tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1 2010-09-09T21:37:44Z Words About Music by Greg Burk and Friends Movable Type 3.38 tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.641 2010-09-03T20:05:23Z 2010-09-09T21:37:44Z

Fri. Sept. 3 -- Kamasi Washington represents this generation's take on the jazz tenor tradition, holding strong to the soul and depth. You don't git this in collij, only by playing the circuit with masters like Charles Owens and Gerald Wilson. At LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., LA 90036; 6-8pm; FREE; Friday summer jazz schedule here. Fri. Sept. 3 -- Rick Wilder lives: The Mau-Maus, an on-off project for 30 years, rock the sandpaper edge of pre-punk; if it reminds you of '70s Iggy, well, skeleton Rick was there in the front row. With Symbol Six, and The Billybones, led by Skulls singer Billy, uh, what was that last name again? At the Redwood Bar & Grill, 316 W. Second St., downtown; 10pm; (310) 245-0273; www.theredwoodbar.com. Fri.-Mon. Sept. 3-6 -- Assuming you're not flying to The Detroit International Jazz Festival, well, it's got a great feature this year by which you can watch it live on the Web. Too damn hot there anyway. The headliners are Bobby Watson, Roy Haynes, Kenny Barron, Maria Schneider, Branford Marsalis and Allen Toussaint. Check it out here. Sat. Sept. 4 -- The Honorable DHC (Dean Chamberlain) claims America for the king of folkblues. At Silverlake Lounge, 2906 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake 90026; 7pm (for real! sez Dean); FREE. Sun. Sept. 5 -- Jesse Gilbert has designed a new audiovisual interface program called Spectral -- I'm a sucker for this sound-sight abstraction stuff. Carole Kim contributes live video, Motoko Honda twists unusual keyboards, and Carmina Escobar electrovocalizes. Eve Luckring opens with poetry and short videos. It's a great little outdoor space at a private home, so be nice. At Folly Bowl, 1601 E. Loma Alta Drive, Altadena 91001; 7:30pm; $10. Tues. Sept. 7 -- The Honorable DHC is the meat in an L.A. Hootenanny sandwich. At Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City 90036; 10pm; free. Tues. Sept. 7 -- Our favorite obsessed literary noirologist, James Ellroy, plugs his new "The Hilliker Curse" and entertains in his appealingly evil fashion. Reviewer and radio commentator Carolyn Kellogg helps out, and comedian Laura Kightlinger (who's actually funny) is also there for some reason. MC? Presented by Rare Bird Lit and PEN Center USA at Largo in the historic Coronet Theater, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A. 90048; 8pm; $25 ($40 gets you the book too); (310) 855-0350; tickets here. Thurs. Sept. 9 -- LATE ADD: Friend o' the page Julie Christensen sings the pure emotional stuff with Pocket Goldberg's fine house band in a songwriter showcase that also features Tony Zamora. If you live on the East Side or in the Valley, it ain't so far. At Arnie's Cafe, 6864 Foothill Blvd. (at Marcus), Tujunga 91042; 7-10pm; cheap; (818) 951-9089; www.arniescafe.com. Read Brick Wahl’s jazz picks in LA Weekly here, Don Heckman’s jazz picks here and MoshKing's metal listings here. Read John Payne's plutonic Bluefat.com here. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.640 2010-09-02T16:34:16Z 2010-09-02T19:17:22Z

Everything about Chris Holmes says rock. His penetrating rock guitar has busted through in his '80s and '90s stretches with W.A.S.P., in his stort stints with Animal, in his recent crunch with Secret Society, and in a bunch more bands. His mom sure couldn't miss the rock when he was chugging all that vodka in her swimming pool during an interview for the 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. And in person -- throwing himself down in a Los Angeles chair to jaw about rejoining old W.A.S.P. bandmates in W.A.S. (Where Angels Suffer) and about making a quick jaunt to play in Russia -- Holmes is rock. He's a hanging rock. You get the sense he'd tumble down and crush some shit, if being pissed off weren't so damn much bother.

Everything about Chris Holmes says rock. His penetrating rock guitar has busted through in his '80s and '90s stretches with W.A.S.P., in his stort stints with Animal, in his recent crunch with Secret Society, and in a bunch more bands. His mom sure couldn't miss the rock when he was chugging all that vodka in her swimming pool during an interview for the 1988 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. And in person -- throwing himself down in a Los Angeles chair to jaw about rejoining old W.A.S.P. bandmates in W.A.S. (Where Angels Suffer) and about making a quick jaunt to play in Russia -- Holmes is rock. He's a hanging rock. You get the sense he'd tumble down and crush some shit, if being pissed off weren't so damn much bother. You feel Holmes approaching before you see him. Dust devils appear in the street. Dogs howl. And when the beat white Trans Am pulls up, its tailpipe billowing blue smoke, you know that vehicle couldn't belong to anyone else. "What year is it, Mr. Holmes?" "Two thousand ten." "Thanks for the help." "Oh, you mean the car? It's an '87." Sirens wail outside the whole time we're talking; one might half expect a battering ram at the door. Holmes is a trouble magnet, and part of that is attributable to his ride. It's got an iron cross on the back, and fake bullet holes decaled onto the side. He uses a pushbutton to start it instead of a key. ("If you know where I live, you can steal it.") Rather than a factory-equipped driver seat, it has something that looks like a sawed-off lawn chair wrapped in rags, with a thin cushion sitting directly on the floor. That way, since he's about as tall as an NBA guard, his head doesn't hit the roof. Having added a beard and street clothing to his landslide of hair and extensive tattooing, Holmes these days looks like a biker more than the dangerous glamster he was in the '80s. His T-shirt, emblazoned with "CalTech Graduate," is not meant to be taken literally. He draws cops like flies, though he says getting stopped now isn't such a problem; he's "out of the system" -- his rap sheet doesn't instantly crop up in a check, since he hasn't been jailed in over a decade. "They just hassle me," growls Holmes, his voice a low rumble articulated with minimal lip movement. "They look up every orifice, presuming that I'm a drug addict. I do choose to look the way I do, and I understand that. But after a while, you're kind of tired of it. People with long hair are dinosaurs. It's those guys with shaved heads that carry guns. They oughta be the guys they're pulling over, right? You ever heard of somebody who's a longhair and tattooed doing a drive-by? No." Holmes says the other day he got stopped by a cop in Glendale. "He sits me on the front of my car against a wall, and another Glendale cop comes up. And another one! So there's three cop cars there. And the second guy comes up and says, 'So how are we doin' today?' And I look at him and I go, 'Y'know, I'm not doin' too effin' good. You guys are harassin' me.' He goes, 'It's the sheriff's fault.' The sheriff comes over, he's got this thing in his hand -- I thought it was a police scanner. And the next thing, I hear 'Fuck Like a Beast.' He's got it on his iPod! I just busted up. I was laughin' so hard, man! Then he left." Holmes has just returned from L.A.'s Russian Consulate; he's grousing about the $237 he paid to get his visa stamped. Kerri Kelly, who used to play guitar with Alice Cooper, hooked him up with a Russian band that likes to play with American rockers. Holmes and Kelly are going halfway across the world to play one show, doing a few W.A.S.P. and Alice tunes. He doesn't even know the name of the band. After that, he'll be stopping in Florida to develop a project with W.A.S., which features former W.A.S.P. mates Randy Piper on guitar and Stet Howland on drums; singer Rich Lewis and bassist Steve Unger fill out the lineup. They hope to write some material and tour, pumping out some of the old W.A.S.P. material. Holmes did jolts with Piper and Lewis' band Animal in 1987 and 2003, but quit because he thought there was too much dead air onstage. He likes to keep things moving. Says it's more professional. Better luck this time. For the last year, Holmes has been recording songs as Ghettoblaster with Phil Taylor, former drummer of Motorhead. Do they rock? You need not ask, though you might be surprised by some of the beautifully dark acoustic-guitar arpeggios Holmes lays on. Only problem is, neither Holmes nor Taylor is a singer. So on one number, "They All Lie and Cheat," Holmes just seizes the microphone, and his gruff expostulations totally nail the sentiment. His vituperative choruses are set off by a delicate spoken interlude from a young lady who proclaims, "After I drag your dick in the dirt, I'm gonna step on your face and leave you for dead!" The song's not about ex-Runaways guitarist Lita Ford, to whom Holmes was married from 1988 to 1990. However, Ford did provide the excuse for Holmes' break with W.A.S.P. Nominated for the 1988 MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video ("Kiss Me Deadly"), Ford invited Holmes to attend the ceremony with her, but Holmes says W.A.S.P commander Blackie Lawless wouldn't let him out of the studio. Holmes held a grudge that permanently destabilized the Lawless axis; he was out of W.A.S.P. from 1990 to 1996, and back in from the band's phenomenally dark "Kill Fuck Die" in 1997 until 2000. His tally with W.A.S.P., which typically reports total sales of over 12 million albums, comprises six studio records, two live sets and a video, "The Sting." Holmes hears Lawless is "not gonna sing half the old stuff anyway." So we might enjoy hearing W.A.S. essay nasty W.A.S.P. nuggets such as "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)," "Don't Cry, Just Suck" (based on a Holmes incident) and "Mean Man," whose lyric Lawless wrote about Holmes. "He changed his religious views, he's Christian, he says. Well, if there is a Pearly Gates, do you think they'd let the devil in there?" Lawless isn't the only devil on Holmes' hell scroll. But Holmes hasn't exactly racked up a string of Employee of the Month awards; his W.A.S.P. stories are packed with instances of his own delinquent behavior and drug use. And he admits that a lot of his problems stem from his own failure to monitor his finances. "I hate to say it, but I've been F-U-C-K'd by everybody I've ever played with in my life, except Phil." Holmes says his parents, now separated, brought him up to treat people with respect. In spite of the vodka-swilling incident, he still gets along with his mom, who gave birth to him while still a teen in La Cañada. Being fairly close in age, they even listened to some of the same music. "The next-door neighbors' parents wouldn't let their kids come over and play at our house, because my mom listened to the Stones. The Stones got busted for pot or somethin' about '66, '67. Pot? They were heroin addicts!" Not that mother and son always saw eye to eye across the turntable. "One time I'm listening to Hendrix real loud, that squealin' guitar. And she comes in, unplugs the stereo, leaves. I plug it back in -- now she comes in with a knife and cuts the cord. I go, 'Mom, what're you doing? It's a new kind of music!' She goes, 'Chris, when you get older, there's gonna be a new kind of music that comes in, and you're gonna hate it.' I looked at her like she was crazy. But with disco . . . and now it's rap!" Really, though, Holmes feels he's more like his dad, a former stockbroker who later started a security company. "I'm born on the same day as my dad. He walks exactly like I would. His personality -- he'll say anything to anybody, and if they don't like it [Holmes claps his hands], shove it." Chris Holmes' personality extends, of course, to the way he attacks a guitar. "I still play on 10 -- the energy, y'know. But if you just go up and down a scale, blowin' notes, there's no melody, there's no feel to it. I'd rather hear one good note. My favorite guitar solo of all time is 'Cinnamon Girl,' a Neil Young song. It's one note, man, fits the song. If you play it with feel, it's cool." Nobody trained Holmes to play the way he does, and he says he can't read music. "I've had dyslexia since when I was a kid, so I have to read with a ruler to read a whole paragraph and understand it. I've never read a book in my life. Seriously, not one book. So reading dots . . . I couldn't even imagine that. So the last few years, I learned what a major, minor scale was. I always played minor, so it was kind of weird. "I used to get in a lot of trouble in W.A.S.P., because the guitar solos that were on the album, I'd go out and play 'em completely diffferent. Every night it'd be somethin' different. I'd be improvising. Blackie'd fucking flip! And I don't give a crap. But when he started fining me . . ." Holmes says he still thinks like a 13-year-old. That implies a certain irresponsibility, but also a certain innocence. The repercussions can linger, as when Holmes attended the May 30 Los Angeles memorial for Ronnie James Dio. "There were quite a few tears in my eyes. I didn't know him that good -- I know a lot of players that he's played with, been around his camp of people. "I did tick him off once. And it was somethin' I used to crack up about." Holmes was at the Country Club years ago when a photographer suggested he pose for a picture with Dio, who was well over a foot shorter. "I was a little hammered, but I didn't do it to be disrespectful -- I got on my knees. Isn't it better than me standing with my arms like this . . .?" He bends over and reaches down. "But it was taken wrong, and it kinda got out of hand. His wife [Wendy Dio] said a bunch of things, and there were almost punches thrown." At this year's Dio memorial, "Wendy walked right by me, and I didn't think she saw me. And I kind of hate that." Grudges, goof-ups, authority issues -- kid stuff. But Holmes is young at heart. "You do things when you're young, y'know? My mom was givin' me total hell the other day about somethin' on the phone. I go, 'Mom, there's things I've done when I'm young, I'm payin' for 'em now. Now listen -- this is somethin' you did 52 and a half years ago, that you're payin' for now!'" CURRENT HOLMES PHOTO BY FUZZY BIRKE.]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.639 2010-09-02T00:29:18Z 2010-09-02T00:33:43Z

So here we are in a cement room with a low polished wood-beam ceiling; its big greenhouse windows look out on a little West Hollywood garden park where an ornamental waterfall splashes. The room is full of folding chairs; the chairs are full of humans who want to hear Wadada Leo Smith's compositions.

So here we are in a cement room with a low polished wood-beam ceiling; its big greenhouse windows look out on a little West Hollywood garden park where an ornamental waterfall splashes. The room is full of folding chairs; the chairs are full of humans who want to hear Wadada Leo Smith's compositions. We want to hear them so we can get our atoms reracked. Stuart Fox, a wispy white-haired gent, initiates the treatment with gentle nylon-string acoustic guitar. There are pings, plucks, bends, flamencoid strums and Elizabethan arpeggios, difficult to coordinate. There are not rhythms, exactly. The notes are asymmetrical constellations of acupuncture points. And Chinese medicine is more or less the process; the effect is physical. We find ourselves unexpectedly inhaling, becoming aware of our breath. Our alignment with our lives has taken on new dimensions. We have been prodded out of our grooves. The process continues via many small and large saxophones, played by Vinny Golia (a calm presence, a sweep of snowy hair) and bearded friends Casey Anderson, Casey Butler and Matty Harris. We're getting more intense shocks now: Nose-clearing sustains merge into dissonant chords; Golia's sopranino scours our ear canals; belligerent three-note repetitions challenge our cardiac patterns. The music soothes as well as startles: Barnyard quacks give way to bovine lowing; mournfull sustains moisten our eyes and stroke our spines. Although the four are reading sheet music, it has no bar lines, so the saxists achieve their remarkable union through careful listening and visual contact. The staccato end has an indefinite feel to it -- To Be Continued. Fox returns to perform Smith's memorial to California EAR Unit flutist Dorothy Stone (pictured), who died unexpectedly two years ago at 49. The piece is spacious and filled with quiet cracked emotion. Smith (his dreadlocks now long again) has been sitting to the side with big sunglasses on. When the music's over, he comes forward to eulogize Stone and to comment on the matter of universal balance, of how you can't have a beautiful high without a corresponding low. Outside, Smith's proposition is proved by a curving stone monument that commemorates architect Irving J. Gill's Dodge House (pictured), a striking 1916 work of geometric art formerly situated to the immediate south. It was demolished in 1970 to make way for an apartment building hideous enough to make the angels weep. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.638 2010-09-01T16:55:55Z 2010-09-01T17:04:18Z

Tea without sympathy.

"Drunk Bershovsky and the Woman She Loves" was the headline in the Star that week. Mona danced around my dump, giggling and holding the paper out at me. She’d picked it up at the ShitMart when she scored a Molson sixer on the way over. The article included an old photo of a bleary Becca Bershovsky tilting out of a limo on Sunset Strip, and a smaller nonpro snap of Mona in the beret. To Mona, the newsprint was better than a Ph.D. from Oxford. And really, she was right. Lately we had needed to scissor our phones because of the calls at all hours. Clubs wanted to book the band, creeps begged to manage us, publications demanded pronouncements from our sacred lips. A couple of days after the Beatnik Barf Incident, as the newshounds called it, a national TV gossip show had tapped Mona for a quickie interview. She looked sweet, didn’t say anything about Bershovsky being blotto, just that the filmchick was "feeling a little ill" and needed to splash some water on her angelic face. In return for the discretion, Bershovsky waxed grateful; she tossed up a press release mewling about her love for the great American jazz tradition, and painting Mona as "the most talented singer I’ve heard in a long time." I tossed the Star into the peanut shells on the coffee table and sighed. "What are we gonna do, Mona?" "Dixie! Dixie! My god, Bill, we've got to get her on the case. She knows everybody, and she can get us more. More shows. More word. More money. She'll work like a slave!" Mona was so hyped, I was not about to piss on her fire with the voice of experience. Anyway, although the thought of Dixie made my tummy feel icky, Mona's idea made sense; her little bitch had amphetamine energy and a hide like a rhino. I told Mona I'd think about it; she grabbed the Star and ran off to tell the world. I stretched out my bones on the couch, but before I could settle my brains, the phone rang. I'd gotten sick of answering it lately, but for some reason this time I fumbled it up to my ear. It was Jack. "Meet me at the Kamakura Tea Room in a half hour." "What for?" "I'm gonna read your leaves, asshole." The Dogphotoman spat out an address and clicked off. I was slug tired. What the hell, though, some tea might perk me up. I hate going downtown -- the one-way streets, the empty tall buildings and miserable immigrants. I was fated to go there, though; Jack's destination was around Sixth and Grand. So I drove. My one functional wiper smeared the drizzle on my windshield as I pulled into an underground parking lot at Pershing Square, a little cement urban fortress for bums. I cursed when I saw the 15-minute rates. Jack better keep it short. An inscription on a concrete wall praised Los Angeles' diversity. Yeah, we kill 'em all here. I walked down the nearly empty sidewalk of Sixth with my shoulders up against the wet. The address Jack had given me didn't seem to exist; there was no signage for the Kamakura Tea Room. I turned around and walked back past the entrance of what I had taken to be some derelict SRO, and saw that the glass door had two addresses in little gold-and-black stick-on numerals. The lower one matched. I pulled the door open to a small foyer with a wooden desk and two chairs. Stairs going up, stairs going down. I went down. Black curtain with a Japanese-looking circular red design on it. I pushed it aside. It was dark, really dark. There were six tables, two of which had little electric candles with bulbs like you'd get in a flashlight, except giving off 4 percent of the light. A small human in a gold satin coat bowed at me, or maybe that was his default posture -- he was older than the shoguns. He led me to the table where Jack huddled, and I sat down. We were the only customers. Jack said nothing. A woman in a kimono shuffled over at the speed of a mail-in rebate. She looked like a withered apricot. There were already two cups on the table. The woman poured hot water over the leaves with a steady hand, poked the leaves with some special stick and inched away. Jack allowed the liquid to steep for as long as it took me to play "Tired of Waiting for You" in my head. He sipped. I sipped. It was tea. The Dogphotoman finally spoke. "Here's what you do now." "Yeah, well, I hope you're feeling tiptop too." "Using the bimbo obviously worked. But you're still playing too many notes." I hadn't seen him at the beatnik show; he must've sneaked in when it was full. "Just lose the jazz." "Mona likes jazz. I like jazz." "I like blowjobs, but blowjobs don't pay my rent. You want a hobby, collect stamps. What did I tell you about simplicity? The Japanese understand simplicity." I looked around. It was so dark that I couldn't see the walls. It was simple, all right. "You've got songs. Use your songs." "My songs are jazz." "Take most of the notes out and they won't be jazz." "They don't have words." "Boo hoo, I don't have a handkerchief." Jack took a napkin off the table and stuck it in his breast pocket. "Oh, look. Now I have a handkerchief." "I've never written lyrics." "Do you know how to say 'Baby, I love you'?" "Not really." "Ask somebody who knows." Since Jack was being so helpful, I decided to ask him about management. "Mona wants Dixie to help out with gigs and stuff." The Dogphotoman shrugged and looked at me. I was getting sleepy, very sleepy. This tea was not working. Decaf? Bedtime Blend? That did not seem very traditional. Perhaps it was impolite of me to drowse while having tea with Jack. I dreamed we were sitting in a rowboat on a dark lake, fishing. I felt a tug. The line played out for eight seconds before I realized it, then I started cranking the reel, and the rod bent toward the water. This was a lake fish, not a huge marlin or something like you'd get in the ocean, but it was fighting hard. It darted back and forth, went under the boat, but I kept reeling; pretty soon the fish's range diminished, and I had it alongside. Jack had been sitting like a yogi the whole time, but now he took a large scoop net, slid it under the fish and pulled the creature into the boat. It was big, and it didn't look like any fish I'd ever seen. It was thrashing and flapping, but it couldn't get out of the net. I told Jack I wanted to throw the fish back. He looked at me and held my gaze as he laid light hands on the fish's head and tail. It stopped struggling. Its jaw stopped working. Its gills stopped moving. I turned my whole attention toward the fish. I looked into the fish's eye. And the eye looked back at me. * * * © 2010 Greg Burk * * * Next week: Sold. * * * Chapter 10. Chapter 9. Chapter 8. Chapter 7. Chapter 6. Chapter 5. Chapter 4. Chapter 3. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.636 2010-08-26T22:54:12Z 2010-08-26T23:03:40Z

Jah no dead.

Burning Spear, "Marcus Garvey + Garvey's Ghost" (Island/UMe) I consider Burning Spear the number-one man in 1970s Jamaican reggae. (And he's still around.) Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, Lee Perry, all great, but Spear, born Winston Rodney in Jamaica's rural north, did it all: sang in his own spooky style, wrote memorable tunes, maintained a righteous presence in the abstract world of dub, and -- crucially -- served up no pap. In fact, Spear's aversion to treacle nearly isolated him. And that's the story of this single-CD reissue of his first two Island Records albums, which debuted in 1975 and 1976. Here's the scene. It's the mid-'70s, and Burning Spear has been knocking around Jamaica's cutthroat music scene for several years, recording for prince of thieves Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. In 1975 he strikes a new alliance with producer Jack Ruby, and they slam together "Marcus Garvey," whose songs and crew (including much of the Marley-Perry musician pool) stamp it as a likely breakthrough. As it's just hitting Jamaican shelves on the Fox label, Chris Blackwell signs Spear to his Island Records and orders "Garvey" remixed for the Anglo pop market. Spear hates the somewhat undreadified result, and he nearly defects, in fact forming his own label to release a series of fine singles. But Island woos him back by creating a credibility-enhancing dub take on "Marcus Garvey" called "Garvey's Ghost." Mollified, Spear churns out three heavier albums for Island through 1978. The original Ruby mix of "Marcus Garvey" is now available nowhere, making one wonder if it ever existed -- and the current set, which includes a remastering of the commonly available "Marcus," doesn't clear up the mystery. "Garvey's Ghost," though, has seen no American release in decades. So it's a blessing to possess this twofer of the Island discs that exploded Spear's reputation beyond his home island. Mr. Rodney's initial reaction notwithstanding, the Island mix of "Marcus Garvey" in no way sucks. To establish the Island aesthetic, compare the Jamaican version of the Wailers' 1973 "Catch a Fire" with that record's supposedly bastardized worldwide version, and it's clear that Island did not intend or achieve artistic destruction: The guest musicians' contributions are tasteful and the sound balance is very similar; the main difference is that the worldwide edition omits the two songs containing the Wailers' most glaring instrumental mistakes. "Marcus Garvey," too, is mixed for brightness and focus. It's got a lot of players on it, and ingenious little twists -- a twangy guitar, a percussive rattle, a clavinet or organ riff -- pop up all the time. These touches add valuable variety to Spear's songwriting, which is very repetitive in the best way. While his elemental lead vocals and harmonies constitute the songs' smoky center, the other crucial hooks come mostly from the queasy horns that respond to his voice. (The horn-section harmonies are always nicely out of tune -- I think deliberately. I once asked Jamaican dubmaster Scientist, a stickler for precision, why this was, and he said at a certain point horn pitchiness was a Jamaican fashion.) The 15-musician "Garvey" roster included Jamaican masters such as Chinna Smith, Robbie Shakespeare, Family Man Barrett and Sly Dunbar. If the mixer had just allowed them all to ride on the same level, he would have been faced with a challenge of "Exile on Main Street" proportions. Instead, he pulled up only each member's best bits. Was the lack of a mass group sound what annoyed Spear about the Island mix? It would go a long way toward explaining the concoction of "Garvey's Ghost," the so-called dub counterpart that apparently eased his dyspepsia. "Ghost" has drawn flak for not being pure dub, but before you agree, consider the climate: Dub was in its infancy, with prime mover King Tubby just coming into his own in early 1976. Even the meaning of the word "dub" was in transition, and the form would not flower into full weirdness for at least a year or two; as instrumental reggae went, the contemporary records of Lee Perry's Upsetters (some of whose members numbered in the "Garvey" roster), with their comparable lack of mixing flourishes, seem like the obvious templates. However, take a listen for example to the extreme dropout dynamics of "Black Wadada" and "Farther East of Jack"; "Garvey's Ghost" is far from an all-or-nothing album. What you can't deny is that "Ghost" effectively showcases the sessions' amazing rhythmic and improvisational talent. (Dig Carlton Samuels' lighthearted flute solos!) In the same spirit of generosity, let's cut some slack to the new mastering of the two "Garvey" recordings. As we discovered with "Exile" and so many other reissues, if sharpness and loudness can be enhanced, they will be, regardless of the original intent. Me, I find the current release's attention to trebly detail rather than holistic mood a little distracting compared to my early-'90s Canadian CD of the same material, and especially compared to my vinyl. No sweat. I guess I just wasn't made for these times. 10 Ft. Ganja Plant, "10 Deadly Shots Vol. 1" (Town/ROIR) 10 Ft. Ganja Plant are mostly-instrumental reggae traditionalists from the Northeastern USA. They record analog. They use vintage equipment. They smoke herb. They name songs after legendary desperados. And for about a decade, they've been creating concise tributes to '70s Jamaican outfits such as the Upsetters and the Revolutionaries. G-Plant's latest record is designed as light barbecue music, so don't expect dread or dub. Sax or guitar establishes a melody; the grooves jump & skank with an irie smile; bits of tinkly piano or glockenspiel decorate the clubhouse. You chomp on your corncob and go home for a nap. Only a grouch would complain, and American clubs rarely stage this style of music performed with the correct feel, so if you get a chance to see Ganja Plant live, grab it. The only thing missing is the audible memory of slavery, the indefinable sadness of the blood. Is that essential? You decide. Thelonious Dub, "Master Plan B" (Cobraside) With his current lineup, guitarist/leader Joe Bartone slides away from Thelonious Dub's original jazz + reggae concept. Bartone's into funky fusion now, and there's something to be said for the wider palette. T. Dub especially excel at a neglected form known as the Philly Soul Ballad. "On Wisdom Without Love" and "All My Friends (Hate Me)," they get a quiet indigo groove going, and you can almost hear the Courvoisier splashing into the snifter and the satin sheets flopping back on the mattress. The slower tempos open things up for the sensuality of Bartone's tripworthy guitar effects, the main element remaining from the first Thelonious Dub record. Drums rattle, bass thumps, sax wafts -- nice. The rest of the album is more of a Medeski Martin & Wood thing, except substitute McLaughlin for Medeski. Drummer Sean Rainey digs that slappy New Orleans rhythm; standup bassist Brandon Schmidt is an active, precise jostler. Bartone and tenor man Space Kyle establish the front-line riffs -- separately, in harmony or in unison, the last being quite a trick, as them figures can be damn twisty. A slick melodian, Kyle's more than up to the challenge, gliding into his solos with easy authority. Bartone, meanwhile, slips like a spontaneous mongoose around the neck of his ax, his tone heavily shaded with distortion and chorus effects. Thelonious Dub go for a '70s James Brown level of simultaneous tightness, funk and relaxation. They're not quite there yet, but with this level of musicianship, it can't be more than a few measures away. Catch 'em live in L.A.; they play around all the time. Oh, and congratulations to Bartone for his "Judge Judy" appearance -- victorious without saying a word. Watch it on his MySpace Page. On Monday, August 30, Thelonious Dub play the West Restaurant & Lounge on the 17th floor of the Angeleno Hotel, 170 N. Church Lane, Bel Air 90049, where Sunset Boulevard meets the 405 freeway; 8pm onward. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.635 2010-08-26T16:44:15Z 2010-08-26T23:05:51Z

The fan club.

Leonard and Angelo unquit the band, the way they always do. I told them that Eli and I wanted to hash out a few songs with Mona; they decided to come on board. Their plans to study Hawaii Five-O reruns could go on emergency hold. I drove to Mona’s crib grinning like a fool -- she would be jazzed at the reunion news. I tapped fingertips on the door and soft-keyed the lock, watching my big feet because noon was not always wakey-time for her. Bedroom: Mona sitting up in a T-shirt, eyballing an Impossible Science magazine with Michael Jackson and Hitler on the cover. Next to her, under the sheet: a human-size lump, with just pixie hair sticking out. Mona smiled; I looked at Dixie. Mona filled in: "We got drunk last night and she stayed over. Didn’t want her driving." I grunted; Mona continued. "Dixie knows the guy who runs Snakebite. Says she can get your band a spot." Snakebite was a mystery club that popped up at various bars around town. For the current three minutes, it was a big hang for young movie scum. Snort powder, pretend to dodge paparazzi, that whole deal. I turned my frown upside down. "My band? Make that our band. The guys want to try you out." Mona smiled even bigger. Dixie pulled the sheet over her head. We did Snakebite a couple of weeks later. Beatnik Night, and we were the cool jazz cats. Dixie said berets were "de rigueur." She enjoyed the expression on my face when she told me that. This week’s Snakebite was in the basement ballroom of an old hotel downtown. Leonard turned up in a beret and sunglasses, settled on his drum stool with a skinny paintbrush in each hand and started to warm up, trying out both ends of the brushes on the snare and cymbals -- if he had to be an ass, he was not going halfway. He completed the look with his idea of an Art T-Shirt, spattered with forest green, pale yellow, off-white and brick red. Dixie whined at him. "You’re supposed to be a beatnik, not a house painter." "You ain’t seen the house." Eli surprised me, looking as if he’d been born in his beret. Angelo was delighted to model one; he owned several. He didn’t have a standup bass, but with this crowd, nobody would know the difference. Mona was cute, of course; even a big black sweater couldn’t hide her stuff. Me . . . Mona scrunched my chapeau this way, that way, but I still looked more like Gil Hodges than Dexter Gordon. We were hired for three sets. First set, room empty; we just drifted through Miles’ "All Blues" till catatonia loomed. Mona and Dixie had disappeared. The bartender was chomping a sandwich. The hostess, a blonde with an attitude, sat by the door scrutinizing her black nail polish. Second set, some customers rolled in -- ten underage white kids from the Valley, five sharp Japanese, a dozen garish Armenians, a lost tourist couple from the hotel, a black drug dealer who gave Leonard the eyebrow. We did "’Round Midnight," "I Got Rhythm," "Cherokee." For the last song in the set, Mona climbed up and sang "Every Time We Say Goodbye," cool Chet Baker-style. The mood out in floorland changed a little for her. First time I’d seen anything but the backs of heads. And right about then, gosh and golly, the entourage plowed in -- six or seven fresh aristocrats wearing, like, T-shirts, jeans and berets that cost as much as an island in the Greater Antilles. No price tag required, you could just tell. Four muscle guys tagged along, pulling little tables and chairs out of a closet and settling the nobles to the side behind a translucent black screen -- no, I am not kidding; a screen. Wealth must really suck. It was time for the band break, and given the developments, I told my gang to take a literal five and not six to minimize the lull. To be safe, I even asked Angelo to grab us all beers from the bar, just to keep his ass away from the water closet. Meanwhile, screeches of hilarity arose from behind the black screen; the star posse had warmed up real good in the limo before making their entrance here. Suddenly, by the way, the place was jammed. We mustered back quick, and I decided to make the last set the Mona Show. She was game, figuring three rehearsals oughta be enough to launch a career in entertainment. No nerves! I started us off by calling Diz’s "Salt Peanuts," which customers like because it’s a bopper with no arty pretensions; Mona did the goofy octave-jump vocal completely deadpan while I blew crazy hepcat shit. Whoring is easy if you let yourself go. "Fever" came next, and I spied some beefy frat boy rubbing his crotch as Mona milked the sweat. When we swung into "Blues in the Night," I snaked a look over at her schoolgirl devil-may-care interpretation. Her hips didn’t move more than an eighth of an inch; the bump-and-grind stayed right in her eyes. Where the fuck did she learn that? I am not a generous soul, but I happen to believe that Mona can sing "The Man I Love" without making you pine for Billie Holiday. She closed her eyes and let the ballad pour out of her. Did you ever see a movie where some howling trashpit falls silent in the face of great art? You always think, "Yeah, sure." Well, this pit fell silent. Except over to the side, I noticed the black screen shaking. Then, from the same direction, I saw bodies getting knocked aside and drinks slopping around as somebody fought straight up to the stage. Then I saw it was Becca Bershovsky. I don’t read the tabloids, but with Bershovsky, that is not necessary. Now that she had trashed her film career with kamikaze behavior, she was more famous than ever at 23. Bershovsky was also -- news bulletin -- drunk. Her hair was cut in the kind of thick black bob that never seems to get mussed; it was her face that was a mess. She was crying. She planted herself directly in front of Mona, still in midsong, and she kept crying. She laid her head sideways on the stage and drooled, rolling her eyes to look up at Mona. The number ended on a deep note. Becca Bershovsky slurred, "I love that song," and vomited a pink pool onto Mona’s black pumps. Dixie sprang from stage right and helped Mona pull Bershovsky onto the stage. They each grabbed a pale Bershovsky arm and dragged her toward the women’s convenience. All around the room, people were screaming. * * * © 2010 Greg Burk * * * Next week: Tea. * * * Chapter 9. Chapter 8. Chapter 7. Chapter 6. Chapter 5. Chapter 4. Chapter 3. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.632 2010-08-20T01:56:12Z 2010-08-20T02:17:26Z

You can read my Ozzfest condensation for LA Times here. But due to a last-minute reallocation of Times column space, some of it got cut. So I want to fill out the record.

You can read my Ozzfest condensation for LA Times here. But due to a last-minute reallocation of Times column space, some of it got cut. So I want to fill out the record. Let's start with the finish: Ozzy. He looked glad to be there, wore the cross on his shirt and dumped the sacramental water buckets on the crowd, grabbing thousands of humans in his hands and making them yell; I've never seen a performer who can do that the way he does. And his pre-set video film parodies were visually spot-on and hilarious as always -- Ozzy as a blue-faced critter from "Avatar," for instance, and bragging, "Vampires are pussies. I'm the Prince of F*cking Darkness!" His voice was a tad shaky (maybe not yet warmed up on this first day of the tour), but that wasn't a big problem, and he did exactly the right thing by not over-reverbing it or pitch-correcting it. We love the man, and growing older with him is part of the show. While guitarist Gus G. was slick and speedy, the guy didn't exactly rock, despite the dozen Marshall stacks. I felt that when Ozzy brought out the 9-year-old Japanese kid to play the Randy Rhoads ax on "Crazy Train" -- even lifting him up on his shoulders the way he used to do with Randy -- it came off as almost a warning to Gus, like, "I can replace you anytime." The drummer, Tommy Clufetos (robbed, like bassist Blasko, from Rob Zombie), was one of those solid, heavy-pounding dudes like Mike Bordin, not in a league with Randy Castillo or Tommy Aldridge, but he struck a high profile because of the way he lifted his hands way up with every stroke, '70s-style. The band embraced the virtue of simplicity, which works well in an arena. It was a treat to hear Ozzy do "Fire in the Sky" and "Killer of Giants" -- great live tunes. He must still have a financial interest in his most ancient recordings, since he included four numbers from Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" album, helping flog the product in its 30th-anniversary year. Impossible to match the original Sab vibe, of course, but no embarrassment. Motley Crue never fail to deliver. I guess their sound mix is always deliberately weird -- heavy on the lowest frequencies to increase the thud factor; Tommy Lee's drums were about 80 percent kick. Speaking of kick, the way Lee walked and talked was not calculated to make several thousand fans perceive him as sober; his playing rocked regardless. To signal that this is a living, breathing band, Crue blazed two selections from 2009's "Saints of Los Angeles." They had some intriguing backdrops, too, including one that looked like dripping lava, plus plenty of flaring, banging pyro, which blended nicely with the smell of burning plastic drifting down from the hillside. (Ozzfesters always find a way to ignite something.) One of the newspaper reports miscast Halford as "sleepy and slow." Perhaps the writer should have stuck around for the second half of the first song, "Silent Scream," which started with a beautiful melody and finished all teeth. If the writer and some fans wanted Halford to "play some Priest," they might've recalled that the Judas Priest repertoire contains classic ballads such as "Diamonds and Rust" and "Out in the Cold." They also might have considered that in a 50-minute set, Rob Halford was not there to advertise his other band, though Halford did in fact perform the psychedelic '70s Priest number "Victim of Changes." (The Times edit made it appear that I think this is the title cut of Halford's upcoming "Made of Metal" album. For the record, I don't think that.) If fans had relaxed and had another beer, they might further have reflected that Judas Priest specialize in midtempo songs ("Living After Midnight," "You've Got Another Thing Coming"), not fast ones. For another Judas connection, Halford played "Heart of a Lion," an absolute masterpiece written by Priest but released by them only on a boxed set in demo form; Halford cover it brilliantly as a studio track added to their "Live Insurrection" album. Local talent Roy Z. (also Halford's producer) and Polish string-twister Metal Mike Chlasciak provided the double-guitar density; drummer Bobby Jarzombek provided the double-kick onslaught. My experience was that most of the crowd, despite being unfamiliar with the Halford songbook (which included "Nailed to the Gun" from Rob's '90s band Fight), dug the band from the git-go. Black Label Society took over the Second Stage around 5pm, which turned out to be the very hottest weather point of what thankfully turned out to be one of the less broiling San Bernardino Ozzfests. Anger-management theory tells us that heat begets hostility; many of the crowd had been spoiling for physical punishment, and Zakk catalyzed the mosh, pushing the less brutal berzerkers to the periphery. Still, I was privileged to experience the nostalgia of an actual fistfight outside the edge of the pit. (Pit/fight: a fine but real distinction.) Three or four dawgs got pissed; punches got thrown; I wish I had been on acid to fully appreciate the lovely spray of perspiration when fist met cheek. It was over in about 10 seconds, then everybody was a brother-in-arms again. The dark music ground on undisturbed, or disturbed at the same level. Now, I'm a huge Zakk Wylde fan, even if I would not be caught alive in the mass-produced BLS biker "colors." And I gotta say, even sober, Zakk has hit some kind of peak. I counted at least three songs from the new "Order of the Black"; all came off mighty memorable, but especially "Overlord," whose riffs, dynamics and tempo regearings really held attention. Older material such as the nagging "Fire It Up" and the depressed "Stillborn" packed a truly heavy set that didn't flag once; if past BLS live shows didn't stock quite enough variety and hooks, a decade has now provided. Sure, I would have loved a few of his bleeding-heart piano ballads, but headlining the Second Stage, Zakk had only 45 minutes. Why did Wylde replace drummer Craig Nunenmacher? Dunno, but Will Hunt (from Evanescence?!) laid down a slightly deeper groove that did the job and then some. I used to kinda like Nonpoint, but didn't get to see them cuz their time slot on the Main Stage conflicted with BLS. Now for the bands that got cut out of my Times review. Wiry singer-guitarist Austin Barber of Saviours had a tight shirt on. No, wait, the shirt was his tattoos. This Oakland band stoked plenty of fire live, surpassing their fine records; the galloping double-kick of Scott Batiste drove the Sabby riffs, and Sonny Rheinhardt kept spieling bristly leads over the top when not twinning with Barber. I kept flashing on my favorite Bay Area band, Drunk Horse, but had not fully grokked that Saviours' bassist, Cyrus Comiskey, hails from the Horse. Stony, strong, charismatic, worth seeing again. From now on, when listening to Goatwhore I'm gonna focus on drummer Zack Simmons. This modern-metal band is all about rhythmic accents while maintaining that forward drive; Simmons pulls it off. And of course Ben Falgoust, with his multiple growl modes and electroshock physical presence, keeps you watching. A band active for over a decade and still getting better. I've said it of other bands (and I've said it of Goatwhore), but I never quite got Canadian vets Kataklysm till I saw them live. They deal out a variety of styles and combinations, from death to sludge to thrash, and they've figured out how to deliver the goods to a live (even outdoor) audience, which means they know what to leave out as well as what to put in. Their set was a rumble that had to roll you down. Skeletonwitch didn't seem sorry that they had to open the festival while a thousand or two customers who'd been waiting an hour outside were still being squeezed through security. The Ohioans had a double-guitar thrash message to convey, and they went at it with full energy. They also did not neglect their secondary message, which was "Drink beer, smoke weed and eat p*ssy!" The crowd took to heart front man Chance Garnette's message, even if it wasn't original. A few festival impressions, just to show that Ozzfest is sensitive and poetic. Some grass remained on the Second Stage field this year; it wasn't a complete dustbowl. There was even a light breeze to ease the 90-plus degrees. The police presence, heavy at first, dwindled when the cops realized that the metal audience is more polite, less violent and less drugged than most. I saw only one tank-topped skinhead passed out from heat stroke. Finally on the field, just a few bored tan-shirted sheriffs gathered in a semicircle around one of three pathetic little shade trees, and snoozed standing. You could get a great big Cajun turkey-sausage sandwich with grilled onions from Uncle Ed's for $7. Bottles of water (which you weren't allowed to bring in): $5. Lines for consumables and bathrooms -- not too horrible for a change because of the diminished attendance. Bad for profits, good for us. A dumb & speechless metal couple got married on the Second Stage before the Black Label set. "Don't do it!" one audience guy kept screaming. When night fell in an indigo sky, a crescent moon and the planet Venus blazed above so bright it could hurt your eyes. Triumph of Islam? The next day there were reports a UFO had flown over; probably just Tommy Lee's hat. Never saw this before: To the left of the Main Stage, a hand signer, with his shadow thrown big against the wall, was interpreting the lyrics for the deaf. Much of this consisted of two arms flung in the air when the band vocalist would set the example; maybe it was an interpretation for the blind as well. But a swell gesture, so to speak. At the gate, the guards, letting through everybody with shoes, keys, belt buckles, nail files, fingernails and hands (which easily convert to fists), took away my pens. This has apparently become common practice. Next time, I'm putting the pen up my ass. Not to hide it; just so I can pull it out and hand it to them. Seriously: What the f*ck are festival organizers thinking? (Yes, I scored an underground contraband pen inside and stabbed a few people, but only those who deserved it.) Introducing "family friends" California Wildebeest (who were okay), Sharon Osbourne wore a white outfit topped with white summer hat. Some of the fans clearly thought the hat should have been black. A bid for a Guinness Record for Most Breasts Shown at a Metal Show fizzled. I did not see a single female nipple, not even a body-painted one. Metal-fest reputation aside, though, there were some hot chicks in the crowd, where the men-to-women ratio was 3.37 to 1. My seat (thank you, MSO Publicity) overlooked a VIP area where three young delectables and a man were seated. The women greeted one another by rubbing their tits in each other's faces, by fingering each other's bikini lines, by fingering each other's crotches and by adjusting each other's corsets. One of the women greeted the man by simulating sexual activity with him. Curious, I myself greeted the women when they filed by me to visit the ladies' facility; I asked them what manner of work they did, considering that they had achieved such a congenial group rapport. The bikinied leader said primly, "We are schoolteachers. I teach calculus." I thought that was a very good answer. At the end, when everybody else went to the parking lot, the three women went backstage. Rock is not dead. PHOTOS BY FUZZY BOURQUE. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.631 2010-08-18T01:22:41Z 2010-08-18T01:30:53Z

A lot of jealous musicians might procure guitarist-singer-songwriter Leni Stern's new album simply for groove study.

A lot of jealous musicians might procure guitarist-singer-songwriter Leni Stern's new album simply for groove study. She's done so much living in Mali and other African environs over the last few years, playing with the likes of Bassekou Kouyate and Salif Keita, that the locals consider her virtually another African performer. She invites 'em all to play on her records, and they know they don't gotta dilute their thing or make allowances for the new kid; they just tune in with her and jam it out. It's all about musical relationships, built from the ground up, like the way the softly punchy hand drum supports the twisty, physical bass on "Babakar," or the way those two and the rhythm guitar push across one another's space on the title track, or the amazingly deep & complex insinuations that coexist in "Smoke's Risin'." (I'd identify the players if I could parse the African instrument names koreckly.) This ain't fusiony showoff stuff, rather an easy, sensual communion developed in places where it's too hot to be waggin' yer dick or whatever all the time. Still, the rhythmic intelligence damnwell glows. Similarly, check out the way it's mixed and balanced by Andy Tommasi. Most of the time, the nearly whispered vocals of Stern and the conversational singing of her friends settle into a coequal stew with everything else, no ego. And Stern's lead guitar -- sporting buffed tones, fingertip sensitivity and Santanalike lyricism -- drifts through the hut like smoke; none o' that "stand back, here comes the solo" trip. Stern tosses some change-ups as well. "Yakhai Bi Khali" is a belly dance with snaky violins and tasteful spreadings of n'goni, or at least that's what I think it is, since the same kind of light stringed sparkle shows up several times played by Stern as well as some of her pals, including the master Bassekou Kouyate. She also doesn't neglect her straighter songwriterly side, including one of her hookiest and most charming tunes, "Tell Me," a holdover from last year's "Spirit in the Water" EP. The words as usual tend to be about love and also love, with an occasional lullaby and sparse scene-setting about the place and the weather. Until I checked, I heard one line as "Like ignorance I am falling." It's actually "Like Icarus," but I like mine too. You should buy the CD (available at various web locations) rather than the mp3 download -- not only to appreciate the excellent recording values, but to read Stern's booklet narrative, symbolic on a number of levels. It involves the former addict embracing a magical African ritual involving a very different kind of white horse. Transition accomplished. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.633 2010-08-17T15:34:03Z 2010-08-20T16:34:02Z

The audition.

I pulled a little subterfuge on Eli. Asked him to come over and help me with a new tune, ha-ha. He was supposed to show up at my shack on Saturday afternoon. The sun had broken through the clouds to shine on the wet leaves; the birds were tweet-tweeting in the magnolias; the dogshit was melting into the grass. I lived in a Hollywood courtyard -- Spanish-style bungalows from the 1920s, with Philip Marlowe’s old girlfriend stretching out her golden years in a corner unit full of gin bottles. I’d been there a long time. Too long, the landlord would have said, but that’s what he had to endure in a commie society that permitted rent control. The neighbors loved me equally, what with the "strange people coming and going at all hours" that always accompany drug dealers, perverts and musicians. Eli came in the open door and took a little plastic keyboard out of a shopping bag. His curly hair was uncut, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept, same as always. He had kind of a poetic face, but it didn’t help him with the women -- he didn’t chase them enough to score a percentage, and he didn’t ignore them enough to be mysterious. Mona brushed the tortilla-chip fragments off my coffee table into their empty bag, then went into the kitchen and started stacking the dirty dishes. I looked around. The white polyester drapes, which I never opened, were creased with Los Angeles smog fuzz. The green shag carpet was matted into paths of grease brown. There was nothing on the beige walls except a gas-station calendar. End tables with non-matching lamps stood beside the couch where I spent my life. A cockroach crawled up the wall behind it for a better view of the television, which was tuned to whatever with the sound down. Eli lodged no complaint; it looked a lot like his place. He put the battery-operated keyboard on the coffee table. I was holding two beers, and he reached out one hand while tweaking the controls with the other. I hooked my tenor to my neck strap. "I wanna warm up. Play ‘Fever’ in A minor." Eli put a tick-a-boom beat on the drum machine; I told him to slow it down. He switched to an ironic lounge-organ sound and poked into a vamp. I blew a few long tones, adusted my mouthpiece and tried a few simple phrases. From the kitchen, Mona began to sing, almost to herself. "Never know how much I love you. Never know how much I care. When you put your arms around me. I get a fever that’s so hard to bear." She didn’t sound cool and snappy like Peggy Lee. She sounded like a man-starved drug offender sweating on her back in a Singapore prison. Mona sang the whole song; I played bonehead obbligato. Eli switched off the drum beat. "She can sing." "Yeah?" He nodded once. Mona came out of the kitchen wearing rubber gloves and a wet apron. A tasseled bikini could not have made her look hotter. Eli caught my eye. "You’ve got an idea." "Yeah." "Let’s do it." Mona sat down with us on the couch. We drank beer and watched a ballgame. * * * © 2010 Greg Burk * * * Next week: The fan club. * * * Chapter 8. Chapter 7. Chapter 6. Chapter 5. Chapter 4. Chapter 3. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.628 2010-08-12T23:42:14Z 2010-08-12T23:47:19Z

Ozzy fired Zakk, then each put out a separate album seven weeks apart, and now they're sharing Ozzfest. Happy sobriety, everybody.

Ozzy Osbourne, "Scream" (Epic) Whenever Ozzy makes a record, we gotta listen up, because he doesn't make that many, because he's Ozzy, and because he never sucks. Though "Scream" pealed forth in June, I decided to sit on it till Ozzfest (which kicks off in the San Bernardino desert this Saturday, August 14) and let it marinate. Now I feel as if figuring it out might take another year -- this is the most personal and complex statement that Ozzy, now 61, has ever laid down. Instead I'll pay heed to the man's latest reminder: "Life won't wait for you." Ever seen Ozzy enraged? Ever? Through all the episodes of "The Osbournes," or his countless interviews and public appearances? Any Mel Gibson moments, where you thought he might actually smack somebody? Hard even to imagine, at least if he's sober. Though Ozzy has mustered some righteous indignation about televangelists ("Miracle Man") or pollution ("Revelation Mother Earth") or war ("Thank God for the Bomb"), moments of personal animus are virtually absent from the 30 years he's been participating heavily in his lyrics. "You won't like me when I'm angry," he sings in "Soul Sucker," and when he devotes the first three songs of "Scream" to vein-popping hostility, we start to doubt that he cares if we like him. Till the end. It's a journey, this record, from anger to accommodation to transcendence. Sounds like Springsteen or something, huh? We're used to Ozzy the entertainer, the rockin' goofus who puts on metaphorical devil horns and demands that we go crazy. Still, songs such as "See You on the Other Side," "Road to Nowhere," "Facing Hell" and "Trap Door" have found Ozzy staring into the coffin for real, over a period of 20 years. While insisting that he's "Not Going Away," he's obviously obessed with the reality that we all do. So, in the wake of his frank & funny autobiography, "I Am Ozzy," the Iron Man seems ready to dump out the full range of his emotions. And hey, it feels good. In "Let It Die," sick of questions about his true identity, he lists every possibility, from coward to fighter, before spitting out the intelligent truth -- "I am you." "Let Me Hear You Scream" lets him play the part of the torturer, taking revenge on the sadists who've tormented him. Similarly, his "patience turns to violence" against the "Soul Sucker" who keeps tearing him down. Later, in "Fearless," he identifies with the renegade soldier who turns against his masters. Whom does Ozzy hate? An open question. And the bile keeps a-comin'. In back-to-back songs, Ozzy plays with his image as the Prince of Darkness -- praying for the Last Days in "Diggin' Me Down," and threatening to renail the Savior in "Crucify." He doesn't sound a damn bit jolly about it. To offer a full spectrum of emotion, Ozzy also wants us to glean a hint of his career motivations, and he couldn't follow up 1991's "Desire" more effectively than he does with the album's best track, "I Want It More," a rundown of compulsive competition wherein he emerges the bloody victor -- "Was it everything you wanted?" After all his life mistakes, Osbourne's in a position to offer advice, so when, in "Life Won't Wait" and "Time," he suggests you stop pondering and get off your ass, you might pay attention. He cares, y'know. When he concludes the set with "For all these years you've stood by me/God bless/I love you all," it's no empty kiss-off; he just plain means it. There are moments ("Let It Die," "Diggin' Me Down," etc.) when the lyrics don't sound like Ozzy -- too rappy, too poetic. The credits provide no breakdown of responsibility, attributing everything to Ozzy and producer Kevin Churko, with keyboardist Adam Wakeman (Rick's son) getting a slice of four cuts. While the sentiments generally sound like Ozzy's own, the form sometimes doesn't play to his strengths, which lean toward long notes and strong melodies. Oh yeah, the music: Did I spend all that time wordin' about words? Deepest apologies, but I couldn't ignore the reality that Ozzy sounds as if he truly wants to say something this time. Yet while his nonpareil gravedigger singing melds skill and pathos more convincingly than ever, the emphasis on message might've gotten a bit in the way of writing hooks. Nevertheless, the album sounds great -- big & powerful. It throws some nice changes around, beginning with the way "Let It Die" moves from drummer Tommy Clufetos' cookin' Bo Diddley rhythms into gigantor stomp, and continuing, for instance, with "Life Won't Wait" and its improbably successful marriage of Black Sabbath and the Beatles. (Ozzy's fave Fabs get a number of acknowledgments, such as the pretty second bridge on "Diggin' Me Down" and the Mellotron pumps on "I Love You All.") Although, aside from the bludgeoning title track, depth rather than commerciality claims the tenor of "Scream," you may find yourself returning to it more often than you think. Considering Ozzy's guitar-employment situation, it's worth noting that the standout "I Want It More" combines a chordally creative, unforgettable chorus with a riff straight outa the bible of the fired Zakk Wylde. The question on every lip is whether the new Greek axman, Firewind's Gus G., shoulders the load. The answer is that for this particular record, he works out fine. Does Gus belch less fire & personality than Zakk? Who doesn't? Still, he's versatile enough to milk the beauty of a lyrical line on the one hand, or shred with incredible speed and precision on the other. His lead playing may lack a certain rock attitude, but when it comes to the monumental riffs, he dials in a mess of delightfully nasty guitar tones that call down the doom. I guess we'll find out down the line if he can write good tunes for Ozzy; that's priority number 1. Meanwhile, Osbourne has crafted another distinctive record, more consistent than 2007's "Black Rain." There still ain't anybody doing this melodic-metal thing any better. Black Label Society, "Order of the Black" (Panworkz/E1) Maybe it makes sense that the two best songs on Zakk Wylde's very first sober album, the only studio record he's made since 2006, would be ballads. The dude was in a reflective mood: His beloved badass father died in January 2009, inspiring the sad & pretty "January," which contains the most centered and inflected singing he's ever done. Then, suffering from dangerous blood clots, Wylde nearly died himself. Also, Zakk's alternate "old man," Ozzy Osbourne, canned him from the Ozzy band, saying he couldn't stand to have a plastered Wylde around when he was trying to stay straight himself. So lo and behold, Ozzy's new album has a ballad called "Time," containing the line "Time waits for no one." And the new album by Zakk's Black Label Society has a ballad called "Time Waits for No One," a soulful number with wonderful Elton John-style chord changes and dynamics. Adversity makes art. It also makes ballads (with strings!). "Order of the Black" stocks four. Mainly, of course, it stocks rock -- hard, evil, squealing, bashing, riproaring rock, in the classic Wylde mode. If I gotta choose from the nine rockers, I'll take three. "Overlord" has a twisty Hendrix-style wah intro, a righteous bluesy riff, sexdown drumming from new recruit Will Hunt, and not one but two bridges, the second peeling out like a dirt bike into a heady, fluttering solo. It's also got a side-splitting coda wherein Zakk puts on Al Jolson blackface and megaphone-croons (to the ragtime melody of "Hello My Baby"), "She is my over, she is my over, she is my overlord!" Sharon Osbourne, or his wife? Flip a coin. Also worthy of BLS hit status: the dirty drunk's lament "Southern Dissolution," with its Alice in Chains snapback bridge and its crazy-ass solo; and the bucking "Riders of the Damned," which sports the record's catchiest riffs. Wordwise, Zakk moans more mournfully than ever, begging for one moment of personal peace and vomiting invective against the agents of destruction who rule the world. Nothing new there, and you could say he's sticking to the overall musical formula he's maintained for eight BLS albums. But it's a damned good formula, and the pacing on "Order of the Black" is particularly effective. (Especially striking cover and booklet art from John Irwin, too.) Word is that Zakk's quite content these days; good for him. I wonder what a happy Black Label album would sound like? "Order of the Black" can be purchased in boxed and LP editions. Black Label Society headlines the Second Stage and Ozzy Osbourne the Main Stage of Ozzfest at the San Manuel Amphitheater in Devore this Saturday, August 14. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.629 2010-08-12T22:01:18Z 2010-08-13T00:11:08Z

A discovery.

On my way to Mona’s place, I hit the megamarket for a bottle. It had a white label imprinted with the word Scotch. It’s made in Scotland, they say. By now, the rain was dumping down. No umbrella in my car; raincoat, ha. So when I knocked on Mona’s door, I looked like a dunked clown. I doffed my rags; Mona handed me her fuzzy robe. Pink. Sleeves to my elbows. Her place always looked like a magazine ad. This woman actually waxed her floors; they were shined up all the time, even though since moving she had gotten a dog, Frannie, a little gray mutt with bright eyes. I scratched the dog’s ears, settled down at the kitchen table and peeled the wet paper bag off the scotch bottle. Mona put a juice glass in front of me, got a Labatt Blue for herself. It was her least favorite Canadian beer, but she bought it as a hometown memory because it had a brewery in Halifax. She had the night off from her new job hostessing at a West Hollywood yuppie boite. Beat the bowling alley all to hell. My booze went down the way cheap booze goes down: It disinfected my tongue, choked in my throat and trickled down around my heart, where I could feel it eating away at my ventricles. I’ve always thought this is the way liquor should taste; otherwise a person might be inclined to drink too much of it. Feeling a chill, I poured another three fingers and popped the question. "Mona, who’re your favorite singers? Female." After a year with her, I should have already known the answer to that. She tugged at her T-shirt, took a slug from the narrow brown bottle and pursed her ruby lips. "I dunno. Billie Holiday, for sure. Peggy Lee." She considered. "Astrud Gilberto. Nina Simone. Dinah Washington. Helen Merrill." My admiration was spreading. "How about outside of jazz?" "Huh. Patsy Cline. Etta James." She tilted her head. "Grace Slick." "Don’t you like anybody recent?" "Not really. Cassandra Wilson?" I had heard Mona crooning over the dishes now and then, but hadn’t paid much attention. I asked her to sing something. She sat back, then gazed over at the kitchen window and opened her mouth half an inch. "Love . . . brings such misery and pain . . . I guess I’ll never be the same . . . since I fell for you . . ." The rain brushed against the window. My mouth was open more than half an inch. She sang the way she breathed, without even thinking about it. Her singing voice was deeper than her speaking voice, and soulful. Musicians don’t cut songbirds big respect, because singing is a gift. The gift can be honed, but any teenager who’s got it starts off with a five-year drop on a sax jockey like me. The gift’s a pisser to us axfucks -- it seems like a shortcut, and on top of that, we know everybody’s gonna be looking at the singer, not us. Of course, millions of singers with great pipes aren’t worth a shit. They’re show-offs, they’re copycats, they’re actors. Mona, though, had the voice and the instant connection; she was a double-barreled natural. No point in being jealous of something like that; you’ve just gotta bow to it, like a sunset. I went around the table and pulled her up to me. She was warm, I was cold. She smiled like she was embarrassed, and we drifted off to the bedroom. My apartment had a futon on the floor; she had a real bed. While she was pulling off her jeans, I shoved two paperbacks, three magazines and a newspaper off the bedspread. Normally we fucked like animals. This time, must’ve been the rain and the singing, we were slow and quiet. Mona fell asleep. I lay in the dark, looking at the blur of a framed picture on the wall: Mona, in a quilted blue winter coat, her hair even bigger than now, standing with two girlfriends on a wharf in front of a three-mast sailing ship. Nova Scotia. I got up, put the pink robe back on and went back to the kitchen. I found some soda crackers on a shelf and munched while resuming my scotch commitment. A full bottle is a challenge. I had made good progress when Mona shuffled out an hour or two later in just the T-shirt, said she had to walk the dog. It was after midnight, and Frannie was sitting by the door, ears up. Oh yeah. I said it was still raining. Mona shrugged. I said I’d get an umbrella and take Frannie out for a minute. Mona smiled and turned back toward the bedroom. "Hey," I said. "You want to sing some stuff with me?" "You have no band." "That could change." Eyes half shut, Mona looked at my half-empty bottle, then looked at me. "Sure," she said. Then she was gone. * * * © 2010 Greg Burk * * * Next week: The audition. * * * Chapter 7. Chapter 6. Chapter 5. Chapter 4. Chapter 3. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.627 2010-08-06T22:30:06Z 2010-09-03T20:15:21Z

Dwight Trible keeps the Afro-jazz tradition alive with an super ensemble featuring windman Justo Almario, pianist Otmaro Ruiz, percussionist Derf Reklaw, bassist Trevor Ware and drummer Dexter Story. Community poet Kamau Daaood's on hand too. Then it's Indus Valley Civilization, a collective that came out of "Miles From India" (Miles Davis' music meets Subcontinental players), but this group's probably way better -- percussionists Ndugu Chancler, Badal Roy and Anantha Krishnan hook up with Ruiz and Almario plus bassist Alphonso Johnson. Troker opens with funky & hip-hoppy horn grooves. At Grand Performances in California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown 90071; 7pm; FREE; www.grandperformances.org. Fri. Aug. 6 -- As L.A. jazz staples go, it's hard to get any stapler than bassist Henry "The Skipper" Franklin, a swinger who doesn't mind short excursions outside the solar system, as he's made with Azar Lawrence. Good band guaranteed. At LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., LA 90036; 6-8pm; FREE. Fri. Aug. 6 -- The lyrical Darek Oles Trio features the impeccable bassist and composer along with young drummer Matt Slocum and vet pianist Bill Cunliffe. At the Blue Whale on the third floor of Weller Court Plaza, south of East First Street between South Los Angeles Street and South San Pedro Street, Little Tokyo 90012; 8pm onward; $10; (213) 620-0908. Fri. Aug. 6 -- I See Hawks in L.A. show that country roots have brain stems, then it's the stompin' band of ace guitarist Tony Gilkyson. At Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City 90036; 10pm; pass the hat. Fri.-Sat. Aug. 6-7 -- Jazz guitar template-stamper Kenny Burrell has a semiannual gig at Catalina's, howbout that. And he don't even sing much. His group includes UCLA teachmates Tom Ranier (piano) and Roberto Miranda (bass, outa the Tapscott mob), as well as drummer Clayton Cameron and saxist Tivon Pennicott. At Catalina Bar & Grill, 6725 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood 90028; 8 & 10pm; $25-$30; (323) 466-2210; www.catalinajazzclub.com. Sat. Aug. 7 -- The 1928 French film "The Passion of Joan of Arc" gets a new score from modern tech-plus composer George Sarah and his string quartet and classical vocal quartet. Good way to relax outdoors in the summer. At Grand Performances in California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., downtown 90071; 8pm; FREE; www.grandperformances.org. Sun. Aug. 8 -- Converse (not Converge) wants you to buy its sneakers, so it's throwing a free Power of the Riff Festival featuring the return of the hard & tuff Corrosion of Conformity, the return of doomsludgers Goatsnake (including drummer Greg Rogers!), and 14 other heavy bands that are more on the arriving than returning side. Good times. At the EchoPlex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., Echo Park 90026; noon-midnight; free with RSVP at www.thepoweroftheriff.com. Mon. Aug. 9 -- Devin Sarno & Bobb Bruno drone bass and extrapolate guitar in scary ambient ways. Also on the bill: howardAmb and Kandyce & the Killdozer. At Echo Curio, 1519 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park 90026; 9pm; $5; (213) 977-1279; www.echocurio.com. Tues. Aug. 10 -- I knew when Zakk Wylde got sober and got replaced in Ozzy's band it wouldn't hurt the music of his Black Label Society, and "Order of the Black" (released today) sure proves it. The ballads stab yer heart, the rockers rock real deep, and Zakk even takes a funny jab at Sharon Osbourne. One of his best records. Opening is a pretty good band featuring BLS bassist John DeServio, Cycle of Pain. This event benefits St. Jude's Hospital. At the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood; $35; (310) 278-9457; www.ticketmaster.com. Thurs. Aug. 12 -- Former Miles/Herbie windman Bennie Maupin has a truly original approach to chamber jazz, beautiful and deep. At the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., West L.A. 90024; 8pm; FREE; (310) 443-7000; www.hammer.ucla.edu. Thurs. Aug. 12 -- The Queens of the Stone Age and Eagles of Death Metal show is sold out, so you'll have to find another way to benefit cancer-stricken EODM bassist Brian O'Connor. At Nokia Theater LA Live, 777 Chick Hearn Court, downtown 90015; 9pm; $50-$250; www.ticketmaster.com. Thurs. Aug. 12 -- You like groove, funk and freak, instrumental-side? The cookin' Israelis of Maetar are your boys. At Harvelle’s, 1432 Fourth St., Santa Monica 90401; 9:30pm; $8; (310) 395-1676. Read Brick Wahl’s jazz picks in LA Weekly here, Don Heckman’s jazz picks here and MoshKing's metal listings here. Read John Payne's plutonic Bluefat.com here. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.625 2010-08-05T19:44:58Z 2010-08-06T16:48:35Z

Burk goes on road; road goes on Burk.

Marcus Roberts Trio at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, NYC, July 29. For 20 years, bozos have elbowed me for digging Marcus Roberts' pianistics, probably because he arrived via Wynton Marsalis' band (suspicions justifiable), because of his delicate touch, and because, if born a hapless dufus like the blurb writer in Time Out New York, one might think he plays "reverential renderings of stride and the like." At last, I begin to see the bozos' point. Maybe it was the venue's proximity to Lincoln Center, bastion of jazz taxidermy, but Roberts manufactured the safest music I've heard from him. Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To" rode clean and even until Robert's final joyful homecoming, where the lack of harmonic challenge made it feel as if he was opening the door to his beloved sheepdog. Ellington's "In a Mellow Tone" did sport a few angularities that showed why Monk loved the Duke. Much of the set derived from Roberts' current "From Rags to Rhythm" album. His own "On the Edge of the Unknown" hinted at more than its genteel grandiosity delivered. "The Reservoir" attempted an African connection that drummer Jason Marsalis, for all his technical understanding, remains too stiff to consummate. Between throwaway references to Roberts' righteous obsession with "Rhapsody in Blue," we got a run at "Searching for the Blues," a title that contains its own critique. Bassist Rodney Jordan grinned warmly and never strayed from the pocket. Only in the encore, a brilliant deconstruction of an old-timey blues, did Roberts cease playing down to the perhaps less urbane summer-in-the-Apple audience and do what he useta do ALL the time. Throughout, he showed impeccable restraint, intellectual acuity and, most important from his accountant's point of view, the ability to switch the mantle of artist for that of nightclub entertainer. Tony Harnell & the Mercury Train at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC, July 30. The realm of metal harbors few what you'd call singer-songwriters, but Tony Harnell (TNT, Westworld, Starbreaker) has deserved that title for something like 30 years, so you can't blame him for easing down the volume and highlighting the less screamatory side of his multichromatic personality. He put together this nice little soft-rock band and made an album, "Round Trip," just to show the enduring strength of his old songs; cynics please step to the rear. If you can find room. Harnell packed this little East Manhattan bar with his chosen faithful, who, even if pre-charmed, responded appropriately to the group's balanced skill. No musicianly histrionics were required; the hooks spoke for themselves. Like "Somebody Told You," building an unusual chord progression into defiant drama. Or "Month of Sundays," its yearning stairstep chorus rebuilt into a more thoughtful reflection. Or "Ready To Fly," whose counterintuitively downspiraling minor melody would not leave my unsorry head for days. Harnell, looking more than usual like Rob Lowe, brought a touch of unironic white funk to TNT's biggest hit, "Ten Thousand Lovers in One," as the audience bellowed counterpoint to his warm yet unbelievably rangy vocalics. Hard to intuit the motivation for closing with Alanis Morissette's "Uninvited," except that it gave the band a chance to pound out an extended sweaty groove, and gave us all another opportunity to hear the lyrics as "I'm a flat turd by your fascination with me." Tony's elfin English wife, Amy, showed she's no Linda McCartney, i.e., she sang expert backup and contributed an unobnoxiously upbeat presence. Jason Hagen's arpeggios and power strumming made his acoustic guitar the music's backbone, while Chris Foley's electric leads burned with tasteful concision. Bassist Brandon Wilde (an accomplished singer and songwriter in his own right) and drummer Brad Gunyon, plainly having studied their Greg Reeves and Dallas Taylor, demonstrated exactly what a soft-rock rhythm section should include and omit. Harnell said he undertook this Mercury Train retrospective because Serafino Perugino of Frontiers Records asked him to, and he thought it would be fun. It sure is. But Harnell's got a solo album of new stuff coming, previewed here by a less psychedelicized version of the over-the-rainbow ballad "The Show," from his jaw-dropping demo release. Preliminary indications are that when we experience the complete presentation, the future's going to seem like more fun than the past. Scorpions, Cinderella at Nokia Theater, L.A., July 31. What rock band can lavish multiple encores on its opening act and let its own drummer plug his side project from a 20-foot riser, and still absolutely dominate the night? If you guessed Germany's Scorpions, you're wrong; the correct answer is "Scorpions -- get stung behbeh!" The proof's once again in the extremely thick & sticky pudding. Big-thud pop-rock isn't so difficult; what sets Scorpions apart is their unprecedented ability to write and perform it PERFECTLY. Which doesn't mean tight-assedly, it means they are going to mash your head without leaving a crack through which your civilized reservations can escape. This being their first farewell tour in 30-some years, of course Scorpions were required to slam out the immortal rockers ("Make It Real," "Bad Boys Running Wild," "The Zoo," "Coast to Coast," "Tease Me Please Me," "Blackout," "Big City Nights," "Rock You Like a Hurricane") and the big ballads ("Loving You Sunday Morning," "Holiday," "Still Loving You"). And they even pulled out a few new arrangements! But it was gonna be more interesting to see how the cuts from their current "Sting in the Tail" would measure up to the '80s chartbusters, and damned if the fresh stuff let not an ounce of pressure out of the tires. Oh yes, the dumb-ass chant-along "Sting in the Tail" made a great opener. And the crunchy "Raised on Rock" meshed like a transmission gear with the band's classic riff-&-hook aesthetic. Riskier was "The Best Is Yet To Come," whose blubbering emotion sounded a bit lonely on "Tail," but served to bring the nostalgic crowd together for a moment of precious optimism. If we wanted another reason to unite, Scorpions served it up by dedicating the prayerful "Send Me an Angel" to the recently deceased Ronnie James Dio. "Di-o! Di-o!" we yelled. Yeah. Sorry, we just don't care about being cool anymore. James Kottak (whose throaty backup vocals contributed more than you'd think) took advantage of a big ol' spotlight segment atop his Olympian column to drum his ass off and strip layers of shirt to reveal more and more advertisements for his other band, Kottak Attack, for which he sings and slings guitar. Give the guy credit, he's hilarious, but he's on the stage with Rudolf Schenker, Matthias Jabs, Pawel Maciwoda (bassist since 2003) and a little beret-wearing banshee named Klaus Meine, who'll go down as one of hard rock's all-time top wailers. So a little perspective is in order. We might be considering Cinderella's deadpan strutter Tom Keifer for that all-time top-voxman list too, if he hadn't been clobbered by repeated throat destructions over the decades since the band's 1983 Philly formation. Dude's been shrieking better than Axl since Rose was a bud (and he's back at full force), plus he gnarls great guitar, bangs soulful piano and even blows mighty tenor sax. Cinderella carry a serious case of Aerosmith blues fever, and it's contagious -- no mere hairboys, these suckers rock right down to the roots. "Fallin' Apart at the Seams," "Heartbreak Station" and "Shelter" got extended treatments we could really drink along to, and Cinderella undertook something like two and a half encores without wearing out their welcome. Howbout that. At this point I wish to thank the Nokia for equipping its pissoirs with sparkly, hi-design AMSCO screens, which provided considerable auxiliary entertainment upon repeated visits. AMSCO has been selected as the official urinal screen of MetalJazz.com. But mainly I want to thank Scorpions for being such generous motherhumpers -- in opener scope, set length, loudness, clarity and execution. Maybe it's easier to be generous when you're king. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.624 2010-08-05T19:35:03Z 2010-08-06T16:29:28Z

Advice.

No gig, no food, no band. I went back to the splendor of solo musicianhood in the great public marketplace: streets, parks, subway stations. It might not have been an accident that I found myself gravitating toward the hills above the western stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, to Wooster Park, one of the county’s designated dog runs. Dark clouds hung low, in the sky and in my head. I had dug up an old jug of gin under my sink behind the drain acid the previous night, and I felt as if I had swigged the wrong bottle. I didn’t see the Dogphotoman till he tapped me on the shoulder while I was trying to put some energy into a saxophonic rendition of "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" "Impressive, Bill -- Doris Day. You have really found your level." I tried indignation. "Most requested, most highly remunerated." Change the subject. "I thought I might run into you here." I nudged a smashed styrofoam cup with my foot. "What exactly happened at your place the other night?" "Nothing. I showed you a few pictures and kicked you out. I was tired, I told you." "There didn’t seem to be anything . . . the matter with me?" "Nothing that isn’t always the matter with you." "I lost a few hours." "The world weeps. It must have been all over the pages of the Hobo Herald, but my subscription lapsed." "The newspapers, that’s another thing. I haven’t seen anything about that bum you shoved in the bar." "I did. He had a lobotomy and got elected to the state legislature." "I guess he must not be hurt too bad." "He’ll be all right as long as he doesn’t join your band." "No band to join." "I know, I was there last Wednesday. Pathetic." "What? I didn’t see you." "I believe we have established that you don’t see much." The Dogphotoman got a pen knife out of his suit pocket and began to clean the middle nail on his left hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?" My head felt stuffed with cottage cheese. I didn’t feel like fronting. "The band . . . what the hell, I'll live without it." "That sorry act is all you’ve got, and now you’re making wimp noises. A lot of clowns limp by with less." Was the Dogphotoman tired of socking me? "Good musicians . . ." Jack snorted. "Yeah, bring your musicians over and I’ll have them paint my walls. What I’m saying is you’re not exploiting your resources." "How?" "I’ll tell you if you shut up." I inhaled and sank down on a bench, wishing I had some water. Jack stood over me and dictated. "Why are you doing this music thing?" "To communicate. To use my . . . tools." "And?" "To scare up some money, maybe." "I assume you’re aware that almost everybody is an idiot." I didn’t argue, so the Dogphotoman continued. "Therefore, your goal is to pick idiots’ pockets. So tell me, how do you connect with an idiot? Do you ransack the jazz legacy for hip obscurities?" "No." "That’s right. But you don’t want to play "Doggie in the Window" every hour, either. You saw my pictures. What do you think I have in common with Thelonious Monk and Kiss?" "I have no clue." "We all say one thing: Keep it simple. You play jazz. You might as well put a magnum to your head instead of a saxophone. Why do you think idiots don’t get jazz?" "Too complicated." "Correct. The musician wins a cherry sucker. So for every eight notes you’d normally play, withdraw seven. Open the door. Let the idiots in. That’s the first thing." "I’m guessing there’s more." "Zip it. The second thing is don’t forget that you, too, are an idiot. It will make this easier for you. And the third thing is right under your nose." "Mm." "Idiots don’t enjoy music that lacks la-la." Jack made blabbing motions with his mouth. "And they need something to look at. You have a bimbo at your disposal. Use the bimbo." I knew Mona’s friend sang in a band sometimes. "You mean Dixie?" "You’re more of an idiot than I thought. Do you want to fuck her?" "No." "Neither does anyone else with a dick. The other bimbo." "Mona? She’s not a singer." "I suppose Jayne Mansfield was an actor. Take care of business. You know I’m right." I wished he hadn’t uttered that last sentence; he used it on his customers all the time. But the conversation was over. Jack had turned away and was quick-stepping his way between the dog turds down the slope toward Sierra Bonita Avenue. I pulled a bottle of aspirin out of my chinos and stuck four in my mouth, forgetting I had no water. But heaven provides. It was starting to rain. * * * © 2010 Greg Burk * * * Next week: A discovery. * * * Chapter 6. Chapter 5. Chapter 4. Chapter 3. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. ]]> tag:www.metaljazz.com,2010://1.626 2010-08-04T19:40:22Z 2010-08-06T19:47:41Z

Good to have a flag with prog on it.

Outopsya, "Sum" (Videoradio/Artemis) Prog hath no bounds, so when a load of Gregorian chantishness gets grafted into the more obvious foliage of Crimson, Utopia and Tangerine Dream and the whole thing gets modernized up to the decade after tomorrow, you just gotta take a deep breath and roll with it. The breath's well worth taking, because this Luca Vianini, who wrote, produced and played most everything on this Outopsya record except bass (Evan Mazzucchi), appears to be some kind of genius. "Sum" means "I Am" in Latin, which is what Jesus said in John 8:58; perhaps Mr. Vianini knows the passage. The first thing that hits you is Vianini's studio mastery. There's a whole lot going on in terms of synthesizers, guitars and drum-machine rhythms, yet each instrument pops like a weasel from its own discrete hole, bristling with distinctive tone -- he handles the bass frequencies, both punchy and cloudy/drony, with special skill. Listen on good speakers, cuz ear buds and car woofers just won't cut it. This is physical music that demands loudness. The second impression is of a very active mind -- maybe too nervous half the time, but that is the modern condition. Outopsya might set things up with steam hiss or rumble or throb, then crank into spiky arpeggios or doom riffs, turning several corners in each composition (average time 7 minutes) while subjecting the textures to constant change and bright, bright contrast (grmmmmmmm . . . PING!). More than in most prog, the emotional content varies as well, from mystery to snake dance to amphetamine paranoia. Oh -- the CD packaging by Michela Eccheli displays a keen, colorful abstract eye and complements the music to a T. If musicians hear this, it will influence them, and they'll want to hire Vianini as a producer. Then he can quit his Deep Purple cover band. But why would he want to? Éder Bergozza & Marcos De Ros, "Peças de Bravura" (CD Sul CD/DVD) Here's what's sweeping the nation of Brazil: An extravagant pianist (Éder Bergozza) gets together with a braid-bearded metallic guitarist (Marcos De Ros), and they wail on every variety of folk dance, tango, rag and fantasia, accompanied by a percussion track from what sounds like a 1980 Casio toy keyboard. Now that is high concept. Citing among their influences the three P's of modern Brazilian inspiration -- Piazzolla, Prokofiev and Purple -- the duo sure do tear it up with cuddly enthusiasm. Bergozza's dancing digits apply both pomp and circumstance to his resilient ivories; you've heard few faster (if many slicker) axmen than De Ros, who sweep-picks and shreds his way through original instrumentals with such indicative titles as "Paganiniana," "Caprichio Infernal" and "The Little Tramp." By the time they conclude with the 8.5-minute "Funeral for a Friend"-type rave "Ponteio Marciano," you'll be well into your third hankie. The DVD could've been a bare-bones concert, but the multitalented De Ros himself tarts it up with fake silent-movie titles and enough split screens, zooms and graphic superimpositions to satisfy five Michael Wadleighs. Hilarious! All this was apparently accomplished with the help of some kind of cultural endowment. Seems we should be looking to Brazil for foreign aid. Available via http://www.gravadoravozes.com.br. ]]>