While I remember...

 ... and while the impetus to keep posting is there, let's just establish something here. Yes, I'm writing in a near-vacuum here (and doubtless have only myself to blame for that) - although a handful of old friends have never completely forgotten me *, and some posts may still get seen from time to time by other people (or at least by bots, ahem) - but I am also writing on a subject which almost defines the epithet "minority-interest"... just to underline this point, I recently found (by accident) a video online of a solo 'cello performance of a George Lewis piece by Mariel Roberts... the sheer virtuosity on display, to say nothing of the intense focus and dedication, left me powerfully and deeply impressed. But I was quite dismayed to see that the video had been viewed less than 1500 times in four years, had only 30+ likes and had attracted precisely one comment, before I got to it. This on a platform where some pop music videos garner hundreds of millions of views... we live in a terribly shallow world, where the majority of people seem to think that reality TV and pre-cooked brainless entertainment is not only somehow "enough", but is all that is available to them, and further still, all that they could ever need or desire.

Many people have observed before now that the more talent, vision and dedication it takes to produce a work of art, the less chance it has of attracting any significant audience. Obviously this has been the case for decades with jazz, never mind the various forms of creative music which have grown out of jazz-infused soil; Frank Zappa referred to jazz as "the music of unemployment", and he wasn't so much being dismissive as just cynically summing up the harsh reality imposed on working musicians by a desperately-superficial music business. 

But...

... all is not quite lost, and this is heartening. For example, I can point to this ** or to this as evidence of musicians and educators making serious efforts to unpack B's music and share their love of it, and foster a similar love in others; just this evening, I discovered the existence of this, via a brief online teaser; over the last year or so, I have allowed myself to get pretty out of touch with recent developments in creative music, and had never heard of bandleader Kobe Van Cauwenberghe - indeed of the seven musicians in that group, I have only knowingly come across one before (Teun Verbruggen) - but this sounds absolutely fantastic, and if B. is aware of this recording, he must surely be absolutely delighted with it. [I then discovered that the leader had previously released this, which must surely be an extraordinary undertaking... needless to say, I shall be making a serious effort to get hold of some of this young guitarist's stuff.]

The world is in a parlous state for sure, nor has our species taken its stewardship at all seriously; and if the earth does eventually recover by casting us off entirely, we can hardly complain too much. But I feel a lot better now than I did a few years ago, whatever the reason(s); and when I see things like the projects linked above, it reassures me that the human race is not such a shitty gang to belong to, after all. There is still hope (as B. himself is fond of saying). 

As regards this guy's amazing, demanding, empowering music, I may have fucked up my own opportunity to make this blog all that it could possibly have been, and to take part in the maestro's journey (with my performance-anxiety issues, I was always destined to sabotage that in some way, it couldn't be helped); but others are more than making up for my shortcomings. That's the most important thing to remember in all this. I still have no idea what Jason G. was talking about - what led him to sever ties with B. and take down his own work - but it doesn't seem to be the case that B. has been disowned by the creative music community in general - far from it. My own interest has been well and truly renewed, and perhaps I can start making up for (some of my) lost time...

* Kai, hi again! Thanks for your recent comment(s). Hope this finds you well - until such time as I figure out how to comment on my own blog (!), this will have to do... thanks for the information you passed on, and the links, which I will be checking out in due course...

** Brian Krock and I exchanged emails briefly, after I commented on his video. And then he realised what a flake I was, and that was the end of that (at least I assume that's what happened... and if so I can't really blame him). Who knows, if I revive my work here I may be able to get him to start talking to me again ;-)

Puzzle pieces

 

Who am I kidding, right? After a number of years of almost total inactivity, I post something meandering (eventually) asking a question of any imaginary readers who might be out there, and I proceed on the basis that someone might actually attempt to answer it within a few days. Of course, anybody who has kept even half an eye on the way things have unfolded here in recent years would fully expect that just because I randomly posted something, that doesn't mean anything else will follow it up any time soon.

However, this time I may actually be getting myself ready to kick things off again, since the timing just seems to be right for it... I have started pulling my entire Braxton collection together in earnest, and whatever else happens, I am expecting to spend a lot of time in the foreseeable future listening to it. Precisely where that takes me, remains to be seen...

... and even if I posted here twice a week, who would even see it? There has (evidently) never been a worse time to recommence writing this sort of blog. That's OK, though... one thing I learned back in the "good old days" was how to do this work purely for myself (even as I was also doing it for other people, if that makes sense). I am perfectly capable of writing it as if others are reading it, even if they aren't. It will serve a purpose anyway :-D

***

So the question was whether anyone had any organised thoughts and / or conclusions about the unofficial Braxton release Live at the Rainbow Gallery '79. I wrote that post the other day without having a heard a note of it - indeed I deliberately refrained from even looking for it online, until such time as I had got down what I wanted to say in the first instance. Having done that, I did then have a look on the 'net for it, and started listening to the first piece. There were two fundamental questions which previous commentators had left seemingly undecided: firstly, that of the year and personnel; and more simply, the identity of the first piece. I figured that the second question should be very easy to answer, and the first not that hard either: with regard to the standard which opens the broadcast, one guy identified it as "Cherokee" and another as "Marshmallow" (an understandable confusion in principle, since the two compositions share a basic rhythm and tempo, and indeed occupy a very similar tessitura generally); as to the year and personnel, I reckoned that if by now I can't identify Dave Holland on this material then it doesn't say much for the state of my ears.

Anyway: it's definitely "Cherokee" (the guy who called it as "Marshmallow" presumably just doesn't know the earlier tune, which is extremely easy to identify). As I discussed last time, it's incorrect to co-credit Charlie Parker with this tune, but he is kind of associated with it (not just him, of course; I personally thought of Clifford Brown straight away, not Parker, in connection with versions of this standard), and the same commentator who identified it on Discogs pointed out that Braxton and his trombonist (very probably Lewis) play the Parker solo simultaneously. - If that is, indeed, the Parker solo... which I haven't established yet. If I'm honest, I found the sound of this recording less than fabulous, so much so that it gave little or no chance to answer the other question quickly, because I couldn't hear the bass at all. (I still think this would be the easiest way to identify the '76 band for sure.) After a few minutes of half-listening to this while doing something or other - I most definitely wasn't giving it anything like my full attention - I put it on hold, and didn't quite get round to going back to it. Some other time for that, then...

[Again, I mentioned in my previous post that if the same commentator correctly identified the three Braxton compositions - 23d, 23e, 40f - then it's pretty massively unlikely to be the '79 band, with or without a guest pianist; playing one of those might make sense, but a whole set of that earlier stuff, when the '78-'79 quartets were all about the 69 series..? I don't buy it. If those are the primary territories, this is very likely to have been recorded no later than 1976; and besides, another Discogs commentator has come forward as the painter whose work was on show in the Rainbow Gallery during (what he describes as) B's residency there, and he assures us it was indeed 1976. In which case, we can pretty safely assume it is Lewis, Holland, and Altschul in the quartet (and to be fair it does sound more like Lewis than Anderson on trombone, I heard enough to say that much at least); as for the pianist, it's always a safe bet to say it was "probably" Abrams, but if it was '76, it could also feasibly be Anthony Davis, couldn't it? Let's face it, we can't trust the label on this, and no-one else seems quite sure. One of these days I will listen to the whole thing - and at that point I may be able to make some more useful observations. I shan't, however, be buying it.]

***

One thing I have listened to - just tonight indeed - is the brand new release (technically it's not even out yet, though clearly it is already available in digital format) Duet (Other Minds) 2021, with James Fei: this is actually due for release tomorrow, September 2nd, on the Other Minds label - and presents a performance which (apparently) took place last year, during the Other Minds Festival 25. The single territory is Composition 429 (!), which - according to another website - 'is the first piece using a new writing method that Braxton calls “Lorraine (...) a music system that governs the ‘sonic winds’ of breath.” '

This really is a rewarding listen, even if I for one would be happy just to listen to the two players, without the vaguely-distracting electronics which accompanies them (this is not Diamond Curtain Wall music, but I presume it's a similar type of interactive computer software being used)... for anyone who's heard even half as much of B's playing as I have, there may not be a whole lot of surprises on offer, but when the quality of musicianship and the depth of interplay is this good, who the hell cares? I am always very reluctant to pay for digital downloads, but I shall definitely be interested in buying a CD copy in the near future.

***

Beleieve it or not, I could go on - but I shan't, or not yet at least. For now, hello to anyone who is reading this; in particular, my warmest wishes go out to McClintic Sphere and his family.

I'll be posting again soon. This time for real, as they say ;-)

A question... of sorts

 Much to my surprise, it seems that a small handful of people still read anything I post on here - what little that currently is, in other words. This despite a) my continuing overwhelming inactivity, b) my failure to respond to comments as I used to (there is a reason for that - see below*), and c) the difficulty in locating Blogger material via a web-search these days.

To anyone who is still checking in: thank you for your (seemingly-infinite) patience ;-)

Now...

... as any Braxtonhead must know by now, an unofficial bootleg CD emerged a few years back on the Cypriot label Hi Hat. This is credited solely to AB and bears the title Live At The Rainbow Gallery '79; it claims to be taken from a radio broadcast from "the end of the decade", implying - sort of - that the 1979 date refers to the year of the broadcast, not necessarily the date of the actual performance. It gives the personnel as being Lewis, Holland and Altschul plus Muhal Richard Abrams, which makes it massively unlikely that it was recorded any later than 1976; but of course, that's assuming the personnel are credited correctly, which perhaps we had better not assume at all (hence my caveat "sort of" in the previous sentence: given the inherently-dubious nature of the release, it's probably best not to assume anything which we can't actually verify).

So, let's posit for the sake of argument that at least the venue is correct, and that the broadcast presents a performance at the Rainbow Gallery (in Minneapolis, apparently; even more confusingly, the entry for this item on Discogs adds the note "...in September 1987.(?)" - which would of course indicate that the performance was broadcast at least seven years before it actually took place! - where this unhelpful note originates (i.e. on the CD liners or with Discogs' members) is unclear). A pretty recent comment (from user "fetidwheeze") reads: "I had a painting exhibition during Braxton's residency at Rainbow Gallery and can assure you that the date was 1976... The group was there for several nights."

-This, in turn, appears to be at least partly in response to an earlier (and much longer) comment by user "senorton", which provides some quite detailed info, but which suggests that the "date" (?/?/79) is correct and the personnel wrong, rather than the other way around, as most people had previously assumed. The commentator supposes then that the line-up actually comprises John Lindberg and Thurman Barker, as per the 1979 working quartet, but with Lewis in for Ray Anderson - senorton reckons this sounds more like Lewis (but is confident it's not Altschul on drums) - and "Muhal Richard Abrams is definitely the likely choice for the pianist."

I have no intention of buying this illegal release myself - never did - and haven't yet heard it. What I'm interested to know, therefore, is whether anyone who might be reading this has listened to the performance, and if so what conclusions were drawn, if any? (My curiosity is however sufficiently piqued at this point that one way or another, I will probably go looking for an online audio rip and see what I can deduce about it... so if anyone does want to beat me to the punch and share their thoughts on this little mystery, they are encouraged to do so in the next few days..!)

[senorton provides a tracklist, too, having stated in passing that "the titles are ludicrous for a Braxton date"; that is not actually strictly true  - the release lists the four pieces just as "Free Jazz Improv. 1-4", which is not completely implausible, though highly unlikely to be accurate for either the '76 working group or its '79 counterpart - but in any case he reckons that he can name all four pieces: the last three are given by him as Comps. 23d, 23e and 40f, while he lists the first as being "Cherokee" (but incorrectly gives Charlie Parker a co-credit for it, and in turn uses that as evidence of this being Lewis playing, since the two duo sets from 1976 with Lewis both include (brief) Parker covers... "Cherokee" was published in 1938, at which time Parker would have been around 18 years old; he is credited with the contrafact "KoKo", based on the "Cherokee" changes, and did play the earlier song, but he most certainly didn't co-write it. Does this undermine our commentator's credentials..?). For what it's worth, a later comment by user "SSRI_Guy" says instead that the first number is "Marshmallow" by Warne Marsh. - Regardless of which number it actually was that opened the broadcast, it was evidently a standard; but the rest of the set, if senorton is right about it, would be a very strange tracklist indeed for 1979. I'm already angling towards 1976, myself...]

***

If anyone doesn't yet have the reissued (remastered) Willisau (1991) Studio 2xCD on hatOLOGY... now is an excellent time to snap it up, since - unlike most commodities - its price seems to have fallen dramatically. A year or so ago you would have been lucky to find this for sale for less than twenty pounds (GBP; I can't vouch for what it would have cost in euros or dollars), but I just picked it up for five-and-a-half quid, brand new and still factory-sealed. Nobody reading this will need to be told what an essential release this was/is. The question is... where is the Live equivalent? Liner notes say it was slated for release in 2019, but we know that never materialised...

* One of the frustrations which has kept me away from here lately is the fact that I currently rely on a device - I can't really call it a laptop - which my wife originally bought, hence it "thinks" by default that I am her. Even when signed into my own email, if I load Blogger it tries to log me in as my wife - and the last time I tried to reply to a comment, I gave up because even though I had (eventually) succeeded in logging into the site / the blog as myself, when I went to the comments it reverted back to my wife's account. - To the gracious person who told me recently about the need to celebrate living musicians - my thoughts exactly - and who recommended one of Roscoe Mitchell's recent groups, I had tried to respond as follows: Yes indeed, we absolutely do... I haven't heard this particular small group of Mitchell's (love Tomeka Reid) and will try to hunt down some recordings. Thanks for the tip :-D   (NB: I didn't yet manage to find any recordings by that group. I do really like Tomeka Reid - especially her first album as a leader. I love Roscoe Mitchell)

(Much belated) birthday card, and other stories

 

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday Mr Braxton

More-than-a-week-ago

Ahem. So, what's going on, then? Maybe somebody can fill me in - evidently, while I was not paying proper attention and getting on with other stuff, Google/Blogger did something weird and now it's all-but impossible to locate Blogger pages via a Google search. (I only discovered this accidentally, a few months ago, when I wanted to remind a friend of mine about a particular post I had written, back in the days when I actually wrote posts... for reasons I can't be bothered to go into, I had no easy/direct route into the blog and it always used to be very easy to get in via a web search... this time I had a few "sinking" moments during which I thought the blog had actually been taken down without me even realising it. This was not helped by a slew of search results in which various ex-bloggers lamented whatever it is that got done, to cause all this.)

As previously (teasingly) advised, my intentions to write about the Thumbscrew album were in worse-than-usual disarray anyway, first because it's a very difficult project to write about (read on), and then because something happened between B. and (at least some of) his inner circle - I say that, I myself am so out of touch with these things now that I have no idea who is or isn't "in the loop" at present; but discovering that Jason Guthartz had severed ties with B. so suddenly and peremptorily was a shock... and realising that Restructures had been taken down altogether was horrible. (It still feels like such a loss as to be almost an act of vandalism, even if it was perpetrated by the architect himself; and I still haven't been able to bring myself to talk to Jason about it.)

So there's that... and then there's this... and then we go and arrange to go away for the weekend, to somewhere (just about) remote enough to have no wifi or mobile phone coverage, in a (semi-successful) attempt to escape the enforced jollity (and, here in Wales, the hypocrisy) of the jubilee celebrations... so that I wasn't even "here" on the one day of the year when I still do make an effort to post. Dear oh dear.

Thumbscrew... this really is a difficult one to write about. The balancing act it will require breaks down like this: the actual finished article leaves me feeling that it could have been SO much more than it is, and yet I don't want to be the guy who moans about it, given that we are lucky it even exists in the first place. (I spent enough time being "that guy" in the past, right? I did, yes.) Besides, it really is quite a delightful listen. It just happens to be problematic for several reasons, but... ugh, later. I will write about this album if it kills me, even if hardly anybody at this point will ever see it...

Why the birthday card will be late this year

 ... we are going away for the weekend and I shan't have access to the internet. (The U.K. is currently embroiled in a four-day celebration for the Queen's platinum jubilee... we are trying to take ourselves out into the middle of nowhere to avoid the fuss as much as we can!)

Hence I shan't be able to post anything on June 4th as such. Happy Birthday in advance, sir! I will be posting some stuff on my return (though it's increasingly doubtful whether anyone will see it, even if they wanted to... I had trouble locating my own blog the last time I went looking for it)

What was THAT about..?

 There I was, finally (finally!) about to start writing on here again - just very gently - and something came along almost immediately to derail my train of thought.

How long has it been? This quasi-edifice I constructed - it disintegrated so long ago now that my regular involvement in it almost feels like another life. I have never lost interest in B's music, though my listening has waxed and waned over time, and I never entirely lost the intention to resume writing about it; but as one year bled into another, and my life seemed to be falling apart around my ears... then rebuilt itself (or allowed me to rebuild it)..., I just never got round to doing anything about it. The online "scene" around free jazz and creative music - which had subsisted for a few years in the mid-to-late '00s - had dissipated little by little anyway. For whom would I now be writing, other than for myself? etc, etc, round and round ad nauseam...

... and then I found I had a few things I wanted to set down after all, so with the annual occasion of the Birthday Card to prompt me, I planned to cobble together a couple of posts. 

Within a couple of days of stating my intention to do that, I went online to recheck a detail on Restructures, and - got a bizarre error message. The site, purportedly, had been taken offline. I thought at first this had to be some sort of mistake, or perhaps a hack. Quite apart from anything else, I had only just been using it a few days earlier (the Braxton discog itself had not been updated for some time, but of course it was still a goldmine of useful info, and every so often I would find myself clicking through it again). It was - right there. It couldn't now suddenly be gone... I had not been in touch with Jason G. for years, but I still had a contact email for him, so dropped him a very quick line, not knowing if he would ever see it. Within a couple of days, I had a response: there was no mistake. He actually had taken the site down.

The precise reasons for that are not something I feel I can go into here, because it's JG's decision and his business. But what he told me came as a nasty jolt, and shook me up a bit. I did some digging, and I think I found what it was that had led him to do as he did. I would have to say: I would not draw the same conclusions from it as he apparently did. But, again, it's his decision and I have to respect that.

What it leaves me wondering is about a sort of "anti-synchronicity" surrounding this blog, and the intentions it represents (or more specifically, "this blog, and the intentions my involvement with it represents", since it was not actually my blog to begin with). I go all that time without posting on it more than once a year, rendering the blog little more than a sort of dusty memorial to itself; and then, I decide at length to resume posting on it, and almost simultaneously, this happens. What the actual fuck? But then, when I really started to think that through, I began to realise that this was just the latest reiteration of something which first cropped up years ago.

Several times, blockages appeared which made it hard to work on this. Most notably, I found myself inheriting another collector's carefully-amassed treasure-trove of live recordings... at a time when I could not possibly hope to give them even a fraction of the attention they deserved (and at a time, for that matter, when I no longer even owned a cassette-player). Previously, I had been gifted a complete set of B's Tri-Axium writings and his Composititon Notes - and had not had time or space for those either. There were several other obstacles of similar stripe, at several points along the way. With my own attention having moved away from such matters, I had forgotten about them. This latest cosmic irony with the Restructures site, and the consequent loss (to everyone) of the Braxton discography,  got me remembering all over again.

There are schools of thought which make much of coincidence, and there are those who say that when one discovers one's true vocation or life-path, it's as if all obstacles just melt away. What, then, am I to make of this? Have I created all such energetic blockages myself? Cos if not... it seems I am being told -have repeatedly been told - to steer well clear.

That feels wrong, though. I suspect that the "lack of cosmic path-clearing" can be traced directly back to B's contacting me for the first time, saying that he hoped his doing so would not interfere with what I was doing. It wasn't his fault... but it did. That's all down to me, though, and my long-established inability to see things through.

I may never see this through properly either, and I certainly have long since missed the opportunity to make it into what I originally hoped it would become. But... does that really matter?

I still intend to post, pretty soon. I just needed to have this little argument with myself, before doing so...

Birthday card... with a difference

 

Another year, anoth- ah now, hang on there. 

Naturally, as always on this day, I want to take the opportunity to wish Maestro Braxton a very happy birthday. I mean, of course I do! But while I'm at it, I want to make - well, I'm not even going to call it an announcement, because unless McC pops his head in, chances are nobody will see this anyway; but after vaguely threatening a few times over the last few years to resume posting, I'm actually about to start doing precisely that. Within the next couple of weeks I shall be writing a bit about the Thumbscrew album (what do you mean, "which one?" - take a wild guess), and a bit about the New Haven box on Firehouse 12. I shan't be going into rabbit-hole detail on either one - quite apart from any other considerations, I have still only heard half of the box - but I do have a few things I wanted to say about them and, dammit, I'm gonna do it. 

The fact that nobody is likely to read such posts isn't really a problem, indeed it may positively be an advantage at this point. And even if it isn't, I'm going to write them anyway. Non-spoiler alert: the New Haven set is absolutely astonishing. 

That's it, for now. Except to wish the main man:

*"@"*Many happy returns of the day*"@"*

C x