a near miss, and such is my experience with Pink Floyd. Of course I loved The Dark Side of the Moon, and sometime you might ask me about my altered state enjoyment of Animals. But it took me years to finally hear Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Comfortably Numb. Maybe The Wall was a very good album but only it wasn't the only album you knew of them. 

This is, largely the tip of the iceberg. Now that I have Spotify, I expect that I can do a great deal of Recovery. So I can tell you, for example that I am hearing A Sacerful of Secrets for the first time. OK. That's interesting. I wonder how long it would take somebody largely unimpressed with Earth Wind and Fire to hear 'Runnin' for the first time. 

 

Black John's Blues

One of these days, hopefully not too soon, we are going to run out of people who knew and worked with Miles Davis personally. Until that time, you should make it your business to seek them out and discover what they have been doing. This man, John Bigham. You can't ignore him. He's got something that you know. Something unsaid. He's from my generation. I feel him like a brother. He plays the guitar upside down. His lyrics are like short declarative sentences that take a tangent off a fat soul. He nails it down without scratching the finish. Not trying to be too fancyfied. Not pretending to be more dirty than ordinary life.

Jazz Under the Stars

Featuring Chris Bowen. The best birthday gift is to see your children doing well.

The Redemption of Michael Franti

I didnt' want to watch Michael Franti's show at the Jazz Fest. But I had friends in the audience with cold beer and a little patch of space. The reason I didn't want to see Franti's show is because I fell out of love with his music. Falling out of love with an artist can be one of two experiences. You're either disappointed with what they have become, or you become disappointed with what you used to be. For me it was a combination of both that made much of his stuff insufferable.

In particular, I refer to the tearjerking pathos of his album 'Home' or perhaps it was the other Chocolate Supa Highway? There's something about the border of folk music and politics that unnerves me. So I don't want to hear a song about the contemplation of suicide, or getting a letter about HIV in the mail, or any song that seems to require 'fuck the police' in the lyrics. It's not that I simply disagree with the politics but the juxtaposition with such agitprop inside dance music is unnerving. In other words, Franti makes art, not just entertainment, and I don't like mixing the two.

Franti is 1/3 of the way to redemption in my eyes, but not becuase I think any differently of him, but I think he has recognized that he has to have a party show, and today he had a party show which was a very long way from the music that made him famous. Today being the final day of the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, my first time. 

Franti is a frantic figure who knows how to rock the right crowd. But I almost hesitate to call him a performer. He is not so much a performer as he is a minister, and his performance is to create an effect in his audience. The effect was effective.

I dont' like crowds. At the same time, I think very highly of the idea of having mass rituals. So in my mind, which wasn't so far from alien observation mode, I am thinking about what happens when a man on stage directs a crowd. It's different from a DJ, but less different from a political speaker at a rally. The political content of the rally is what gives me pause, and I know that Franti is not merely in the music business to make people feel good but speaks of empowerment.

Franti uses a hiphop concert formula which is tried and true, which is to get the crowd to do the work when beats and lyrics from the stage are all unsurprising and the bars begin to drag on. You know the old critique - don't ask me to say 'ho' and raise my hands in the air and jump, if the music inspires, I'll do that on my own. Franti never stops asking.

The odd bit is that when he brought a violinist (or I should say fiddle player) onto the stage, he didn't have to ask twice. Here is the border between bluegrass and hiphop and the crowd absolutely loved it. I loved it. It had a kind of energy that is rarely heard anywhere outside of Phish (I think), and I hope to hear more of that.

Franti is redeemed by his willingness and ability to rock the crowd against no particular big ideas and messages. I can see that he gets that. Using his call and response and moshing it up in the crowd, he created an excellent atmosphere. And while I was marginally annoyed by the hugs and the passing of the herb I had to decline, I enjoyed exactly what he did produce on Sunday. It was the Holy Ghost part of church and the message was Big Easy. Celebrate life. Love. Peace. All good from the folk and party to the people.

So the question is whether such a man who can and does perform alter calls and gets people to send their babies and their grandparents up onto the stage to shake their stuff or rap into the mic or air guitar with real guitar props is content to party in that non-threatening bucket. I couldn't read it on his face that he was 100% in the party moment. There was too much structure and control in the whole offering. Franti is about 6 foot five and handsome, exuding a John the Baptist vibe and moving as widely around as any 45 year old could dream of, swapping out guitars for every song.

I saw another third of Franti on stage. The party man, not the political party man. And all of the music was designed to keep the good time party rolling. It gives me a reason to refresh my consideration of Franti and Spearhead. What's going on?

Russian Street Jazz

Unbelievable!

Trombone Shorty

Saw him yesterday. One of the best live performances I've ever been to. He straight rocked it out, funked it up, and blew the crowd away.

Oh Yeah, Jazz

I recently fell into a Jazz discussion via a debate between Stanley Crouch and James Mtume over the importance of Miles foray into electronic jazz fusion. I forgot that such debates still raged, and I have found some old soulmates in the process.

My hunger for jazz has been rather weak and I haven't looked for anything new for a while. Everything is just a new interpretation of the Standards and I'm happy enough with that. I got the Ella Fitzgerald boxed set for Christmas and that has been the last outstanding thing, although I am really hooked on the latest Stanley Clarke. But basically, other than Laswell and McFerrin, I haven't bothered to make a move to get any jazz and am happy with my casual listening. 

Every once in a while, I might get a Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock. The smooth jazz doesn't bother me much although I absolutely hate the 4/4 version of Take Five. But I've met a new writer Nashira Priester and she's connected via Facebook to Greg Tate and suddenly I am reminded of that whole world of the music/cultural production and criticism. 

Hmmm.

Cottontail

Colors of the Wind

Everyday Sunshine

You can't possibly know me unless you know Fishbone.

Cairo, West Virginia

Everybody's doing it. Walk like an Egyptian.

Hova's Apple

It has been about six months since I last cruised with the sunroof open through Palos Verdes in a white shirt and Ray-Bans. Around Portuguese Bend in the black BMW you could have seen me with the bling hanging out the driver's side. The best rap on the planet blasting. That would be Steve Coleman & Metrics. Since '93 rap has has only been a mood-enhancer and there are only certain moods I enjoy having enhanced by beats and rhymes, driving bogard is first. There was a time when I threw out some couplets, but I couldn't live for making blue collar teens wanna be. So my heart wasn't in the core of the art. I might have thought a broader mix of mental juices could be loosed by the right combination, and a few have tried that hiphop chemistry, but most of the young punks can't hack it. They confuse H20 with H2SO4. I third degree that mimicry of shit we heard before.

And so I take my pleasures elsewhere. 

I couldn't estimate who it would be that would not look as stupid as Snoop Dogg, who is now officially the oldest man in the club. He blew up a truck for Zynga, and that's the state of the art. But Jay-Z has done the extraordinary. He has become middle aged, appropriately.  So I was literally brought to tears when I saw this piece this morning. It is what hiphop should have become, and now, if this is any indicator, has actually become - because this is the man at the top. 

There are several things that strike me about this tribute to NYC in this performance. 

 

The first thing you have to recognize is Jay-Z himself. Everything about his performance says pro. He's up to make the perfection exuding confidence, ease and energy at the same time. He's right in the moment and he knows he is the performance. The chorus, busted out by BK just soars. It's flat out majestic. The stanzas chop with the same piano highlights that made 'Hard Knock Life' groundbreaking, but now all empty space is orchestrated right through to the dramatic swelling cinematic drama tumbling down like boom boom boom. It dances with poise and lets the bittersweet poison of the gritty lyric sink in. But like the best hiphop and why the whole genre always has the potential to change music, you don't get it until you read the lyrics, memorize their poetry, internalize their associative imagery and then spin it back with the dBs up into the plus. 

What's excellent here is that so long as Jay-Z stays in the game there's a level of mediocrity that he won't stand for, and we all stand to win for that. I thought about Linkin Park last month seeing that they put out a new album that's less hiphop and more something else. After their collab with Jay-Z what else hiphop is there for them to do? My prediction. If Jay-Z is all that he portends to be in this performance, then fifty years from now, this will be the sort of stentorian lyricism that rules 4:4 time, and you'll have to go to Bob Dylan and get sparse and rambling to find its equal.  And so there is the reason that he's like Sinatra. May he live that long. 

Brilliant Corners

Take 24.

I thought this might be a nice complement to 'Facts Are Stupid Things'.

The Music That Made Me - 15 Greatest Albums In My Mind

I am bound to follow up on the discussion of the music that made me, the albums that I obsessed over in my youth. There's just stuff that has to be said by me as a writer about music, so much of my life I had arguments in silence with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, and now I'm out here not talking about it. What's wrong with me? Time to turn that boat around.

I am bound to follow up on the discussion of the music that made me, the albums that I obsessed over in my youth. There's just stuff that has to be said by me as a writer about music, so much of my life I had arguments in silence with Robert Hilburn of the LA Times, and now I'm out here not talking about it. What's wrong with me? Time to turn that boat around.

We start at the top with The Last Poets - This is Madness. Along with Moms Mabley, this is an album I found in Pops collection that I probably wasn't supposed to find because it was filled with cursing. It must have been one of those long summer days when I was bored to death and started poking around in the bookshelves, and I come across this album with a bright interior. And the words! The words just leapt of the page searing my consciousness - I never saw them written down before. Imagine the nerve of such people, talking about revolution and here it all was. Now my father liked Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, The Four Freshmen and Nancy Wilson. Now that I think of it, I can probably recall a great number of his favorite records, including the transparent red vinyl of Peter and the Wolf he got for me. But seeing this in the bunch was too much. Of course I memorized the killer track Mean Machine and still remember snippets like 'automatic pushbutton remote control, synthetic genetics command your soul'. It was difficult for me to understand how this record could exist - it was pure uncut revolution on wax - who turned the other way at the record factory? And look at those black Africans on the cover. They were beautiful and powerful with big afros and fire. It was the coolest, most subversive, thrilling thing that could be. Just listening to it gave me thrills. I don't know if I ever let my father know that I knew that he had this album. It was that powerful.

 

All N All- Earth, Wind and Fire. I found All N All on the downstroke. The album had been out for years, I'm sure, before I actually purchased it. In fact, I lived a relatively impoverished life with music. It wasn't until I was around 19 with my first real fulltime job that I was anything more than a slave to the radio and the tape deck. I remember the cassette I owned with a piece of 'Be Ever Wonderful' that cut off suddenly and began to play backwards. I fell in love with half a song and played it for years not knowing the rest since it had fallen out of radio rotation. So when I finally got the album it captured me completely. One night at USC as a tender frosh, I got to dance the perfect slow dance to 'Would You Mind'. Ahh where did you go? How many hours have I spend staring at the artwork of this album? But the great personal triumph and impression was 'Runnin'. This was a completely new discovery, the kind of jazz I was just beginning to appreciate. I don't know what the term is for that transition they did with the horns and voices in the middle of the song, but it blew me away. Runnin' is probably the first song I knew that made me comfortable with multiple tempos in a single performance. If you don't understand me, it's your fault.

 

 

 

 

Dirty Mind - Prince. When Prince's first album 'For You' came out, I wanted to be Prince. When Prince's second album came out, I didn't want to be Prince any more, but I could see maybe how I might try something as crazy as riding naked on a horse. When Prince's third album Dirty Mind came out, I just stood there with my mouth open. See, I could handle the blistering guitar and screaming of Bambi. It was way cool to be into that - it was pushing the envelope. But Dirty Mind didn't only rip up the envelope, it burned down the post office. Yes, 1999 was a much richer and more rewarding album, and Controversy lived up to its name. But Dirty Mind was the album that had a much bigger impact. To say that you were a fan of Prince before he became the huge success that he was by Controversy was to take a serious risk. I took the risk. 

 

 

 

 

Majesty of the Blues - Wynton Marsalis. Wynton came along right at the perfect time. As soon as I read up on him, I purchased Think of One. We were born in the same year and he spoke directly to that part of me that was respectful and arrogant at the same time. I dug him on that album, played it to death and then even more with Black Codes from the Underground. And then with Herbie Hancock's Quartet my favorite jazz ballad for a long time would become 'I Fall In Love Too Easily' featuring a melancholy Wynton that betrayed something I hadn't heard before. JMood, years later broke through but it wasn't until Majesty of the Blues that he connected with me on a gutbucket level. The astounding Death of Jazz just brought me low. I determined that this was going to be the song they played at my funeral. And then with Premature Autopsies, I had words that connected me emotionally to all the things that jazz and the black soul in America symbolized. It was an album which was a soundtrack to my pathos, and it put me on a road to a more robust feeling of something ancient flowing in my blood.

 

 

 

 

Tutu - Miles Davis. Nobody wants to say so, but Tutu is the greatest hiphop album ever recorded. It wrecked jazz for good by bankrolling Kenny G, 94.7 The Wave and every jazz artist desperate to escape for bebop. It may not seem like it but it's true - just nobody wants to say so. Miles went the length whereas with Youre Under Arrest, he was just playing. But in Tutu is a reinvention that showed everyone that the masters can work with the sixteen beat and that Herbie wasn't just out there freaked out. The nerve of Miles to do a Scritti Politti tune just completely solidified everything I had been out in the wilderness saying back in the days when I wanted to scratch Hey 19 and put some meaty beats under a jazz arrangement. I got a chance to see Miles around that time down in San Juan Capistrano. It was phenomenal.

 

 

 

 

Carmel - Joe Sample. There were three distinct moments in my life when I decided to really understand jazz. The very first time was when I was about 19, and I must have asked around, because my first album was Joe Sample's Carmel. This was one of those albums I always liked playing end to end rather than picking a track and then lifting the needle again. It always put me in a good mood to listen to Joe Sample whereas other jazz I listened to at the time (not much) tried to prove its cool. I listened to Billy Cobham, Seawind and Tom Scott, and of course there was Spyro Gyra's Morning Dance and Hiroshima. But Joe Sample was the coolest of them all.

Even looking at the cover mellowed me out and reminded me of the peaceful camping trips I had taken up in Big Sur - a romance with that area of California I have never shaken.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern Man - Stanley Clarke. Not long after I took in Joe Sample, I ran into a cat named Ronald Stephens. He knew things about music that put me to shame, especially on the jazz side. And I wondered how anybody who had any hair growing out of them could possibly be excited by the mellowness of jazz. He looked at me and said, you obviously don't know Stanley Clarke or Jeff Beck do you? Who? He said Stanley Clarke is the greatest bass guitar player on the planet. I'm like, you can't be serious - don't you know about Louis Johnson? He yawns. He says, I play bass guitar and I can play every Brother's Johnson song, but I can't even come close to that. This I got to hear. It turns out that right around the way in the high end stereo department, the guy with a rack of Soundcraftsmens and the biggest speakers that JBL makes is cranking up Rock & Roll Jelly and Closing Statement. So now I've heard it, and I realize that I will never be the same. People are asking me if I've never heard of Stanley Clarke - I see the School Days album and realize that I have heard him before, but only in that odd way. If you've ever hung out with record store geeks, something we all used to do but never do any longer, then you know what it's like to be in the store when they play something that only the guys behind the counter can get into, and people in the store are like... you took off the Commodores to play this?  There used to be a record store between Rocket Cleaners and Boys Market on Crenshaw in the hood, and I can still remember the day they did that for what was then Stanley Clarke's newest album, School Days. I stayed to listen to the whole thing, liked Desert Song, walked out and forgot all about it. What I really wanted to hear was 'Running Away' by Roy Ayers - that was about as jazzy as my teenaged sensibilities allowed me to be. It had to be funky. Still Stanley Clarke was a great revelation to me and expanded my musical world with themes that I still find fascinating.

 

 

Sequencer - Synergy. If it's not obvious to you, then here's a clue about me. Ever since Space Race by Billy Preston, I have been absolutely addicted to electronic music. In high school, I thought that the world's greatest musician was Walter Orange. That had something to do with some confusion on my part, because I saw a picture of him and we bore each other some resemblance. What I recalled was that there was a man seated in the middle of five keyboards and Moog electronics. Every funk band that used synthesizers became associated with Orange in my young mind, and he was me. That association stayed in my mind until George Duke broke through with Reach For It, and then was completely obliterated by Larry Fast and W. Carlos. Still, I didn't own any of that music until I was 19, and on the same Soundcraftsmen / JBL setup at Fedco La Cienega's Coastron concession was the introduction of several new albums that fundamentally rearranged my musical tastes. One was the Alan Parsons Project - specifically Pyramid. The second was Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire III. I dug the big Doobie Brothers album that was hot that year and Supertramp's Logical Song was often on my mind. For the first time, I really listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon - the problem being that anytime I inquired into the matter, people who knew looked at me like I was crazy. So, not willing to pay up for the super duper quality remastered version, I could only get a little piece of that music at a time up until that point. The second biggest favorite of that time period would have to be the debut album by the Yellow Magic Orchestra, which did the right things with electronic music that was perfectly original and not part of a disco tune. Still, the granddady of them all was Larry Fast's Synergy. At times when I get nostalgic, like right now, I think of how I used to daydream over the sci-fi illustrations of an artist whose name I need to recover to the strains of the New World Synphony. This remains one of the albums of which I never tire, and that period of music was signature in my life.

 

Duck Rock - Malcolm McLaren. Duck Rock was for me very likely the thing it was for everyone else. A glimpse into the future, the success of a shotgun method without any rhyme or reason that nonetheless struck more than a chord but established an orchestra hit. I have only now discovered the fact that my other idols, The Art of Noise, collaborated on this LP. But in fact it was Hobo Scratch, the 12 inch remix that just wore out the needles on my turntables. 

Go ahead, say it. We're on a world tour with Mr. Malcolm McLaren. We're goin each and every place including Spain, Asia, Africa, Tokyo, Mexico.  A hiphop bite that's been bitten all over for decades. 

You've got half the aesthetic that would dominate for the next decade in the album cover with Keith Haring and the iconic ghetto blaster, and the hard beats with scratches and electronics and signature voices, accents never heard, outtakes. Insane. Brilliant. Addictive.

 

 

 

 

 

Daft - The Art of Noise. AON became for me something of an obsession. Beyond the crystalline beauty of the synthesized note put to funky use by the brilliant Thomas Dolby whose Blinded Me With Science, like no other song beside Morris Day's Tricky, put me into uncontrollable break dance spasms it was Close (To Ehe Edit) that was the song that gets the Michael Bowen Lifetime Achievement as the 'Something about the music gets into my pants award'. And what's even more crazy is that Beat Box was on the same album. Astounding! I would have to say that without question {Rockit, Beat Box, Close, Tricky} are the all time greatest break dancing songs ever. The answer to your question is yes, I could break. I never managed a head spin or the signature windmill or flare. I would have needed a crew to practice with, something I wouldn't find on campus. I satisfied myself that I was the best breaker at State and famously won the campus Nerd Contest for breakdancing with taped glasses, flood pants and a pocket protector. Props must go to Charles Walker however, I did have red black and green pens in that pocket. As well I spun on my back after winning a scholarship at an awards ceremony dance. Of course I dug Scritti Politti, ABC and Yes' Owner of a Lonely Heart was a smash, but the Art of Noise was king and remained champion. There was something of an underground art to them and ZTT; I loved that they were texty. It was from them I expected codes from the underground.

 

 

 

 

Windham Hill Sampler 84. What happened during the 80s was a burst of creativity in the popular culture of the sort we're likely to see after we get out of the current depression, and in that time was the creation of Silicon Valley as a cultural as well as an industrial center. Windham Hill was a big part of that movement and I felt very much a part of that. The haunting beauty that was David Bowie's This is Not America was the the other end of the electronic spectrum from the jarring bombast of the Art of Noise. There was of course Moments in Love in its various incantations, but that was not enough. There had to be an entire ocean of mellow, and that's where Windham Hill shined. With its minimalist approach, it was pristine and crisp. It was logical and soothing.

Mark Isham's On the Threshold of Liberty was an anthem that struck stirring noble emotions in direct counterpoint to the lament of Bowie. And while Andreas Wollenweider ended up getting on my nerves, and Jean Luc Ponty always seemed to be too busy, there was balance and a lack of pretense in the Windham Hill artists. All except for Liz Story whom I found to be a great disappointment. For many years I had a solo piano search.. well that's another long story. In the end, I must say that I never did find that solo pianist who did New Age properly for me, but I have been spoiled by Herbie, Chick, Andre, Martha, Vladimir and Glenn.

 

 

Crossroads - Tracy Chapman. I fell in and out of love around this album with the woman I would eventually marry. And for her there are a number of albums that resonate with romance and affection from that same time in my life. Those would include UB40, Basia, Clifford Brown (with Strings) and most notably the Stanley Clarke project Animal Logic. Lyrics! Not since Stevie and EWF have we had music that speaks to the soul. Again, there is a kind of purity and simple beauty in this that I found inspiring. It helped that the very idea of a black woman of unconventional beauty in dreads who spoke of unplugged revolution was automatically appealing to me back in the late 80s, but we all knew talent when we saw it.

Crossroads was her second album and although my favorite of all her songs continues to be 'I Used To Be a Sailor', this collection hangs together as the center of gravity of Chapman. The sweet sadness of A Hundred Years, the defiance of Born to Fight, the smug condescension of Material World, the heartfelt and plaintive This Time. It's an album for the ages.

 

 

 

Keep On Movin' - Soul II Soul. For me as I believe with many millions of others, this was the watershed album that helped initiate that international level of cool I called New World Afrika. It was one of the first acknowledgements of a global set by my generation. You knew that EWF travelled around the world, but they never brought anyone back with them. Jazzy B had the voice, the look, the sound and the humanistic vibe that took everybody by surprise. What's funny is that I remember that he came out at the very same time as Al B Sure! when all that New Jack Swing was still trying to be cooler than it possibly could be. I remember just feeling sorry for hiphop at the time when Special Ed was still on the charts as well as Kwame (whom I thought was the coolest and most avant guard in the days before De La Soul) and ESD. When Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis could still make or break people as if all of urban contemporary was closely held as if prisoner of a New Jack City redoubt, in sails Soul II Soul like an irresistible force and blows them all away. When sophisticates like myself and my buppie crew were just getting fed up with the frenetic energy of Rob Base and the Beastie Boys (not to mention Milk is Chillin'), the smooth vocals and pounding beat of Soul II Soul was the perfect respite in between them and the super smooth of Double Vision. No not Foreigner, James and Sanborn. Speaking of which, there are other albums that really locked me in during the years between 86 and 90 and I'm going to do a special on them because in that spot was some great happenings, and music was one fourth of my focus. More on that later. As for Soul II Soul, they picked the exact right shade of brown, something that wouldn't be repeated until Janet.

 

Fishbone - Fishbone. Now I'm going to take a step backward in time to Fishbone. I happen to believe that Fishbone was one of the greatest rock bands on the planet. And it is certainly the most underrated bands ever. This was their debut and it changed the world. For all the music in the world I grew up with, all of it was cool. Cool is not enough and sometimes you just need to be weird. For weird there was Parliament. But even that was not enough. Fishbone was frenetic. They represented the energy of the moment, and it wasn't until I knew the music, smart, fresh, funky, rocking, ska-rythmic and loud that I could express that energy of mine. It turns out that these were neighbors. Some of the band members went to middle school with my younger brother, and I can distinctly remember when I used to hang out with Angelo during that brief period in my life when I was not above disco roller skating and pop locking in the streets of Hollywood. Fishbone was on the edge, and if I didn't spend my entire life trying to be respectable I would be exactly like them, and it is that dynamic that lead me to the mosh pit at the Santa Monica Civic for the first concert of the Black Rock Coalition, in shirt, tie and jacket. I have been lucky enough to have found a woman who actually understands Fishbone. I wish I knew her then!

 

 

 

 

Hallucination Engine - Material. This album remains my absolute favorite of all. It is finally, after many years of searching, exactly my kind of music. There is the purity of ambient synthesizers, there is the sophistication of polyrhthmic beats. There is big boom of bass, the improvisation of bebop, the integration of Eastern themes. All that and Arabic lyricism as well. I have been following two threads of this kind of music since the 80s. One of them culminated in the music around Adrian Sherwood and OnU and the other around Bill Laswell and Axiom. In the end, Laswell was the champion and his music explores all the dimensions of sound I find fascinating, compelling and majestic. His collaborations with everyone from Sly and Robbie and Peter Namlook to his recreations of Bob Marley and Miles Davis are stunning. But in my opinion, his greatest work to date can be found on this album. It is track number seven, entitled The Hidden Garden / Naima. Yes, that Naima. It is, in my opinion, better than Coltrane's original. This is the music I have played in rented cars through the streets of Brooklyn and Tampa and Houston with the windows rolled down, just trying to show how that big boom can carry so much sophistication and flavor. This is the music that carries the literal wit of William S. Burroughs about deals with the devil. 

The odd thing is with this album is like so many others, I don't associate a name with the songs. I just know them. They occupy a nameless place in memory because there is no communicating them. It's like a secret knowledge, a fountain of inspiration that you try to share but the water slips through your hands as you attempt to remove it from the source. I can say 'Laswell' to a few that know him and then what? There's this, of course, but there is also the perfect Dub Chamber 3. There's also the extraordinary Panthalassa. I know a man named Benzon who once looked after my son. If there's a man who knows my mind perhaps he is the one. In music he understands the power it transduces through the brain. I look at him with library envy and wish I could explain. I'll tell him Laswell and he'll nod, then pick up his horn and play a stretch and hang on to a note mystical and forlorn. And I'll say yes after a moment and say how did you know. He'll shrug and ask me don't we all who listen for the flow? And I forget this epic trance was dreamed in God's own mind, as I just wrangle syllables interpolated for the purposes of explicating that which transpired without any sense of time as if binded to the blind.

Robert Anton

Quote of the Day

Perverse modernism is the strain in modern art that will do anything to get a rise out of the public. It's not the sum total of modernism, by any means. Rather it's the easy part. Millions of people who cannot grasp the formal innovations of Picasso or Parker have no trouble grasping "art" that rejects tradition, attacks standards, blurs the line between high and low, and (most important) uses shock and offense to attract attention and boost sales. These tactics are often classified as "post-modern," but in fact they've been present since the dawn of modernism. A century ago, certain avant-garde artists in Europe believed that if they made the right anarchic gesture in the right setting, it would spark social and political revolution. No one believes this any more - indeed, there is a vacuum at the heart of today's perverse modernism, where the old dream of revolution once stood. But the bold outrageous gesture is still thought the essence of "creativity" by many people who can know better (artists and pundits) and many who cannot (teenagers).

-- Martha Bayles

Donald Trump Black Version

In an odd kind of confluence of events, one that probably registers in about 12 brains in this whole damned planet, I noticed that there is a guy being sued for misrepresenting himself as an attorney for CAIR. His name is Morris Days.

Morris Dees is the guy who bankrupted the KKK. Morris Day is cooler than Santa Claus baby!

I'm one of those guys who wanted Morris Day to become a much bigger superstar than he did become. His attitude was my attitude, at least back in '82 when I was a freshman at State wondering how I could get into one of those camisole parties thrown by Phi Beta Sigma. In fact, I did go to one of those camisole parties and it was a bit too off the hook for me. But it was pleasing for me to discover that such things actually did take place.

Morris Day is one of those talented individuals who has a website that's five years old still with 'coming soon' parts. There's nothing quite so sad - except knowing in the same breath that he used to represent your social world. Andy Rooney remarked that he didn't even realize who Kurt Cobain was. Cobain had the advantage, like Princess Di, of dying young. Right about now it would be even sadder to see what they would have eventually turned out to be in their fifties. And so it must be with Morris now that he's not, what he wanted to be, Donald Trump Black Version.

When that song came out, back when Morris was a big star, as silly as it sounds, that was quite a miraculous thing to think about. Back in those days, Barry Gordy who owned half of the black slaves entertainers in Hollywood was saying to hell with MTV and music videos - that it was a trend and black people wouldn't respond to flashy videos. Well, except for Stevie. If Stevie wanted a video then it was OK. But the idea that black and white audiences would go for videos of black artists and that such a thing would sell records and concerts.. well there was an industry consensus that this was something neither black artists nor audiences could afford. Morris Day was bodacious enough to record Ice Cream Castles and break through lots of frozen mentalities about race. But he was just that kind of off the wall dude, managing to be classy and subversive at the same time.

Day should have been rich. He held a grip on my generation which was as substantive as Jay-Z ever had on his. I don't know how many parties have been had based on ideas in Jay-Z records, but I have a feeling that Hova just bought the whole girls and their camisoles, whereas Morris, Jerome and The Kid used wit and candor. Day seduced, all the rest of the rappers bullied women into submission. And, as quite as it's kept, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone else who moved the party scene with such finesse and intelligence after the end of Day's salad days. They all became sweaty crooners like Keith Sweat, Orange Juice Jones or Al B Sure, or just little cut-up nasty rudeboys like Jodeci and all the clones around Johnny Gill. Now I'm not really going to say anything bad about Boyz II Men, except that - well they only could rock the party with one song MotownPhilly. After Morris Day fell off, the R&B Party did not come back until Missy Elliott. OK? Yeah there was a little New Jack Swing, but it didn't really last more than two years. Admit it.

Now what I have to admit is that Morris Day kicked the majority of ass for four years around my collegiate days, when time moved slow. So they will always be outsized in my mind, especially for that particular time in my life when I used to rent KITT looking Firebirds and cruised down to San Diego State to front on the locals. And yeah actually Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam rocked the party even harder. BUT. Morris Day and the Time were the last huge R&B party band of all time. And yes they crossed over. I'm trying to think of another band since that has actually got people dancing a new dance with a song about the dance. Not Missy Elliott. She saved it, I've already acknowledged that. Crunk all you want, but what kind of audacity you had to have to make a song about an Oak Tree and make it a dance? That's energy.

The Walk, The Bird, The Oak Tree. The brilliant percussion of 777-9311. That's stuff with sweetness and light that just doesn't happen any more. And it's too bad. Morris Day couldn't blow, and he didn't try. He couldn't rap, but the boy could talk, and he talked in his records improvising at a moderate clip that made all of the 'owws' and 'aawws' of the previous Funk era instantly tired.

The classic in all of this - of Morris Day at the absolute quintessence of game was a single called Tricky. It was a stripped down version of the beats to Prince's Irresistable Bitch, and you have to ask which was the chicken and which was the egg. There was also Cloreen Bacon Skin that almost worked on Prince's Crystal Ball, but it was an extended variation on the theme that was only good enough to be mixed into a good DJ's rep. Speaking of which... that's what killed The Time. It was the beat. Once DJs had the beat at their disposal, nobody needed a band. And without a band, there was no need for a front man. Goodnight Morris.

What we will never know is how the band exactly disintegrated and what must keep certain people awake nights thinking about how they might have been Jimmy Jam or Terry Lewis. They survived the death of the R&B band in the late 80s. The whole thing became a producer's game - and that became clear by the time we had Rob Bass and the Beasties. Jam & Lewis got Janet and the rest is history.

But I still think of Morris Day as the last of his kind. That reminds me. I'm going to buy Pandemonium.

A Beautiful Son, Opus One

My son Christopher is now a junior in high school and is at the point where he is notable enough on his own merit for me not to conceal his identity in the blog. Aside from that, I'm very proud of him as his father and find him to be somewhat exceptional. The other day I realized that he was doing something that he normally does, which is making music some way around the house.

Most of the time, he's singing. It might be Sinatra, it might be Jarreau, it might be something I don't know. But it's almost always loud. Other times, he's playing speedmetal on Guitar Hero III on the expert level at full blast. I generally like when he plays Cliffs of Dover, but that's about it. Mostly he plays his trumpet, doing scales or playing along with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in his room. Sometimes he gives the flute a twirl, but that's more rare these days. He tells me that he's starting to think trumpet and that compromises his flute. This particular morning, he emptied the case in the dining room and had an array of about 15 glasses with various levels of water in them. He managed to get Silent Night out of it, but nothing anyone would want to see on You Tube. Still, I got the new iPhone and it takes movies. So I was able to prompt him over to the upright.

I am always most impressed when Chris demonstrates his musicality on the piano. He never had any lessons, but I can hear what he's thinking as he plays. I've always wanted to be a concert pianist, but I could never get my hands to perform the music in my head, but my son has accomplished that. And what is inside his head is lovely and I find it to be a great achievement in this noisy world. It's not that he's a gifted pianist; I can tell that he'll become proficient over time. It's that he has that beauty inside him. Listen and you'll see why I am fortunate.

This was the first few minutes of a set that went on for 15 minutes. I've been wanting to edit it down to for a while. Enjoy.

I Emerged In London Rain

I've been thinking about my absolute favorite songs of the 80s and have decided to come up with a list of my top picks. These encapsulate my four years of college and that experience that was, for me, everything cool about everything that happened between 82 and 86 when I was in the thick of it all. The New Wave that is. 

I should say that around 87 I discovered Sonny Rollins, Moliere, beach volleyball and cycling. I was through with break dancing. So while the 80s may have continued after 86, they were essentially over for me. I could probably talk a lot about each of the songs I'm going to list here, but it's probably better to leave that alone and for the comments. There's something about music that speaks for itself.

Well it turns out that I had something to assist my memory. Thanks Bing. My method is as follows. I took 600 songs - the Billboard 100 of each year from 82 t0 87 and scored all those that I considered to be worth noting. That turned out to be about 175. And then I gave each song two scores. The first score is the 80s Score, which is the answer to the following question. How emblematic of the 80 New Wave do you consider this song? And then I gave it a second score which is the answer to this question. How much did you really like it?  And that's reflective of all the years between, meaning how much would you now be proud of saying you liked it back then. Since I was only originally gunning for about 50, there's a lot that I left out. Like Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love got left out, and somehow I scored a Wham song that I don't even remember. But it was a lot of fun just going through the exercise. 

 

What are your favorite songs from the 80s?

Bones Come To Life

Maybe. Perhaps. Is this what it felt like when you first heard Bob Dylan? This dude is the real thing. I'm diggin' it, seriously diggin' it. His name is Jonathan Mann.

The Whisky Android

I love this guy.

Dia De Los Muertos Drumline

Awesome. I've been watching drumline & orchestra videos this morning and here's one that sticks in the mind.

All My Fingers In The Pool Go Splash We Must

For the next week I will be delighting in the memories of my favorite songs of the 80s. And right now it's all about Prince's great song Temptation. This is a song that needs to be covered by a roadhouse blues rocker with a gravelly voice. All you have to do is imagine it being done by Mickey Rourke. OK, do you see it now?

This version is fairly interesting, but it's still too Princified. It needs a bucket more gutbucket.

Fantastic Plastic Machine

Very cool graphics. I love this. The song's not bad either.

The Sound Beyond Soul

You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind -- driving you mad. -- Morpheus

My life sometimes hates my brain. And it is for any number of complex reasons that it does. There is certainly a profound social reason, but since I am the sort who likes to believe my own actions matter I tend to take a responsibility which is perhaps larger in my head than in reality. I think my life hates my brain because I can't often get it to that place where it can breathe free and make the connections its hardware dreams of making. Connections between the abstract and the real, between the ideal and the practical, between God and man, man and woman, music and philosophy and a list that wants to go on down this page, but can't because I do have a life.

Between my brain and my life is therefore a compromised mind. A mind that bears up sometimes and wears down other times. That makes excuses and rationalizations and bridges the gap between the desires of my wetware to crank and the time I have on this planet to focus. It is the creature that must worldswap when I'm on a 6AM conference call with the practice manager on the East Coast and my 15 year old daughter knocks on the bedroom door. 

But there are times when I work out the three, the life, the mind, the brain. It is through nothing less than the tried and true - reading, writing, listening. A discipline of engagement one could almost call 'the life of the mind', where all parts are in harmony and mostly satisfied. It was once a journal. For a time it was performance poetry. A decade ago it was an online community or two or three. Since 2003 it has been this blog. I have a category in this blog called Mind Splinter, and I have another.

There is a sound I am searching for. 

Benzon reminded me this morning about the connection between Africa and Europe being played out in American music. Some of that was done and perfected and put down on wax. Wax doesn't last. But memories do, memories of music in my mind. My brain hungers for the things it might generate in the presence of such a sound. My mind could be put at ease in guiding my life and brain to that point of excitement. But I have a splinter. It is the inability to track down where that sound has been recorded. It is a problem of search, perhaps. But it is also a problem of context, because the thing that created that sound in the first place now has no place to go. And that is why I only know of two or three clips of it.

I call it Negro Operatic. And maybe it could be described as African spirit wearing a European Christian dress as Benzon describes the some fraction of that musical connection. But I know that it is close to my home. It is a kind of extremity of performance reaching beyond perfection in the hopes of attaining the practically transcendent. It is a creation of mind, coaxing the brain to achieve something that drags the life out of the dust to the mountaintop and beyond. It is like reaching up and trying to touch the face of God knowing you stand in robes on stage in front of people who may be merely entertained. You take off the robes and head out the back door into the streets. You live for the next moment of creating that sound and your brain hates your life, and your life hates your brain, and you employ your mind on the daily to keep them from snuffing each other out. 

For those who have been trained by it, no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful. 

Robert McFerrin Sr. sung that kind of music. And I'd like to get my hands on some because I want to be put in that frame of mind. I want to drink from the well of spirit that created the sort of virtue that seems superfluous in today's market of music. I want to hear music that makes me cry - a crying of a different sort than is evoked by swelling violins and deep screen kisses. I want to hear it and I cannot find it. It sounds a little something like this:

Born In A Manger: Sounds of Blackness

Do you hear the perfect diction? Do you hear the perfect harmony? Do you follow the dynamic lead surrounded by the power of the chorale? Can you hear the contrast? Did you catch the off key denouement and diminuendo? Aren't you amazed all that could be done in 79 seconds? I play that album every year during the Holidays and have ever since I've been married. It is in may ways the single most profound piece of music I possess.

But I've heard the sound before. For a moment, Take 6 will go there as they did riffing 'Rock of Ages' on 'David and Goliath'. There is of course McFerrin's 'Discipline'. But that's it. That and the way I sung in the Gospel Choir at St. John's Episcopal Church in 1977. Alto. 

I'm going to start looking. And maybe you and Benzon can help. I fear we are losing some of the old world as everything goes to iPad. There is a sound beyond soul out there. And maybe it might never be recorded. Maybe it isn't a problem of search, but of something else entirely. But there you have my splinter. 

Guru: Dead

If you ask me, there have been fewer travesties to the majesty of the blues than the lyrics penned by Guru. One thing anyone should insist on is grammar. Guru gets a fifty fifty. Listening to Jazzmatazz was like living on the border of sun and shadow on Mercury. It's never as comfortable as it should be.

On the one hand, when Guru put the gangsta in GangStarr, it was righteously good rap. 'Sights in the City' has to be his best cut ever, and it bordered on great. No anthology of Acid Jazz would be complete without Guru. But then when he approached jazz standards, it puts a hole so deep in your heart that it's hard to forgive. Somewhere in that hole is the memory of what he has done, and I have practiced the dissociation long enough to have forgotten the damage done. So I'm cool and I don't want to remember. Still, a cut like 'Loungin' is just methodically wrong.

According to the people I used to hang with and do the hiphop hermeneutic thang, all props went to DJ Premier for arranging the coolest cuts ever, and then some more for putting up with Guru's lyrics and diction. The thing was, as an innovator, there was nowhere else to go. Nobody knows the names of the rappers of Buckshot LeFonque and so nobody could approach what Guru was up to, nobody except Lucien and MC Solaar and that angle of the Native Tongues. Asking for another Guru was like asking for a second 'A Different World'. (I was going to say Cosby Show, but that would be doing Guru too much of a favor). The connoisseurs would demand it, but the broader market (according to the producers) wouldn't support it.

My remedy was going towards French Rap, something of a guilty pleasure, because I knew some of it was gangsta. Nevertheless, Lucien was all that, bi-lingually.

You could say that Acid Jazz survived. You had the Brand New Heavies and others. Certainly The Roots came up behind Guru, vulgar as they were. The best of that lot were the one hit wonders who worked as Metrics with Steve Coleman. A lot of R&B got hiphop/jazzified starting with (ick) Erika Badu and on down the line to John Legend (finally) and the lost, forgotten and nevertheless magnificent and as far as I'm concerned the greatest talent of them all Frank McComb. And we should not forget India Arie or D'Angelo. But on the pure hiphop side, it kinda all began and kinda all ended in the English language with Guru. He ran it like a rapper should, even he never consummated his own skills up to par with what he would have had to if he was more mainstream.

What saved him of course was the music, and for that he is forgiven, and will also not be forgotten. Guru was the closest that mainstream rap music got to permanently edifying itself for the better and properly taking on the mantle and responsibility of jazz. That was a lot to swallow and it has never really been done. But the elements are all there.

Vocabularies: All About Not About Bobby

Bobby McFerrin has done something that impresses me as both majestic and simple which is that he has begun to be iconographic. I'm likening his musical genius now to that of Thelonius Monk in that there are a few signature melodies which will be forever his legacy. Monk was a great deal more prolific than McFerrin of course and one could argue that Monk was more innovative, but when it comes to the actual genius of Monk's melodies it's difficult for me to say he had all that much over McFerrin.

When I first downloaded Vocabularies, his latest release, I immediately recognized three tunes; Baby, The Garden and He Ran To The Train. I was immediately disappointed because I wanted to hear something new. I always wonder where he's going to go next. And since Medicine Music, BangZoom and Beyond Words, I think I have found the golden age of Bobby. But now I hear in Vocabularies some of the very best of that orchestrated with instruments and a chorale group that fulfills much of the unknown promise in those extraordinary songs. McFerrin is an extraordinarily gifted vocalist, but now what he has done is realized to an extent never before possible with his single voice. These vocal arrangements are some of the most profoundly beautiful and dynamically striking I've ever heard. It's no longer just Bobby, it's something much more.

My favorite is now 'Train' and as I hear it I imagine myself transported to the day Bobby fell across some Southern African traditional singing in his travels - something he captured and distilled to his own signature and presented to us without a real spoken language but with sophisticated vocalizations like American jazz scatting taken to the next level. It could have been that or it could have been the simple melody Bobby invented scaled up and given all it needed to realize all that was embedded. Either way it establishes the songs I've been grooving to for the past 15 years over and over as McFerrin's own standards. There is nothing in my library which is not an acknowledged classical or jazz standard that is so listenable and fresh as these songs. 

McFerrin has a popular video going around my circles from TED. In his own trademark and inimitable way he communicates human musical fundamentals to the audience with wit and humor. He is maturing into a realm of serious play in a way that speaks to the sort of living musical legend he is in his blood, spirit and character.

Fabulous.

But what stands out here is how in his work he has sublimated himself to the art in a dramatic way. McFerrin is now establishing himself as one beyond mastery. He is a literal and figurative conductor of music that engages us.

There is something I am trying to understand about the positive and creative spirit in the essence of Pop. If there was an exuberance enjoined by Pop creativity in the 60s which led artists to believe in a new world of conveying the essentials of the human spirit in an open and engaging way, then McFerrin has some of that in his work. What's wrong with Pop is that it has become something other than that people's music - it belongs to stars. McFerrin has brought something back down from the firmament that requires talent and craft beyond that which fuels today's pop recording artists. You know it. You know where the music is going and where it is coming from. It is the power of the human voice and this is what it supposed to sound like.

Something Wonderful: New Bobby McFerrin

Borrowing from my favorite editor, I celebrate my favorite living musical artist's new album. His work is always something wonderful. I picked up his latest work, VOCAbuLarieS, from Amazon today. I'll write a review after I let it bake in my head for a bit. I'm hoping that the pop media pick up on this single. Bobby has been pigeonholed for too many years.

New Sade and new McFerrin in the same quarter. This is a great time to be alive.

A Good Thing in Full Swing

The great thing about greatness is how it gets sampled. Third generation standard from Steely by way of De La.

Turn Off The Lights: Teddy's Dead

Teddy Pendergrass. If you don't know who he was, you would never guess by his name.

My first thoughts of Teddy were mixed feelings about the life of sweaty singer. He sang songs of seduction. I was a bit too young in body to work out all the romantic fantasies he sang during the time his songs were hitting. But I knew what he was talking about and I liked it. That was also true of Marvin Gaye so I immediately contrast him with Marvin Gaye. Marvin famously told us,

We're all sensitive people with so much to give,
understand me?
Since we've got to be, let's live!
I love you.
there's nothing wrong with me loving you
and giving yourself to me could never be wrong if the love is true. 

That's extraordinarily beautiful. It's philosophical and convincing.

Teddy on the other hand was urgency itself.

I'm lying here
waiting my dear
give me what I want
I'll give you what you need

and 

You got, you got, you got what I want
You got, you got, you got what I need

But like everyone else I misremember. The truth of Teddy is born in his music and it's a revelation to listen to it again after 30 years. Still, there are the impressions and memories of those days that don't go away.

 Everybody made jokes about the titles of Teddy's top hits, that read like a pimp's instruction manual. Come On And Go With Me. Close The Door. Turn Off The Lights. Perfect for the newly liberated Me Generation, when we got all glassy eyed about the instantaneous seductions of candlelight, wine, and a fireplace with a bearskin rug. Teddy was the man among the men that were the Bucks of Seduction. Issac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Billy Paul, Leon Haywood,  Smokey Robinson and Barry White. He was tall, dark and handsome. He wore the open silk shirts, the slim gold chains, the ivory colored suits, the full beard and the million dollar smile. This is the Teddy Pendergrass I remember. 

Teddy was one of those great singers that somehow got into music under bogus management. It used to twist our heads around to understand that it was Michael Henderson that was singing 'Starship' on the Norman Connors album. And so it was that the solo singing from Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes was not Harold Melvin. It was Teddy's voice that made everything work. Under Harold Melvin, there were great songs that still move you. The Love I Lost, Wake Up Everybody, Bad Luck, I Hope That We Can Be Together Soon, all magical, richly emotional songs. And when R&B wants to get emotional, in the seventies that mean a big black sweaty man shouting. Teddy Pendergrass punctuated his songs with that kind of earthly primal bellowing that had no equal then or now. In every one of his greatest hits, Teddy turns to the mic, breaks verse and grunts out an exclamation that kicks you in the gut. It's almost everything I can remember and that you can remember if you remember Teddy.

It was that unidimensionality of black male sexuality in song that turned me off. Don't get me wrong, I loved Teddy as much as anybody, but his lusty imprimatur became a caricature to me after a time. We all knew that he could sing Turn Off The Lights at a concert, get to the grunt 'Turn 'em off!' and be inundated with panties from the audience. It became a cliche. Like the nasal 'well' and 'ow' in the funk voice of the same period in American culture there came a point at which we desperately needed some diversity. And not long after the decline and fall of TP we were delivered into a new era of soul singing by Al Jarreau and Luther Vandross after a short transition period given by Ray Parker, all three smooth singers with none of Pendergrass' jagged edges. 

But looking back at Teddy from the perspective of this past metrosexual decade and the continued feminization of the American male, I desperately miss him. The raw honesty of his voice, the unapologetic attitude. Teddy was a man unafraid of being a man. You could never imagine him walking on tiptoes. We all felt cheated when Teddy wrecked. We were left with Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson. Because whereas Teddy could be tender and sensitive when the moment called for it, that was all the others were capable. That rather says it all. Those who followed sung sad imitations of the stuff you really want to hear when you are slow dancing. We had to let it go, just like his last big hit Love TKO. Let it go.

Any time I start talking about the status of black culture in all its manifestations, there are several laments I tend to narrate. One of them is the change in popular music for the worse. And I tend to go directly to the death of the romantic duet - something that I poignantly felt during the days I was ready for finding the last woman I would love. Where were Ashford and Simpson? What about Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway? Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell? Even some Peaches & Herb would be better than what was going on in the 90s. It got to the point where the only duets were done for Disney movies. Teddy made a great song, Two Hearts, with Stephanie Mills, years after The Wreck. 

There are only a few singers of Teddy's rank and vintage that are still around with us. In my opinion, the greatest of these is Jeffrey Osborne. Something about Stevie ran off the rails. Al Green doesn't sing any longer.  I know how it used to be, even through the foggy gauze of memory but as much as I've represented the Old School around here at Cobb, I'm often at a loss to say where it has gone. If it remains only in our memories, then I owe it to everyone to bring those forward. So you must take a tour over to Amazon and download Teddy's essentials. 17 bucks for the 'two album' MP3 download. I guarantee it will be worth your while if you remember Teddy, and an eye opening experience if you've never heard the originals.  

 Like all great songs, many of his written by Gamble & Huff, Teddy's sung of simple eternal truths about human nature in love. Unlike today's music all about extraordinarily peculiar particulars Teddy could keep it all straight. We all have been living without Teddy Pendergrass for a long time. He was raw, bold, tender, larger than life. He could say everything that needed to be said without a great deal of elaboration, qualification or deconstruction. 

I don't love you any more.
It's just that simple.
No. No. No. Not like before.
It's a shame. Dirty shame.

Unambiguous. 

I guess in the end, that's how I'll think of TP. He was a singular man. No ifs ands or buts. Simple, direct, amped. Turn off the lights. 

Better Than Weird Al

Tim Minchin. Wow.

I Think I Want To Live The Sporty Life

 There's something about a song that can take you back in time and raise emotions and thoughts of days gone by. Today I stumbled across Chic's instrumental genius track 'Open Up'. From the Real People album,Chic became instantly my idols. I was a 'hood kid with a huge attraction to Chic. They were everything I was trying to be, stylistically. They manifest the funk with impeccable style. They were upbeat, posh and romantic. They were uppercrusty and seditty without being stuckup and conceited. 

Last week, I gave an interview to Radio Montreal and there was something I wanted to convey about what I see as the estrangement between the generations of African Americans by class. I hate to say so, but I don't think that the current young generation has come anywhere near replicating the excellence of ours. Not as blacks at any rate. 

Some time ago, I played to role of 'the last real black man' and did some scoffing about how our generation had real black culture and that which passes for 'black culture' today is dysfunctional, retrograde and ugly. It has been crossing my mind lately - more often than I'd like. I have this distinct notion that if Denzel Washington as he was when he made 'The Mighty Quinn' and 'Carbon Copy' tried to break into Hollywood, there would be no place for him. In today's entertainment industry, Sidney Poitier would be broke. In today's music business, a group like Chic, who would dare wear suits and long dresses and play upbeat dance music with a string section and without salacious lyrics would be laughed out of the studio. 

Look at that album cover. What do you see? I see ladies and gentlemen. I see clams on the half shell, a little jive and jitterbug. I see people who say let's put an end to this stress and strife. They simply don't make 'em like they used to. Looking at today's culture, it's hard to believe that these were real people. 

Monte's Little Wing

Little Wing is my all time favorite guitar song. I just discovered Montgomery yesterday and I am astounded to hear it this way. His virtuosity is a kind of precocious thing that gives you an idea how extraordinarily quick his musical mind is thinking. I'm just going to sit around this morning listening to YouTubes of Little Wing...

The Era of OutKast

Now that I have a 500GB disk drive, I can bring more music to work. And since I get music from all of my friendly co-workers, I have a lot of music that I would not ordinarily hear or listen to. I find good stuff like that all the time, although I haven't recently. Well, I do like Mae, for that kind of mood.

Anyway, sometime today I came across an OutKast cut that I never knew, which includes about 95% of their music, having never bought hide nor hair. It was that Valentines day joint. Clever. It occured to me that there have been several eras of hiphop which might be categorized by the standout group. Right now, if my patent disregard for that subculture hasn't blinded me completely, I'd guess that this would now be the era of Kanye West which I would say started two years ago. Before West would be the era of 50 which was pretty short.  basically ruled from OutKast. Before OutKast is kinda vague but it would definitely go back to about 2001 or so. Before OutKast is vague but I wouldn have to put Eminem in that space right after the age of Lauryn Hill & the Fugees which would be basically the spot after the death Biggie Smalls. So 1998 was the turning point, and I would say that the era of Biggie goes back to Nas & WuTang and then it gets complicated because back then, around 1994 I still cared.

Now I'm just throwing all this out there because I'd like to think of hiphop chronologcially. Every few years, there are some good artists to listen to whose stuff will still be playable ten years later, and more than just because of sentiment, I'll say.

Before 1994 when there was a big transition to Nas and the Wu, it was original Gangsta (call Nas and Biggie, neo-gangsta) there would be the era of Ice Cube and Dre. Basically the roots of the dramatic slow stuff that got how many movies into theaters? OK call it Cinematic Gangsta.

Before Cinematic Gangsta, say 1991 was the New Jack Swing which lived for a few short years going back to 1989 and before that was the era of Public Enemy. PE ruled in the days of Do the Right Thing,; funny how they had fallen off by X. Prior to that would be a four way era of Beastie Boys, EPMD, Kool Moe Dee and LL Cool Jay, and before that there was no industry to speak of, I don't care what people say about Big Daddy Kane.

How I Sleep At Night

Nocturnes.

I have a fairly long playlist which starts almost always with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I first started to go to bed every night to Beethoven back in 92. It's odd how I got into the rap criticism stuff last week without giving anyone much of an idea of what I listen to now. Here's a new on by Per and I always catch his latest solos on YouTube by subscription. And in my old classic 'recovery' style, I've learned a couple dozen new Beatles songs I never knew that I knew, and some I never knew at all. Other than that, I've got Thomas Dolby and Linda Ronstadt stuck on blast in my head. Per clears out the noise and makes me quiet down. That's beauty.

The Last Soul Singer

The Hiphop Aesthetic: Producers, Consumers, Critics & Culture

The most interesting discussion I've heard in a long time about hiphop culture has been happening over at Respectable Negroes. Interesting because it has focused on the role of critics and tropes. Now I've done more than dangled my feet in post-modern rhetoric when dealing with the selection of roles for something newer than Coloreds, Negroes, Blacks and African Americans. So I can navigate some of that. But I have been a skeptic of identity politics and have paid extra attention to the slights of hand that say 'culture' when they mean 'race'. Nevertheless there is a fascinating set of verbiage and ideas that get to the fore when people who know their Insane Clowns from their ESDs from their Bone Thugs start talking about that big old subject: Why Hiphop Is Not Just Music.

Now I'm offering my blog as neutral territory for something that has raised a few hackles over there. I think mine is a good spot for several reasons.

1. I do Socratic pretty good and I think I can flush out some of the inside ball.

2. I have no dog in the hiphop crit fight.

3. I know enough hiphop to be dangerous.

4. I'm generally skeptical rather than looking to be convinced of something, so I'm happy to be corrected.

--

So let me flesh out my biases up front, which can serve as a standalone blather in case nobody over there cares enough to come over here.

I was once one of those clever individuals who thought he had what it took to save hiphop from intellectual decline. In fact I've written more than a few couplets in my day. On the edge between performance poetry and lyrical hiphop and under the influence of the likes of Cornel West, Sekou Sundiata, ATCQ and Arrested Development, I did my own NY thang in the early 90s. I gave it up primarily because of the success of Onyx and the fact that I looked, to those who cared (and produced) much more like an R&B seducer than a Large Professor. Plus I thought all the 5%ers were straight wack, booty, and gas-faceable. If I couldn't have made money doing what I do now, I would be somewhere with the likes of where ever KMD is now. The dude who succeeded where I failed is Common, but I was of the Fishbone generation.  

So I have long had a personal interest in seeing how hiphop might be extended for the purposes of cultural production under the dual headings of 'generic Talented Tenth race raising responsibility' and 'look on my black cultural works ye mighty and despair' on wave of the hybridization of American pop to what it is now, all 16 beat. I ended up falling in love with MC Solaar and French Rap in general, because it could be hard without the embarassing idiocy of those who are not Acey Alone level rap intellects. In short, I became a rap snob, and decided to call the whole thing off - including all that responsibility to the masses stuff. I sprouted children, wingtip shoes and insurance policies, and I knew that nobody writes hiphop for me in a world where Living Colour is no longer and house parties in the ATL featured low energy stuff like D'Angelo.. but I digress.

Rap today is like all things related to blackness. Which is to say its popular interpretation tends to low common denominators, and its historically accurate, aesthetically contiguous expression tends toward esoterica. Sure there are lots and lots of people who understand and respect to the best - true to the roots, just as there are people who read Colson Whitehead, but.. such people find themselves marginalized towards the edges of academia and philanthropy. Which is to say that there are no institutional legs for them to stand on and control. The most rigorous and discipline orthodoxy of the aesthetic is co-opted (from a black nationalist standpoint) and the rest is commercialized.

So my belief is that the prospects for hiphop commercially is excellent, but that hiphop's ability to become and remain fine art in the Western World is severly limited. I'm curious as to where the middlebrow of hiphop lands and what history is being written right now.

The only thing I think that might lift my spirits about hiphop as a middlebrow or fine art would be the trend towards artists who actually read music and play instruments, and the best dance choreography influenced by the wild style. I also wonder why rap has not done well with the separation of lyricist and performer.

Best Hiphop Crit War Ever

The best discussion ever on hiphop criticism is happening over at Respectable Negroes check it out:

There seems to be a growing consensus among mainstream rap critics that older fans’ aversion to current rap springs strictly from these aging fans’ nostalgia, fear of change, cultural detachment, and overall out of touch-ness. That this simplistic, uncritical rendering of aging rap fans passes for insight is problematic; that it has become the default narrative among mainstream rap critics is ridiculous. How did things get to this point?

A little background is in order. Since around the late 90s, there’s been a fierce battle waged at the margins of rap fandom. This battle has pitted two small but annoying factions against one another. The first faction—let’s call them NYstalgists— actually embody the aforementioned bitter old rap grouch stereotype: they typically (though not always) hail from NY or the East Coast, they elevate a thin, but influential slice of 90s New York rap above all else, and they mock anything deviating from that style. For years, NYstalgists have written off the entirety of Southern rap, save for a few tokens. The current waves of Southern and Southern-influenced rappers are, according to NYstalgists, untalented, unskilled, stupid, lyrically bankrupt, and sonically lazy. More recently, NYstalgists have extended their hatred to hipster-baiting beta male emo rap and its fans.

Karajan & Perfection

Part of the difficulty of dealing with death, and I suppose this applies particularly to Americans, is that if you haven't faced your own mortality you might come away less inclined to live. As I write this, I cannot remember the last moment I felt as if I should discipline myself to perfection. To discipline oneself to perfection is the proper attitude to life because there is such joy and inspiration in being a vessel of the perfection that is available to us. It is to submit to the highest will and thus gain orientation over one's own life and destiny. But I happened upon a biography on PBS this evening on Karajan, and it is music that is bringing me over to that kind of appreciation I once had for my own perfection.

Small perfections.

That was how I used to run my life. And I think of the short years after having read Ayn Rand and a moment in time when I was watching Jeopardy and calculating my own score as a fourth player while adjusting the others down and distinguishing Monk songs in my head, broiling New York strips and reading Moliere and falling asleep to CBS Mystery Radio. lt was the start of a new life for me in 1987, but I'd have to check my diary to be precise. I was looking to perfect myself because the order of things became apparent - I realized that I had wasted time trying to help others to do things that cannot be helped.

And I'm rather there again, because I've been saying "It's not about me", for several years.

The phrase in my head was "Civilization is where you put it." And for a young man with a vision of the digital future and quite enough nerve to assume a role in its creation, I was putting myself always up to the task. I discounted my surroundings and dedicated myself, and I was called arrogant and I liked being called arrogant. I only wanted to be clear-eyed and unafraid.

Karajan reminds me of what it must be like to be that vessel. To have such dedication to clear one's mind of clutter and to master, over all things to attain mastery and reach the point at which the answer is clear. He memorized concertos and operas and symphonies. He exerted his will to create. He dominated in order to perfect, to create a powerful harmony, to achieve an excellence. His is an expression of will I've not perceived since my appreciation of Yukio Mishima. It was Mishima who set me free to perfect in those mid 80s.

How one lives a life of compromise is a matter of inattention. It is by not having a vision that demands your perfection that you slip, human-like into your own smell. If you stay in bed long enough, you breathe less oxygen. 

Life is too long, and it is too short, not to believe in self-perfection. We are fortunate that in youth it is done for us by the simplest unsullied application to our pure and genuine ambitions. But as life becomes long and we forget it becomes longer still to reapply without world-weary cynicism. That is why there is great God-given asymmetry in the ability to perceive and to produce. For all of Karajan's great dedication and perfection to his craft it only takes us an hour to hear and appreciate. For all many years of practice and discipline any man exerts, we have only to recognize it to be made rightly inspired. And greatest yet we have only to have faith in God to build a religious perfection in ourselves. To do otherwise is to self-destruct.

I am realizing the necessity of my discipline and my aim towards perfection. From God through Beethoven through Karajan to me.