Commercial Taphouse on Sunday(3.30)

That’s right, Glows is returning and premiering new work! The song Five Deadly Venoms was talked about here, and has turned into something slightly different, but way cooler than I first imagined.  Also, in true American fashion, the band gets paid a percentage of the bar, so the more people drink, the more we get paid.  This is the system Commercial Taphouse has always used to pay bands, and it’s pretty darn American if ever anything was American.  AMERICA!  So don’t bring your beer goggles, just pick them up at Taphouse.  They are reasonably priced and come in many different shades of assorted browns and yellows.
So here are the official details for Sunday’s Best:

Glows in the Dark

@

Commercial Taphouse

111 N. Robinson St. (in the Fan)

9:30pm-12:30am

FREE and ALL AGES

Sunday March 30!

Feeling Free – Barney Kessel

So at the risk of sounding like some sort of square, I can say that Barney Kessel is one of my favorite guitar players. His album Workin Out got me into jazz guitar in the first place, and I always enjoy putting one of his albums on. His approach to chords has had a great effect on me, and I’ve always loved his complex-yet-sloppy style to single note stuff. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at a record that I think might be one of jazz music’s great accidents.

Feeling Free (1969)

Barney Kessel-guitar, Bobby Hutcherson-vibes, Chuck Domanico-bass, Elvin Jones-drums

This is one album that I really didn’t understand on first listening, but further study has led me to consider this one of Kessel’s best efforts–no matter what the circumstances. Basically, this was Barney’s first album after leaving the comfort and safety of Hollywood studio playing (where he played with everyone from Elvis to The Beach Boys) and his stepping back into the jazz scene. Kessel has always had an old school sound-a product of the 50’s West Coast scene-and on this album he takes that sound and puts it into a very unfamiliar context. He brings in two players that were both heavily steeped in the free jazz/avant-garde scene of the times (Bobby Hutcherson, Elvin Jones) and brings in a VERY forceful and strong anchor (Chuck Domanico). What this adds up to is a very interesting mix of styles that is very exciting to listen to because it’s never comfortable. Most of the album seems to belong to Elvin. He plays a constantly sliding time against Domanico’s anchor and Kessel and Hutcherson’s rhythmic stabbing. This has the effect of what sounds like everyone getting lost, and Elvin taking a drum solo to try and get the band back on track. Domanico’s forceful bass is so at odds with Jones’ give and take feel, that it often sounds like Domanico starts with a solid “1″ and midway through the song just picks another “1.”

It’s a really dramatic record because at times the songs sound like they’re literally on the verge of falling apart-but they always hold together somehow. I wish Barney had made a few more album’s in this vane, though it’s possible that some of the drama was real and Barney wasn’t happy with the results. To me, the music opens up another way of thinking about playing “free,” one thats less about typical dark atonal intensity, and more about truly daring unpredictable melodies framed in a very tradition way. Good Times! I’d love to know what other people think of this one-this is just my analysis (or, shit I think about when listening to it).

Check out the opening track Moving Up

Scott Clark=The Man

For anyone thats taking notes, here is the evidence of our drummer’s ongoing heroism and creativity. This is page 2 from his “written” part for the song Security Lock. We have a few versions of the song in the Archive, and it’s pretty obvious that if he wasn’t the shit, it wouldn’t work out so well (or at all).

His other band, the amazing Ilad is featured as part of the RVANews Eight Track Competition. Go vote for them!

Bloody Italiana + Rare S & P

So recently I’ve been spending quite a bit of time checking out the Bloody Italiana blog. No, not just because my girlfriend writes for them but because the site is a wealth of information on 70’s and 80’s Italian genre cinema. This is an area of film that I go in and out of being obsessed with–spurred on by the fact that Ennio Morricone worked with so many of the great Italian genre directors like Lucio Fulci, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Leone, and even that weirdo dood Dario Argento. While the blog focuses mainly on horror and giallo, it’s still a great starting point for anyone interested in expanding their cinema horizons. Great educated writing on sweet stuff.

And speaking of Lucio Fulci, here is a version of the title theme for his film Zombie as played by my guitar/drum duo Standards and Practices from a Halloween show we played in ‘06. Check it…

Zombie Title Theme

RIP Dennis Irwin + The State of Creativity

So news is coming out that NY jazz bassist Dennis Irwin has sadly passed away at the age of 56. He died of cancer which he was diagnosed with not too long ago, and which has led to much talk on the blogosphere and in a few publications. He sadly had to face this illness without health insurance, a problem shared with fellow NY jazz player Andrew D’Angelo who is currently dealing with a similar situation. This has raised quite a debate online fueled largely by the fact that many in the creative sector of NY and the U.S. at large do not have health insurance. There are arguments on both sides (luckily in America we always deal with things from 2 sides to keep it as unhelpful as possible) but we can all agree that not having health insurance sucks, and that not being able to make a decent living in a field that you have worked in your whole life also sucks.

This is definitely a big problem, and one that you can approach from many angles. Some people feel that as artists, they deserve to be treated better (i.e. more funding, higher wages, healthcare). Another approach is to hold down some sort of part time employment to help pay the bills. Still another approach (interestingly favored by the most avant of the avant-garde) is to secure a college level teaching position and work on your music from there. There are many other ways to make money, but the sad truth right now seems to be that playing the music you want to play has nothing to do with making a living. When you look at the development of music throughout history, making good money from your music is a relatively new concept. The tough part of the job (unless you go the “sideman” route*) is that once you have worked hard to develop a unique voice, then not only do you have to figure out how to get the music out there, but also how to get paid for it so that you can keep on creating. It’s a vicious cycle that is all too familiar to anyone trying to advance anything in any area of anything in the U.S. People like to appreciate art from afar, but because of the easy accessability of pop culture, art too often gets lost in the shuffle (because it’s creators are honing their crafts, then trying to figure out how to get the art out there, then trying to figure out how to make a living from it). When art does make it into pop culture, you almost always find out that the artist had been struggling for years, and something they did clicked with the right individual (i.e. someone willing to invest in them). This brings up a whole slew of other questions about art and the artist, and unfortunately NO answers.

Score 1 for Life, 0 for Art.

Sorry for the depressing post guys, but the scene these days can be depressing (you know, when you look at the facts and stuff).

*I’m am in no way saying that the “sideman” route is easy.  It actually is probably harder because you develop a way of playing to the point that you attract others who want to play with you, then you are usually depending on them to continue hiring you or for new people to like and hire you, and therefore living a life of constant stress!

Lau Kar-leung and the Importance of Being Musically Earnest.

Just wanted to let everyone know about a great blog post here. Dragon Dynasty’s Bey Logan just posted about his encounter with Shaw Bros. and Hong Kong movie legend Lau Kar-leung. This is the man responsible for the classic 36th Chamber of Shaolin, as well as many others including the great Heroes of the East, which DD are currently preparing for release on DVD soon. Bey does a great job with these films, filling them with as many extras as he can get his hands on, and his blog posts are always insightful.

Speaking of great blog posts: Darcy James Argue, a fellow jazz cohort fighting the good fight, posted a great analysis of the (un)importance of being a technical alien here. Being a virtuoso on your instrument always seems like a good idea, but then you graduate from high school, and you realize how much more you listen to Led Zeppelin than Joe Satriani. Its at that time that you realize how similar musical virtuosity is to the film Virtuosity…BAD!

Sukiyaki Western: Django

As soon as I heard that Takeshi Miike was remaking Sergio Corbucci’s Django with a mostly Japanese cast, and that it would be set in the 1100’s with guns, I was instantly hooked. I felt like this movie was made for me, and after finally seeing it (thanks Internet), I can say that this is one amazing movie mash up.

I was dubious at first, because I had only seen two other Miike films: Audition and Iichi the Killer. I loved Audition, but very strongly hated Iichi. Audition was so disturbing, but Iichi just seemed like a boring way to watch violence. But I love Corbucci’s original Django. I first discovered the film in a long closed Fan video store called VideoMania, and had recently re-fallen in love with it after my girlfriend gave me the new Blue Underground DVD release for my birthday. I was so impressed this second time that I wrote a song for the lead actor Franco Nero called Nero (woah…the creative forces at work here are SERIOUS). So I was very surprised late last year to learn that this very film was getting the Miike treatment.

The film opens, of course, with Quentin Tarantino in front of a mountain-scape painted background. He cuts into the stomach of a snake who had just partially devoured a chicken egg. He takes the egg out and wipes the blood off while behind him, a few thugs get ready to kill him. As soon as they speak, you realize that they are all Japanese and no matter how good or bad they are with English, they are all speaking it. Tarantino sets up the story as a battle between a gang dressed in white and one dressed in red before quickly killing the thugs and then beating the egg he recovered with chopsticks. AMAZING!

The film quickly establishes a great atmosphere through the combination of broken english, and many film genre conventions from Westerns Italian and American, Samurai films, and cartoons (anime), and it all blends together to create a completely unique little movie. There are too many great scenes and ideas to list here, but I will just say that like a lot of great mash up artists (Madlib comes to mind) Miike throws a ton of ideas at you, and they all work together–even when he forces his actors to speak a foreign language (much like Italian directors did).

Now, I hope that this movie will get a theatrical release in the U.S.