Tag: music_history

Monk with mikes: A jazz history

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“The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall” (Thelonious Monk)

On the short list of American musical geniuses, Thelonious Sphere Monk is certainly included.

The cardboard boxes are everywhere, stacked almost to the ceiling, in the Manhattan loft where W. Eugene Smith, the renowned American photojournalist, once shared living space with Hall Overton, an obscure composer and pianist. Inside the boxes are wigs, maybe thousands, the inventory of a Chinese business that now holds the lease. Nothing about this nondescript building in the flower district betrays its decade-long history as a bustling clubhouse for the jazz scene, beginning in the mid-1950s.

So it takes some effort to picture Thelonious Monk, one of jazz’s great composers, pacing these floorboards early in 1959 as he prepares for his momentous large-group debut at Town Hall, which would help lay the groundwork for a career beyond clubs. It takes imagination to place him and Overton at a pair of upright pianos, hashing out chord voicings for one after another of his songs. But these things did happen; that much we know from an extraordinary cache of tape recordings made by Smith, who had wired most of the building with microphones.

The Monk-and-Overton tapes account for just a fragment of some 3,000 hours of material amassed by Smith from 1957 to ’65. Because of the light they shed on both musicians, their value is inestimable. Monk, famous for his cryptic silence and cavalier methods, comes across as exacting, lucid, even voluble — an eccentric genius, yes, but also a diligent one. Overton, enlisted to orchestrate Monk’s knotty compositions, is revealed as a patient amanuensis and a brilliant foil.

“What’s obvious is their mutual respect, and the extent of their precision,” said the pianist Jason Moran, 34. “It’s crazy to hear how specific everything was.”

Moran is among a handful of people to have listened to the loft recordings at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, which is in the process of cataloguing all of Smith’s tapes. On Friday, as part of a 50th anniversary celebration of the Town Hall concert, Moran will perform a postmodern tribute, complete with excerpts from the tapes. Together with a concert on Thursday — a more literal re-enactment led by the trumpeter Charles Tolliver, which will be broadcast live on WNYC-FM in New York — it’s among the more anticipated jazz events of this year.

[Click to continue reading Home life with mikes: A jazz history – International Herald Tribune]

I assume these recordings will find their way to a box set at your local jazz store: I know I’ll be anticipating listening to them.


“Complete Prestige Recordings” (Thelonious Monk)

Reading Around on February 20th

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Some additional reading February 20th from 09:50 to 18:29:

  • Reviews: Companies Accuse Yelp Of Review Extortion, Yelp Says No Way – Some San Francisco companies have accused the review website Yelp of manipulating reviews, either in exchange for buying advertising or as punishment for refusing. Yelp flat out denies the charges. They say that the posting and removal of reviews are determined solely by an algorithm and that their sales staff has no access to the reviews. But in this detailed article published this week in the East Bay Express, several restaurants cite phone calls and emails that they say indicates otherwise.

  • 50 Greatest Guitar Albums – Guitar World – Highway 61 Revisited introduced Bloomfield…his next major recording, 1966’s East-West with the Butterfield Blues Band, … The tune “East-West,” a 13-minute exploratory fusion of blues and Indian modality that features Bloomfield’s and Bishop’s guitars, flipped the switch for long-form rock improvisation. His shimmering slide licks and shrieking, treble-toned lead on “Walking Shoes,” akin to Hubert Sumlin’s playing on Howlin’ Wolf classics like “Killing Floor,” are ghostly, needling, vicious and patently unforgettable. On the band’s showcase, “Work Song,” Bloomfield’s melodies climb through scales in a manner closer to free-jazz saxophonist John Coltrane than to B.B. King, balancing chromatic ascents and descents with radically slurred bends and off-the-beat accents. And Bloomfield’s linear single-note playing on “I Got a Mind to Give Up Living,” which acknowledges his debt to King with wrist-shaking vibrato, captures the soulful essence of simmering slow blues.
  • Media Matters – Austin American Stateman , unlike AP, others, notes Heartland Institute’s energy industry ties – Well, yesterday the Austin American Statesman came out with a story making reference to Heartland and what did they do?: He is “regarded with reverence,” said Dan Miller, a publisher at the Heartland Institute, which puts out a newsletter asserting no scientific consensus on global warming and gets money from energy corporations. […] Climate scientists, however, hold that carbon dioxide emissions have a significant effect on a changing climate. A 2007 climate change study by an international group of scientists found that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and said with “very high confidence” that the net impact of “human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.”Atmospheric and climate scientists at UT and Texas A&M University have said that temperatures will rise in Texas, coastal communities are at risk from rising sea levels in the Gulf, and weather conditions are likely to include more severe droughts and flooding.

Reading Around on January 31st

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Some additional reading January 31st from 08:49 to 22:46:

  • When I was seventeen, it was a very good year – Cristgau usually has tastes similar to mine, 1984 was no exception (though at the time, there was a lot more thrash metal on my playlist; I hadn’t discovered mind-and-ear expanding drugs yet). Plus I only turned 17 in 1986.

  • Harper’s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era (Harper’s Magazine) – Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

    Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
    …
    Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland: 6

    Estimated total miles he has ridden his bike as president: 5,400

    Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

Obama’s Secret Record Collection

Seth Anderson0 comment

mmmm, vintage 180 gram vinyl. Wonder what sort of amplifier the White House has? They should release some photos of the listening room…

Vinyl is the best

When Barack Obama moved into the White House on January 20th, he gained access to five chefs, a private bowling alley — and a killer collection of classic LPs. Stored in the basement of the executive mansion is the official White House Record Library: several hundred LPs that include landmark albums in rock (Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), punk (the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols), cult classics (Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin) and disco. Not to mention records by Santana, Neil Young, Talking Heads, Isaac Hayes, Elton John, the Cars and Barry Manilow.

During the waning days of the Nixon administration, the RIAA, the record companies’ trade group, decided the library should include sound recordings as well as books. In 1973, the organization donated close to 2,000 LPs.

…

Paul Nelson, then Rolling Stone’s reviews editor — compiled a list to reflect “diversity in what was going on in popular music.” They picked the Kinks’ Arthur1 for its “theme of empire,” and Blumenthal snuck in favorites like David Bowie’s Hunky Dory.

…

But Obama may be pleased to learn that at least a few of his favorite albums — Bob Dylan’s


Blood on the Tracks

Bruce Springsteen’s


Born to Run

— are there if he wants them on pristine slabs of vinyl.

[From Obama’s Secret Record Collection : Rolling Stone]

 


“Trout Mask Replica” (Captain Beefheart)

There isn’t a full list of the albums anywhere, but Captain Beefheart? Really? I wonder if it was ever opened? or played more than once. Is there a CD player too? Did the Bush family leave behind any favorite George Jones albums?

Gram Parsons and Band

Footnotes:
  1. full title: Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) [↩]

Reading Around on January 23rd

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Some additional reading January 23rd from 09:12 to 09:14:

  • The Allmusic Blog » Binge Listening: Solage – “The best known of Solage’s works is the rondeau for three voices, Fumeux fume par fumée, a staple of music history courses and a favorite among the Allmusic classical editors. This intensely chromatic and modally meandering piece may be about dreaming, smoke, or drug use — no one is quite sure what to make of it! But it is one of the oddest examples of early music extant”

  • David Bowie, 1973-76 – “Geoff MacCormack toured with Bowie during his glam-rock heyday, and has these (rather wonderful) snaps to prove it”

Them Never Love Poor Marcus

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“Right Time” (The Mighty Diamonds)

I always wonder what my subconscious is attempting to inform me of when I wake up singing a song. This morning the song ringing through my mind was the Mighty Diamonds classic 1976 cut: Them Never Love Poor Marcus.

Here’s a version.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DAJI8dpNIE


Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Till they betray him
Him own brethren sell him fe rice ‘n’ peas
They didn’t know there would be days like this
Now do you man waste in such a squeeze, yeah

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Men like Bag O’ Wire should burn in fire
the betrayer of Marcus Garvey

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Till the betray, one bredren sell him for rice and peas
They didn’t know there would be days like these
Now the human race in such a squeeze, mmm Yeah

Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus-they
Never love him, oh no
Them never love, never love, never love poor Marcus

Men like Bag O’ Wire should burn in fire fire fire, Lord
Betrayer.
[repeat chorus]

Black man come together, unity is forever

Such a great song, and a great album, but I’m not sure exactly the point I was making to myself. Hope it isn’t the obvious point, of betrayal and politics…

Ralph Heibutzki of Allmusic writes:

Few reggae bands evoked their audience’s suffering as viscerally as the Mighty Diamonds, not least because of lead vocalist Donald “Tabby” Shaw. Although overshadowed by stars likeBunny Wailer, Shaw’s aching lilt remains a compelling signature of the roots-oriented ’70s era. His graceful yet forceful presence on songs like “I Need a Roof” — which laments lack of housing — is exactly what the music needs. A strong moralistic undertone runs throughout the album. “Right Time” warns of an impending breakdown in social order, and “Why Me Black Brother Why” decries the rampant lawlessness afflicting the island nation. “Them Never Love Poor Marcus” scornfully denounces the people who betrayed the black nationalist leader (Marcus Garvey) for “rice and peas.” “Gnashing of Teeth” takes up the Biblical imperative of Judgment Day, in which “only good works shall see you through.” Some strategic departures help to leaven the band’s approach, most notably the love song “Shame and Pride.” Lloyd Ferguson steps out of his backup vocalist role on “Go Seek Your Rights,” which reminds people to respect their differences while striving for social change, and “Africa” is a wistful tribute to the continent that Rastafarian believers consider their final home. The playing is first-rate, bolstered by unobtrusive contributions from session aces like bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar. No student of the genre should miss this landmark roots album.

while Robert Christgau gives Right Time an A-

On the purely aural, preverbal evidence–the sweet, precise harmonies and arrangements, the intent beat–you’d figure they were singing songs of love, or at least sexual mastery. Ditto from their foolish stage act. But in fact there are no broken hearts in these lyrics, only broken bodies, and the exultation is the exultation of oppression defied. In other words, this follows reggae conventions as Americans know it, and on a few cuts conventional is how it sounds. Usually, though, lead singer Donald Sharpe sounds as if he’s learned all this more recently than the Bob Marley of Rastaman Vibration.

The Scottish Origin of Rap

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Alex Boese of the Weird Universe blog adds a counterpoint to the Scottish origin of rap theory we ridiculed a few weeks ago:

The more conventional theory is that the roots of rap music trace back to ancient West African poets called “griots”. From Wikipedia:

the griots of West Africa were delivering stories rhythmically, over drums and sparse instrumentation. Because of the time that has passed since the griots of old, the connections between rap and the African griots are widely established, but not clear-cut. However, such connections have been acknowledged by rappers, modern day “griots”, spoken word artists, mainstream news sources, and academics.

Actually, given the big gap in time between these two possible origins and the emergence of rap in the 1970s, both theories sound a little iffy to me.

[From Weird Theory: The Scottish Origin of Rap]

When Fats Waller Met Al Capone

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“The Very Best of Fats Waller” (Fats Waller)

Kottke pointed out this great incident in Jazz history.

One evening Fats felt a revolver poked into his paunchy stomach. He found himself bullied into a black limousine, heard the driver ordered to East Cicero. Sweat pouring down his body, Fats foresaw a premature end to his career, but on arrival at a fancy saloon, he was merely pushed toward a piano and told to play. He played. Loudest in applause was a beefy man with an unmistakable scar: Al Capone was having a birthday, and he, Fats, was a present from “the boys”.

The party lasted three days. Fats exhausted himself and his repertoire, but with every request bills were stuffed into his pockets. He and Capone consumed vast quantities of food and drink. By the time the black limousine headed back to the Sherman, Fats had acquired severeal thousand dollars in cash and a decided taste for vintage champagne

[From First encounters: When Fats Waller met Al Capone | Independent, The (London) ]

I’ve always had an affection for Fats Waller (and in fact, we have a song of his that is ‘penciled in‘ to our screenplay), now I love him even more. What a cool cat.

By the way, you could purchase a home previously owned by Al Capone (seen here getting an autographed baseball at Comiskey Park1 ), if you were so inclined:

Want to own a notorious piece of Chicago history?



The modest, red-brick home once owned by Al Capone is expected to hit the market this spring for an estimated $450,000, marking a new chapter for the infamous South Side landmark that has had just two owners since the death of Capone’s mother in 1952.



“I think there’s some value in the home’s history,” said Barbara Hogsette, 71, who has lived in the house since 1963

…

For more than a century, the two-flat home with large bay windows has stood near the corner of 72nd Street and South Prairie Avenue in the working-class Park Manor neighborhood. Cook County records show the Capones bought the home for $5,500 in August 1923, part of a wave of first- and second-generation European immigrants who moved to that part of the city in the Prohibition era.

Footnotes:
  1. Gangster Al Capone and his son having baseball autographed by player Gabby Hartnett aka Charles Leo Hartnett from Capone’s front row seat [↩]

Possible Return of CBGB

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“CBGB and OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock” (“Harry N. Abrams, Inc.”)

Cool, if it works out. The founder of CBGB, Hilly Kristal, has died, and his former wife, Karen, is disputing ownership. She probably just wants a percentage, doesn’t sound like she has any plan to try to reopen the club on her own.

The notorious urinal that served patrons of the famed New York rock club CBGB for 33 years now sits retired in a basement in Manhattan’s posh SoHo district.

Plucked from the graffiti-covered walls when the club closed in 2006, the urinal is among several CBGB artifacts — such as the gritty “CBGB & OMFUG” awning that hung over 315 Bowery and a phone booth covered with punk-rock band stickers — donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, which opened its doors last week.

The donation is just one step taken by entrepreneurial group CBGB Holdings LLC to revive the brand and transform it once more into a money-making business — without jeopardizing its counter-culture past.

Last month, the group struck a distribution deal with Bravado, a Universal Music Group company that markets rock-themed merchandise around the world, to help sell millions of CBGB T-shirts. Next summer, the Vans Warped Tour music festival will showcase an interactive CBGB exhibit.

These deals were crafted by two men who believe there’s life after death for the landmark venue: James Blueweiss, a marketer who began advising the club a year before it closed, and Robert Williams, a veteran of the retail music business who helped open HMV stores around the world. The two attracted capital from angel investors and paid $3.5 million for the rights to the CBGB brand in 2008. Their company, CBGB Holdings, owns all intellectual property, domestic and international trademarks, copyrights, video and audio libraries, ongoing apparel business, Web site and physical property of the original club.

[From The Return of Rock? – WSJ.com]
[non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

I never lived in New York, but I have gone to a couple of shows there, and yes, it was a bit of a dive. So many famous groups played there that CBGB will always be part of rock music history.

Bookmarks for December 3rd through December 4th

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A few interesting links for December 3rd through December 4th:

  • T.R.O.Y.: On Your Marks, It's Funk Marathon Stage 1 – "This is volume one from a six part series. I put these together years ago. The material is mostly 70's funk, with a few exceptions here and there. You'll recognize some well known samples, but there is also a fair amount of obscure music too. The idea with these long-play funk mixes was to fit as many dope tracks as I could onto a 700 megabyte cdr. I wanted all day compilations for driving, working and generally just grooving. There are distinct sections in each volume, so check them out thoroughly."
  • ODETTA RIP – "Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

    In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." He said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said."

  • Ethiopian music legend convicted of manslaughter – "Afro first made his name on the Ethiopian music scene in 2001 with his mix of reggae and east African pop. He became renowned for songs paying tribute to the late Emperor Haile Selassie as well as athletics heroes Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie.

    His third album, Yasteseryal, was released in 2005, the year of disputed national elections that saw mass anti-government protests quashed violently by the state. One of Afro's songs accused the government of failing to deliver on promises of change, and his music became the unofficial soundtrack of the opposition struggle.

    Afro was detained shortly after the hit-and-run incident in 2006, and released on bail. He was the biggest local star of Ethiopia's millennium celebrations in 2007, before being arrested again and charged in April, leading Ethiopian bloggers to question why it took the authorities 18 months to decide to put him on trial. A least two journalists were arrested for writing articles seen as siding with Afro."

  • Hi, How Are You? | MetaFilter – Austin music scene ~1990-1995 (an unscientific survey)

    Boy, I saw a lot of these bands, even knew several band members. Ahhh, youth.

From Snapshots from a Flounder

The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

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Another Quickie review1


The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

Awesome, if you like Adrian Belew’s electric guitar caterwauling on top of Talking Head classics. To be fair, only on a few tracks. Three thumbs up2

All the tempos have been quickened, and the rhythm section locks in. I posted some YouTube footage from this tour a while ago, the files might still be accessible.

Extended to 33 songs from the original release, spanning 2 hours and 36 minutes of funk, Afro-pop, and quirkiness.

Sean Westergaard of AllMusic writes:

The sound is crisp and clear, with tight drumming, a great punchy bass sound, and clearly separated guitars that allow you to really hear what complementary (and fine) players David Byrne and Jerry Harrison were. Byrne is the über-geek with a totally unique delivery (especially on tracks like “Who Is It?,” “Artists Only,” and “Stay Hungry,” not to mention his nervous stage announcements), but they all play with the raw energy of a young band on the way up. The bonus tracks are all excellent. There is no sense whatsoever that they were simply padding things for a longer running time, and it’s just great hearing live versions of songs like “Mind” (with extended guitar solo), “The Big Country,” and “The Book I Read” that have never been readily available in live form.

As fantastic as the first disc is, the second one is perhaps even more exciting. The expanded band (ten musicians and two backup singers) is amazing, not only adding power and punch to the Remain in Light material, but in most cases surpassing the studio versions (no mean feat). These live versions of “The Great Curve,” “Houses in Motion,” and “Crosseyed and Painless (all prominently featuring Adrian Belew) are nearly worth the price of admission alone, but the bonus tracks here are just as exciting. The original release had no overlapping songs on the two LPs, with the large version of the band sticking solely to tunes from Remain in Light and Fear of Music. Now you’re treated to arrangements of “Psycho Killer,” “Stay Hungry,” and “Warning Sign” as performed by the expanded lineup, not to mention live versions of “Animals,” “Cities,” and “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On).” The band is on fire throughout the performances, and fans of Belew’s guitar playing will practically be giddy with ecstasy. These are some of his finest performances strictly as a guitarist, and although Remain in Light was the only studio album he played on, he beautifully adds his own touches to “Stay Hungry” and especially “Psycho Killer.” Byrne also contributes some cool guitar, sometimes using a great delay sound, and again, the clear separation of instruments lets you really hear the details.

Footnotes:
  1. for Musebin [↩]
  2. umm, well, two thumbs, and your neighbor’s thumb too for good measure, because you will probably want to play this album with the volume turned way up [↩]

Stars of Track and Field

Seth Anderson0 comment


“If You’re Feeling Sinister” (Belle & Sebastian)

For some reason, I was humming this song when I awoke today. Probably related to some now forgotten dream, but am passing it along for you to decipher.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIF8n5-hbrg

The lyrics are something like:

Make a new cult every day to suit your affairs

Kissing girls in english, at the back of the stairs

You’re a honey, with a following of innocent boys

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way

They never know it

Because you never show it

You always get your way



Have you and her been taking pictures of your obsessions?

Because I met a [boy] who went through one of your sessions

In his blue velour and silk

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s throwing discuss

For Liverpool and witness

You liberated

A boy I never rated

And now he’s doing business



The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people



Could I write a piece about you now that youve made it?

About the hours spent, the worldliness in your training

You only did it so that you could wear

Your terry underwear

And feel the city air

Run past your body



Could I write a requiem for you when you’re dead?

“She had the moves, she had the speed, it went to her head

She never needed anyone to get her round the track

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her into college

But when she’s on her back

She had the knowledge

To get her what she wanted”

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field, you are

The stars of track and field are beautiful people

Ten Thousand Hours

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“Outliers: The Story of Success” (Malcolm Gladwell)

I’ve already ordered Malcom Gladwell’s new book, Outliers1 just on the strength of a few excerpts I’ve stumbled upon. His New Yorker magazine style of writing is easily consumed2, and his ideas are usually interesting, if not always perfectly formed. His theories are what they are, but truth be told, I really just like his anecdotes. Speaking of the Beatles, I did not know this factoid about their Hamburg days…

Is this a general rule of success? If you scratch below the surface of every great achiever, do you always find the equivalent of the Michigan Computer Centre or the hockey all-star team – some sort of special opportunity for practice? Let’s test the idea with two examples: the Beatles, one of the most famous rock bands ever, and Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men.

The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – came to the US in February 1964, starting the so-called “British Invasion” of the American music scene. The interesting thing is how long they had already been playing together. Lennon and McCartney began in 1957. (Incidentally, the time that elapsed between their founding and their greatest artistic achievements – arguably Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album – is 10 years.) In 1960, while they were still a struggling school rock band, they were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany.

“Hamburg in those days did not have rock’n’roll music clubs. It had strip clubs,” says Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles’ biography, Shout! “There was one particular club owner called Bruno, who was originally a fairground showman. He had the idea of bringing in rock groups to play in various clubs. They had this formula. It was a huge nonstop show, hour after hour, with a lot of people lurching in and the other lot lurching out. And the bands would play all the time to catch the passing traffic. In an American red-light district, they would call it nonstop striptease.

“Many of the bands that played in Hamburg were from Liverpool,” Norman continues. “It was an accident. Bruno went to London to look for bands. But he happened to meet a Liverpool entrepreneur in Soho, who was down in London by pure chance. And he arranged to send some bands over. That’s how the connection was established. And eventually the Beatles made a connection not just with Bruno, but with other club owners as well. They kept going back, because they got a lot of alcohol and a lot of sex.”

And what was so special about Hamburg? It wasn’t that it paid well. (It didn’t.) Or that the acoustics were fantastic. (They weren’t.) Or that the audiences were savvy and appreciative. (They were anything but.) It was the sheer amount of time the band was forced to play. Here is John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band’s performances at a Hamburg strip club called the Indra: “We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over. In Liverpool, we’d only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing.”

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don’t perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

“They were no good on stage when they went there and they were very good when they came back,” Norman says. “They learned not only stamina, they had to learn an enormous amount of numbers – cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock’n’roll, a bit of jazz, too. They weren’t disciplined on stage at all before that. But when they came back they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.”

[From Extract from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius? | Books | The Guardian ]

The excerpt goes on, click if you want to read more. Or just buy the book!

Footnotes:
  1. Amazon sent me an email today that the book was shipped from their warehouse – I should get it by Tuesday [↩]
  2. I tried to avoid using the phrase, breezy, but it does fit [↩]

Forca Bruta

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Another Quickie Review


“Forca Bruta” (Jorge Ben)

The guitar rhythms circle around a moving middle, makes me move my belly button in concentric ovals in my chair. Huge thumbs up.
From the Amazon blurb

First time on CD in the US – and first time in the world in over 15 years! A groundbreaking album from the young Jorge Ben – one of Brazil’s most soulful singers ever – heard here at a pivotal point in his career! Forca Bruta is a record forever transformed Brazilian music with its unique blend of samba and soul – and it features some tremendous rhythm work from Trio Mocoto – who bring in a wide variety of percussion techniques to make the whole thing groove. There’s an earthy, laidback feel to the whole set – one that makes the album feel like a spontaneous expression of genius, even at the few points when larger orchestrations slide into the mix. The album’s easily one of Jorge Ben’s greatest – and it’s a much-heralded Brazilian treasure that’s finally getting reissued!

RIP Mitch Mitchell

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“Jimi Hendrix: Live at Monterey” (Experience Hendrix)

By now you’ve probably heard that former Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell has died. The Criterion Collection blog mentions an interesting factoid:

Mitch Mitchell, the inimitable drummer featured in all of the Jimi Hendrix material in Monterey Pop, died this week at age sixty-one. A one-of-a-kind player, Mitchell was the perfect foil for Hendrix and integral to the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. His roiling, explosive approach was a rhythmic analogue to Jimi’s redefinition of the guitar.

For the Monterey Pop Criterion release, we had a hell of a time trying to re-create that huge drum sound from the studio records. The great remote recordist at Monterey, Wally Heider, did a valiant job just trying to get anything on tape. The seven-track master we had to work with had mics being moved and repatched in the middle of songs. Drums were an afterthought to the vocals and guitar, so legendary engineer Eddie Kramer had to build much of the drum sound from bass player Noel Redding’s open vocal mic!

[From On Five: The Criterion Collection Blog]


“Are You Experienced?” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)

The three first Jimi Hendrix albums1 are essential to any self-respecting rock snob’s music library.

Footnotes:
  1. Electric Ladyland is my favorite of the three, but Are You Experienced and Axis : Bold as Love are almost as good [↩]