Katharine Whalen's Jazz Squad by Katharine Whalen (1999)
A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Archive
Katharine Whalen’s Jazz Squad by Katharine Whalen (1999)My computer was randomly in the mood for some jazz standards today. This is kind of an interesting little CD. First of all, some context: Katharine Whalen was in the band Squirrel Nut Zippers and this CD also features her former band mate Jim Mathus on guitar. It is straight-ahead jazz, played unadorned in a small combo setting. There is really very little that sets these performances apart from any restaurant combo you could hear on just about any night of the week in thousands of cities across the country.
However, it’s the “very little” that I want to talk about. At most points, it sounds like Whalen is doing an imitation of Billy Holiday. And really it’s uncanny how close she sounds to her obvious heroine. And that makes me wonder—is there any place in “art” for this kind of focused, specific modeling? Does it make her less of an “artist” that she he has been able to come so close to Holiday’s voice? My gut reaction is the old cliché: “she needs to find her own voice.” Literally. But then I think that there is an element of copying in all the arts. No one is an
absolute original, are they? Music isn’t created in a vacuum. The Beatles started out aping the skiffle groups. Led Zeppelin, the Yardbirds, Eric Clapton-they were all white boys who happened to like American blues. Eddie Van Halen, while totally re-invigorating electric guitar, was in turn a disciple of Clapton. And on and on it goes.
So, can I really condemn Katharine Whalen for so
successfully learning from her influence? No. The artistic impulse is a slippery thing, largely built on an individual making her own choices. Just because I happen to wind up on the receiving end of someone’s art, it doesn’t mean I am given free reign to judge both creator and creation. Discerning creation alone is enough challenge for a lifetime.
That said; separating Whalen from all Holiday considerations leaves this a fairly unaffecting album. I wouldn’t call it great, or “fine art,” but it’s certainly not garbage, either. As you can see, I’m kind of ambivalent towards this album.
It's Impossible
The being of truth stands in a primordial connection with Da-sein*. And only because Da-sein exists as constituted by disclosedness (that is, by understanding) can something like being be understood, only so is an understanding of being possible at all.
-Martin Heidegger
Being and Time I.VI
[*“Being there,” or “existence,” if I even understand that. (My notes, not his.)]
And that’s two of the easier sentences.
I’m a little more than halfway through the Heidegger and still not sure I’ve understood one damn word.
Wynton Marsalis
Speaking of Wynton Marsalis, I also read his book a couple weeks ago. It’s called
Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, and was a kind of behind-the-scenes look at his life as a traveling musician, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes biographical.
And I must say, at most points, it was
too behind-the-scenes. You see, Wynton was a big hero for me, growing up as a musician. So much so, that any depiction of the
real guy was doomed to fail in comparison to his myth. I’m sure this isn’t a real shocker to most people, but turns out….Wynton Marsalis is a regular, flawed man. He has his good points and bad points. He cusses and is a sexual being. He’s a workaholic. But he also takes time to listen to little kids play trumpet for him after a concert. He takes every opportunity to talk to kids at schools when he’s on the road.
It’s strange to find out the truth about your youthful idols.
Ken Burns Jazz
Sorry I haven’t been very regular with this blog lately. Work has been crazy busy for me. But enough of that.
So, I mentioned watching
Ken Burns’ Jazz a couple weeks ago and now that I’ve had some time to absorb and reflect, I thought I’d let you know a little bit about it. First of all, I must say it was some of the most interesting cinema I’ve seen in a while, (although it seemed to devote a little too much time to the period right before the big band era.)
One big theme is that of jazz being a symbol of American freedom. In my thought before seeing this film, I was already heading in the direction of jazz being a music of
personal freedom. The whole process of improvisation is a very liberated idea. And the concept of
group improvisation is, as I’ve said elsewhere, even more novel.
But what the film revealed to me was the importance of jazz during World War II. The country was swing-crazy. But across the ocean, jazz was a forbidden music, largely because of its association with African Americans and Jews-music of “subhumans,” as one German official called it. I had no idea about that little fact. And so, when a European gypsy like Django Reinhardt played American jazz standards with altered names to keep out of trouble- that was a pretty subversive act. The patriotism of swing and jazz during the 40’s was lost on me until I saw this film.
I also didn’t realize how “academic” the be-boppers were in comparison to what else was going on in the 50’s. I was exposed to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker pretty early on, so it just seemed to naturally belong under the “jazz” category for me, but not so at the time. Be-bop was kind of like anti-dance music. (Strange, when you think about how much the Beats loved it.) This film made be-bop out to be nothing short of a revolution.
The aesthetics of jazz seemed to get a little confused after be-bop, spectralizing into several different directions, which I kind of assumed.
Anyway, this documentary was obviously very thorough, touching all of the most famous players and moments. And when you’ve got 10 DVDs of time to kill, that’s pretty easy to do. Overall, I wonder who this film is for: history-type people, or music-type people. Obviously, both will find plenty of stuff of interest.
And so, I’ve been on a bit of a jazz kick since watching this, pulling out the Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Christian, and soon I’ll need to re-visit all of the Wynton Marsalis stuff that fed my brain in my junior-high and early high school years.
Whatcha Readin'?
I’m still in the throes of Heidegger, but I also just finished a great book called
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Beatles, by Geoff Emerick, who was the recording engineer for all of the Beatles’ singles and albums except for some of the
White Album and
Let It Be. Needless to say, he has some great stories to tell, some of which I’ve never heard before. And he shows a different side of the band as individuals, both flawed and brilliant, that is shocking at times.
And he also goes into some technical detail in revealing the studio trickery that he used in achieving certain sounds and reveals some of the compositional process for some of the more complicated moments on the middle and later albums.
All in all, a very interesting read and I recommend it for anyone who cares about the Beatles or their music.
Brutal Youth by Elvis Costello (1994)
Sorry it’s been so long since my last post, those of you out there who give a hoot. This is the busy time of year for me at work blah, blah, blah…
Last week I finished watching the ten-part documentary Ken Burns made about “Jazz.” Pretty interesting stuff and maybe I’ll comment on it in the future since it really deserves it and might save you the 18 hours of watching it if you’re not freakishly into music like certain people I could name.
While I personally have been on a jazz kick fueled by the above, my Excel spreadsheet seems to be getting a little sentimental, picking out some of my favorite artists. Today, Elvis Costello.
A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Library
Brutal Youth by Elvis Costello (1994)Man, what a fabulous album we have here! And I do mean an album. Not a mere collection of songs. This whole disc has a dynamic, “live-in-the-studio” vibe, thanks largely to Tchad Blake’s engineering. Blake is known for being the most influential proponent and developer of binaural recording in the studio. Basically what he would do is record certain parts with two room mics positioned on the ears of a “dummy head.” I’m not sure how many tracks of each song were recorded in this manner, but the end result is a hyper-realistic audio experience that makes you feel like you are in the room, especially when listening through headphones. There are some kind of physical phenomena that occur when sound is picked up by your ears that is not reproducible by traditional close-mic’ing. Maybe it’s caused by your ears receiving the sounds at very slightly different times. Anyway, I assume that this method of recording is one of the things that produces this album’s “vibey-ness.”
Quite simply, this is Costello at his best if you ask me- catchy melodies, succinct arrangements, stripped-down instrumentation, and guitars that sound like they’ve had thirty or so years to learn how to resonate. Stylistically there is some edgy pop “13 Steps Lead Down,” reserved balladry “Still Too Soon to Know” and some straight-ahead rock “20 % Amnesia,” but it all showcases great memorable hooks and some pretty smart harmonies. The melancholy of the closing song “Favourite Hour” with just EC at the piano alone made the disc worth the cost for me.
I don’t know what the story is with why Costello dropped his band The Attractions, but this album, (among others), makes me think that he was just as good without them as he was with them. He strikes me as the kind that might be a bit bossy with his songs, kind of like a Jeff Tweedy-type guy. But that’s mere conjecture.
I highly recommend that anybody who doesn’t own this album to rectify that situation, put it on around 6 or 7 in the evening and just crank it. I dare you to try to not sing along.
From the Kitchen Archives Vol.2 Live 1977 by Steve Reich (2005)
A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Library
From the Kitchen Archives Vol. 2 Live 1977 by Steve Reich (2005)As I’ve said before, the composer Steve Reich is one of the ten or so artists who totally shook the foundations of what I knew about music. It’s lucky that my friend the Excel spreadsheet spit out good old #487 today, because this is an interesting recording and a little on the rare side when it comes to Reich’s catalog.
So, what makes this an interesting album? Other than Reich’s music, (which is typically fantastic in concept, and even more fantastic in sounding), the overall sound is not very far from a bootleg. In just about every piece you can hear busses and trucks and cars outside the theater where this was recorded. The room itself sounds about the size of a catholic school gymnatorium.
Stylistically, two or three different phases of Reich’s technique are represented here: note-for-rest substitution in “Six Pianos,” and “Drumming,” the early phasing technique in “Violin Phase,” (which holds a special place in my heart as the piece which originally brought me to the altar of minimalism), and the concept music of “Pendulum Music”-the reason I bought this disc. Having seen and read about the idea of this piece, I was excited to see that it had actually been recorded. Basically, “Pendulum Music” is the sound of several open microphones hanging from the ceiling and swinging at random speeds directly over a speaker to produce feedback loops as they near the point of being perpendicular to the speaker. I just thought that was a wild idea and was interested in hearing the resulting sounds. To be quite honest, I wasn’t blown away by the sounds. But that’s part of experimental music. Just because you’re open to new kinds of sounds and music doesn’t mean that you’ll love what you hear.
But the other familiar stuff on the CD makes up for it. And there’s an interesting thing that happens when you hear the avant-garde, yet accessible music of Reich broken in upon by mundane, outside sounds like trucks driving away. John Cage would have considered those noises as much a part of the music as what the musicians prepared. I don’t know about that, but it surely inspires a conflict in my head, for Reich’s music is anything but mundane for me. It’s celestial, summing up the music of the spheres and inspires my mind to wander into bigger ideas than our walking around life. But this album, (probably unintentionally), presents both worlds-the world of art and world of city-life, simultaneously. Pretty interesting, I think.
Whatcha Readin'?
Oh, man. I am reading a book right now that is kicking my ass!
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger.
His main aim so far is to define the word “Being.” This is by far the most difficult stuff I’ve ever tried to read. But I will press on. I have this need to finish books, even if I get nothing out of it. I’m anal like that. When in a reading bind like this, I always have this hope that perseverance will pay off and treasures will abound for the one who finishes the race.
Where Ideas Go to Die
So I was thinking about my filing system that I use for stuff on my computer at work. Documents go to one of three places: the desktop, the recycle bin, or onto my personal share on a network drive. A document’s ultimate location is obviously determined by its’ importance, i.e. how often I use it.
I was kept up a couple nights ago with the idea that I order my world in a similar way, particularly when it comes to the world of ideas. You know, in this life, we’re constantly inundated by ideas. If you read anything or listen to people with any kind of attention, you will receive all kinds of differing ideas-some dramatically opposed to each other, some with nuanced differences, some completely compatible with each other.
And I was thinking about how we (I) process these ideas. Some are just ludicrous horseshit from the get-go. They go in my subconscious Recycle Bin, (Trash, if you’re a Mac user.) This is the final resting place for hate-fueled rhetoric from the religious ultra-right and all manner of emotional tripe from overly-sensitive pop artists.
And then every now and then, you get exposed to a thought that is just so “right.” (I wanted to say “seems so right,” but I don’t know about all that. I’m in the throes of an epistemological crisis right now.) These “true”-(ish?) ideas go into the personal share for safe-keeping, where they join the lives and deaths of Jesus, Socrates, and the odd quote of a philosopher here and there.
And then, there are a whole slew of ideas that stay on the desktop, where you can mess around with them and try to figure out where you stand on them, accept them or reject them. For me, this is where the bulk of ideas stay. But that’s the way I am.
I’m indecisive.
