Music Notes

The great drummer Milford Graves has died. One of the most astounding jazz percussionists of the free jazz era, he also, like a lot of these guys from that generation, was a pretty unique thinker as well.

He also worked as an acupuncturist, and researched the connection between music and the human body’s natural rhythms, developing what he calls “biological music.” Graves believed that exposing the body to certain frequencies could have healing properties; he once treated a friend with a heart arrhythmia with music, helping sync up the irregular heartbeat with a steady beat. After winning the Guggenheim fellowship, he used the money to buy lab equipment to continue his heartbeat research in his basement in Jamaica, Queens, and in 2017, he co-invented a process that can repair stem cells using heartbeat vibrations, and was awarded a patent. Graves also collaborated with some of the many contemporary musicians influenced by his work, including John Zorn, Sam Amidon (The Following Mountain), and Greg Fox, whose experiments with Graves’ bio-sensing apparatuses appeared on the 2014 LP Mitral Transmission, in which Fox sought to find music in the natural rhythms of his body.

After his diagnosis, Graves’ research intensified as he sought to put his findings into practice healing himself. Former students would often visit his basement, and after his diagnosis in 2018, they documented and recorded his daily activity as he prepared for the exhibition at the ICA in Philadelphia. He hoped for his research to be continued by his students after his death.

Rolling Stone also has a very nice discussion of Graves’ career.

You might be surprised that I mentioned Graves before Chick Corea. There’s a reason for that. I think that most of Corea’s work after he left Miles Davis is not very good. There are some good albums. But Return to Forever is massively overrated and the solo work is hit and miss at best. What I find interesting is how short-lived the interesting part of the careers of those fusion guys were. Stanley Clarke? John McLaughlin? Billy Cobham? Corea as well. Why were these guys so addicted to cheesiness in their playing and arrangements as the fusion era went on? Even Herbie Hancock never really came back to a place of creative leadership in the jazz world after his fusion period. Wayne Shorter is something of an exception but his work after about 1975 is awfully hit and miss too. Meanwhile, look at the long and amazing careers of people such as Wadada Leo Smith or so many other of the musicians associated with the AACM or similar movements. William Parker has three plus decades of astounding music that continues to move in new creative directions. This just wasn’t the case for the fusion guys.

Also worth mentioning the death of Danny Ray, James Brown’s MC. You can hear him as the hype man on many Brown live albums.

Tony Malaby is among the finest saxophonists working today. But he can’t play any gigs these days because no one can play gigs. So what to do? He started playing underneath a bridge on the New Jersey Turnpike and all kinds of crazy things happen. An excerpt from this interview:

That’s what we started calling the nude black man because he looks exactly like James Baldwin. Here’s what’s really funny. So that day, getting back to Baldwin, I teach the lesson to the student who came down from Rhode Island; Baldwin comes walking up the street, buck naked except for the leather shoes. Dig this and then disappears, right. I go back later at night to play a session, and we’re talking about Baldwin, and he comes up at that instant in a velour, sparkly jogging suit with the zipper pulled down to his navel, and he’s carrying a bottle of champagne. He walks right by. The site is very well lit, and we can play at night. One evening Billy and I stayed very late, and it might have been a weekend because a very young posse showed up with girls and boys. They walk by, and they start heckling, and we kept playing. After a time, they go well, “leave them alone, they sound pretty good. They sound really good for old guys,” and then they walk away. I never turned my head to acknowledge them. About half an hour later, I’m in one of these things where I’m completely gone, just from my eyes closed deep into the music, and they are back and just listening to us. Billy and I are playing crazy shit, we’re really going at it now, and they listen, and then they walk away and walk around the corner, and it was so beautiful. A lot of people walk by say hello, some people film us, a lot of people, especially the skaters, talk to us, they get closer and closer, and there’s an exchange, and we’re watching those guys. In their own way, they’re doing the same shit we’re doing. They’re stretching. They’re working their moves. They’re working it out. They’re going for things—taking chances. Yeah, it’s a special place.

Douche Country artist Morgan Wallen continues to make a ton of money because he’s a racist, as racists are buying his albums at a vastly increased pace now that he’s been cancelled. What a country. Anyway, one of the songs he covers on his latest album is Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up.” This means that Isbell is making a bunch of money off all this. So he decided to do the right thing and donate all the royalties to the NAACP.

Speaking of Isbell, this is a tough call:

On this week’s #XPNUltimateAlbumSide, we’re celebrating the music of @JasonIsbell. If you had to sum up his career in five songs, which five would you choose? Comment below and let us know, and tune in at 5 p.m. ET when @WXPNDanReed plays them back! 📸: @deltufo pic.twitter.com/SzDclNYFon

— WXPN (@wxpnfm) February 9, 2021

It’s hard to get this down to 5. The first 3 are obvious because they are three of all time greatest songs ever written by anyone: “Outfit,” “Codeine,” and “Elephant.” I’d then definitely include “The Day John Henry Died,” even though it seems he has not played the song since he left Drive-By Truckers. I have no idea why but it’s a brilliant song. The problem then is that there’s about 10 great choices for #5. I think because The Nashville Sound is his best album, I’d want to go for something off that. So I think I’ll choose “White Man’s World.” But again, you can go a lot of different ways, including “Cumberland Gap,” and “If We Were Vampires.” As for “Cover Me Up,” I confess it is not a favorite of mine. I am very much in the minority on that one.

Your finalists for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

• Mary J. Blige
• Kate Bush
• Devo
• Foo Fighters
• The Go-Go’s
• Iron Maiden
• JAY-Z
• Chaka Khan
• Carole King
• Fela Kuti
• LL Cool J
• New York Dolls
• Rage Against the Machine
• Todd Rundgren
• Tina Turner
• Dionne Warwick

I’d go with LL Cool J, Tina, Fela, the Dolls, and….I guess Mary J. Blige as my 5th. But there’s a number of solid selections on there and a lot of artists who aren’t old white guitarist rock bands that Jan Wenner likes, so that’s refreshing.

Interesting consideration of The Pointer Sisters

Album Reviews:

James Brown, Live at Home With His Bad Self

The legion of great JB live releases grows by another with this great performance when he was back home in Augusta in 1969. A few of these tracks appear on Sex Machine, but this is the first release of the entire show. It just kicks ass, as one would expect from Brown at his peak. What to even say about these performances that hasn’t already been said about this transcendent live performer?

A

David Torn/Tim Berne/Ches Smith, Son of Goldfinger

This is fantastic stuff. Berne and Smith are great performers, but I want to focus on David Torn’s guitar a bit here. Torn is kind of an underrated figure in my opinion and he is just an amazing shredder of a guitarist. Just as COVID hit, these guys were going to play a show at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, the great jazz club that I miss so much. By the time the show was to start, the first restrictions were in place. So they went there anyway and played a streaming live show. It was awesome. Torn just ripped through the entire set. This is just great guitar-based noisy jazz. Super great.

A

Klein, Frozen

This experimental album by the British musician Klein is not without interest. It engages heavily in electronic soundscapes that chop beats into microns, guitars distorted into all sorts of noises, and, very occasionally, audible words. The question is whether one considers a project like this successful and on what terms. For myself at least, I absolutely respect the intellectual and creative energy happening here. But I also feel like it doesn’t add up to a whole lot. Even when it does attempt to ground itself in the real, such as the 11 minute tribute to Mark Duggan, who was murdered by London police. But 10 of the 11 minutes are literally silence. Again, I very much respect what she is doing here. But who is going to listen to 10 minutes of silence? Maybe you do this once to really reflect on Duggan and the murders of Black people on both sides of the pond. But if the electronic noise is only sometimes listenable, at least it is noise.

C+

Deadbeat Beat, How Far

Just tremendously solid indie pop music with great hooks and harmonies. Not going to change your life lyrically and it’s not profound music. But it’s just damn good pop and why would you not want that in your life? Fun album. Highlights–the opener “Baphomet” is a master course on the 2 minute pop song and “Tree, Grass, & Stone” is an 8 minute jam fest that shows how you can take the genre to the other extreme.

A-

Oso Oso, Basking in the Glow

Sometimes sounding like a poppier Modest Mouse, this is solid enough indie rock. Catchy, melodic, and hooky, it’s good. Stylistically, it’s not quite my thing–the Jimmy Eats World comparisons are obvious enough on the first listen and that doesn’t push all the right buttons for me. But you can’t argue with the talent or the ability to deliver within than genre.

B

Noname, Room 25

I’m obviously way late on this 2018 album by the Chicago hip hop artist, but this is great stuff. Coming out of the city’s poetry community, she brings incredibly smart writing to her material, focusing more or less on a Black woman surviving and thriving in a sexist and racist world. One rarely expects much from a first song called “Intro,” but when she drops the lines “My pussy teachin’ ninth-grade English/My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism,” let’s just say it grabs one’s attention. There are other gems as well, including “Globalization’s scary and fuckin’ is fantastic.” The other thing here is that unlike so many hip hop artists, Noname really has a pretty soft voice, one that almost seems more naturally attuned to R&B balladry than hip hop. It makes for a nice change from the usual.

Somewhat sadly, though understandably, she has expressed a lot of frustration that her words and activism appeal more toward whites and that Black people aren’t listening to her music. This has caused her to openly discuss leaving music behind and her follow-up album announced last year has not been released yet. I can empathize with wanting to reach your own community and instead reaching the community of the oppressors instead, even if the ones who are aware of their oppression, for whatever that is worth.

In any case, Noname is a huge talent and I hope she keeps on making music. There is reason for optimism on that front.

A

Oumou Sangaré, Mogoya

This is a very nice 2017 release from the Malian artist, in which she hired a bunch of hip young European producers to freshen up her sound. I’m not real sure her sound actually needed freshening as she’s pretty great anyway. This is also one of the last recordings with the great drummer Tony Allen. In this, Sangaré takes on serious issues as she usually does, ranging from the plight of migrating Malian refugees to suicide.

A-

As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics or disease or especially impeachment.