7/4

"the avant guard allows for so much more freedom...because you can't really make any mistakes."

I need one of these:

It's true. My Martin sounds much better than when I first got it And it sounded great then! I slapped new strings on this guitar last night and it sounds even better now!

Didn't buy one, but I did go to the NJ Guitar and Bass Center. They were supposed to be open, but not today. Where's that? Edison. Along with all the other Eq., they have a lot of basses and more fretless basses on the wall than anywhere else I've been. web page Call first! They're real close to both the NJ Turnpike and Rt.1 And don't go on a weekend. Too many kids playing Eruption or whatever... They had one of these that I wanted to check out a few weeks back, but the store was small and busy. I finally got back over there and this bass was totally lifeless!

I tried a Martin bass guitar recently, I was so tempted to buy it. Might have been this model.

I got a kick out of that too, but it's the video that cracks me up. It's the Spinal Tap/Fear of a Black Hat of free improv/funny rat.

Stimpy's Pregnant There's a new DVD coming out! The Lost Episodes

I like to say this works, but it only helps.

http://www.myspace.com/ibsmusic

June 17, 2006 Music Review Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos at the Village Vanguard By BEN RATLIFF, NYT Guillermo Klein's Los Guachos, 11 musicians, are making unnameable music at the Village Vanguard this week, rich and sticky in rhythm and harmony. It doesn't have much to do with current trends in the rest of jazz, but only jazz musicians could be making it. It is not the only way or the true way; it is just one excellent, original way. Or maybe it is 11 ways: what makes the music more special is Mr. Klein's attention to the individual sound personalities of the group's members. Mr. Klein, a pianist making his Vanguard debut, is not selling his audience jazz, per se — and not Argentine music either, though Argentina is his country, and some of the rhythms in Thursday's early set related back to the six-eight chacarera of its musical culture. The set included short, through-composed pieces with no solos; longer pieces with several solos, some unaccompanied; a lot of baroque counterpoint; a heartfelt song about a soccer player; imposing, layered rhythms built by Jeff Ballard on trap set and Richard Nant on the big, cylindrical Argentinian drum called the bombo; and a transcription of a famous, quiet, solemn piece of classical music from 1940. Best of all, it was a tight, organized performance by a cohesive band serving the music. There was no dead space, no pointless soloing. One heard a reasonable amount of improvising from the three excellent saxophone soloists, Bill McHenry, Miguel Zenon, and Chris Cheek, but from other first-rate improvisers, including the guitarist Ben Monder and the trumpeter Diego Urcola, almost nothing. Each set looks to be entirely different. Mr. Klein's disciplining of rhythm and harmony creates a stir in the body. When the band played something complex, like the 13-beat rhythm he wrote into "The Snake," or a similar one written by the band's trumpeter and percussionist Richard Nant in "Chucaro" (it could be heard as 13 but broke down more exactly into three, four and two threes), it felt purposeful, not just tricky, and the audience got behind it, cheering forcefully. First in the set there was "Venga," a hard, loud, droning, chacarera- related piece, ending on an explosion of the tonic chord in which the horn players bore down hard, bringing grit into their long tones. Later there was "Con Brasil Adentro," its motion defined by a series of organlike chords held by the brass; then "Fuga X," a tangle of related contrapuntal lines based in a weird, invented clave; and a bit later again, "El Espejo," which moved forward with constant echoes of its short lines. In an unaffected, husky voice, Mr. Klein sang "Va Román," a song of encouragement for the Argentinian soccer player Juan Román Riquelme (once of the Argentine team Boca Juniors, now of the Spanish team Villareal). As he sang, the band moved through a small handful of chords, widening its territory in the middle with Chris Cheek's powerful, slowly building baritone saxophone solo. At the middle of the set, the band played the fifth movement of Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time." Bill McHenry took over the tensile melody, written for cello, on soprano saxophone, an instrument he doesn't normally play; he gave it a personal reading over the slowly tolling piano chords, a little less sure and steady than one would have gotten from either of the two saxophonists next to him, who both play it a lot. The Messiaen was originally marked by the composer as "infinitely slow, ecstatic," and in this set a piece like this didn't seem unusual: those are qualities compatible with various parts of Mr. Klein's work. More to the point, it was matched to the individual musical voices of the players on stage, which Mr. Klein seemed determined to draw out. Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos continue through Sunday night at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037.

June 17, 2006 Music Review The Vision Festival: On the Fringe and Reveling in Rhythm By NATE CHINEN In 1970, the saxophonist Sam Rivers and his wife, Beatrice, opened Studio Rivbea in a loft on Bond Street in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Rivers was already an accomplished musician at the time — he had toured with Miles Davis, made albums for Blue Note and taught at Wesleyan — so this act of self-determination had more than a casual resonance. For nearly a decade, Studio Rivbea served the city's avant-garde jazz community as a performance space committed to an ethos of independence. The same principles, and much the same aesthetic, govern the Vision Festival, an annual summit of experimental music, art and dance being held this week at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts on the Lower East Side. Founded in 1996 by Patricia Nicholson Parker, a dancer whose husband, the bassist William Parker, is a Studio Rivbea alumnus, the Vision Festival has evolved into an impressively vibrant and well-organized affair. Fittingly, this year's edition bears a dedication to Mr. Rivers. Wednesday's program was billed as "Lifetime Recognition: Sam Rivers Day." Mr. Rivers presided over the occasion with grace and good humor. At 82, he is irrefutably an elder statesman, but he wears that distinction lightly. In an evening bracketed by two of his working bands, he conveyed a sense of mischievous, ageless wonder. That's not to say that his music lacked gravity or focus. His Rivbea Orchestra, the big band that kicked off the festivities, had both qualities in abundance. Its opening tune, "Monsoon," employed a syncopated rhythmic tattoo played by the full company of saxophones, trumpets and trombones (and a lone tuba). It sounded like a Morse code distress signal overlaid with a blaring, polytonal dissonance. Another piece in the set, "Mélange," featured a climbing melodic line that casually evoked the 12-tone language of Arnold Schoenberg. "Flair" and "Spunk" — two words, by the way, that could be said to describe Mr. Rivers — were more elastic and contrapuntal, with flashes of calypso and rhythm and blues. Mr. Rivers has lived in Orlando, Fla., for the past 15 years, and he has stocked his ensembles with musicians from that area. They were markedly at ease with Mr. Rivers's heaving arrangements, and a handful of them — including the trumpeter Tom Parmenter, the trombonist Andrea Rowlinson and the tenor saxophonist David Pate — made an impression during their brief solo openings. But the most dynamic part of the orchestra was the rhythm section, composed of the bassist Doug Mathews and the drummer Anthony Cole. Both are members of Mr. Rivers's trio, which closed the evening — after sets by the trombonist Grachan Moncur III and the drummer Warren Smith, each with a sextet — on a decidedly high note. Partly this was because Mr. Rivers had a chance to stretch out as an instrumentalist. His tenor saxophone style was gruff but nimble, obliquely rooted in blues feeling. On soprano, he went for scrambled flurries. His phrasing on both instruments — and, in a tantalizing stretch, on flute — was fitful but masterful. Mr. Cole has become adept at anticipating the peaks and pauses of Mr. Rivers's solos, and his drumming provided an uncannily intuitive punctuation. It also bonded tightly to Mr. Mathews's elastic bass lines; together the two musicians produced a rhythmic slipstream. All three musicians make a virtue of versatility. Mr. Cole and Mr. Rivers took turns sitting at the piano, each with a strikingly different style. One haunting ballad featured Mr. Rivers on soprano, Mr. Cole on tenor and Mr. Mathews on bass clarinet. What could have felt like dilettantism was instead a moving expression of exploratory ambition. During each of Mr. Rivers's sets, a painter stood at the back of the stage, swiping at a canvas in loose accord with the music. (Jeff Schlanger, the event's informal artist in residence, had his own easel set up in the front row.) The festival, which runs through Sunday, encourages its audiences to perform similar acts of imaginative translation.

Ah...Morton is good for you.

Radigue is a big analog synth drone, twisting the filter knobs. Love her.

Good for you! I had great seats to hear Metheny/Burton here in NJ touring to support that Reunion album in '90. Now if they would only use Eberhard Weber on bass...

He's your Uncle Morty too? Wow. See you at the family reunion. Thanks for this. Not by blood, but we have a couple of connections. I have a string quartet coming out on a DVD comp dedicated to him any day now. And there's another one where I found out recently how he was a young admirer of a disant cousin of mine who wrote and died young of TB many years ago.

Very cool. I visit a simple web site like my own and I see a simple set of relationships and links. Organissimo is still growing while the app checks the links. I have CNN growing in another window.

June 16, 2006 Arts Extra | Maceo Parker and Prince Prince a Surprise Guest at Celebrate Brooklyn By NATE CHINEN, NYT The new season of Celebrate Brooklyn kicked into high gear last night at the Prospect Park Bandshell, with crackling backbeats, a tight horn section and an unannounced special guest: Prince. The featured artist was Maceo Parker, an alto saxophonist best known for his long association with James Brown. Prince’s cameo came as a surprise even to Mr. Parker, according to representatives of Brooklyn Information & Culture, the nonprofit organization that sponsors the series. Mr. Parker fronted his nine-piece band in an energetic, funk-soul set that lasted roughly an hour and a half. At 9:52 p.m., after what appeared to be the end of the show, several members of Prince’s touring band walked out from the wings. Then came the artist himself, sharply attired in a white suit, a black shirt and sunglasses, and clutching a hollow-bodied Ibanez guitar. He played just one number: “Get on the Boat,” the closing track from his latest album, “3121” (Universal). But the song’s James Brown groove suited the occasion, and gave Mr. Parker the chance to recreate his horn arrangement from the album. Prince sang some upbeat lyrics extolling racial harmony, and took a fleeting solo on guitar. Then he struck a dramatic pose, tossed his guitar pick and a white towel into the audience, and strutted off. He had been onstage for exactly seven minutes. However brief, the appearance galvanized the crowd, and made for a splashy close to the concert. “To have somebody like Prince show up just makes it all the more special for everyone involved,” said Jack Walsh, Celebrate Brooklyn’s producer and director. Mr. Walsh was responsible for the guest apearance. “I sent an email to a friend in the concert business,” he said, “and it got forwarded to the right person. It was on a whim, but the response was immediate. Somehow it just worked out.” Prince happened to be in town for a “Good Morning America” taping that took place this morning in Bryant Park. Though his Prospect Park appearance was a secret, word had begun to spread in the audience by the time he took the stage.

Sure thing folks. I think Uncle Morty is important.

I just call the cops any time they get loud.

Boot from the net.

It's a mandolin.

Zappa plays Zappa Düsseldorf Philipshalle 21 May 2006 Set list: Disc 1 (74:18) set 1 01 - Intro 02 - Help I'm a rock 03 - Hungry freaks daddy 04 - Let's make the water turn black 05 - Florentine Pogen 06 - The Pygmy twylyte 07 - The idiot bastard son 08 - Cheepnis 09 - Dweezil talking 10 - King Kong 11 - Don’t You Eat that Yellow Snow 12 - St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast 13 - Father Oblivion 14 - Dweezil talking 15 - Inca roads 16 - Imaginary diseases Disc 2 (64:39) set 2 01 - Bozzio intro 02 - I'm so cute 03 - Tryin’ To Grow A Chin 04 - City of Tiny Lites 05 - Punky’s Whips 06 - Black Page story 07 - The Black Page drumsolo 08 - The Black Page #2 09 - Peaches en regalia 10 - Montana 11 - Village of the Sun 12 - Echidna’s Arf 13 - Zomby Woof Disc 3 (44:01) 01 - Dweezil talking 02 - Sofa #2 03 - Applause 04 - Camarillo Brillo 05 - The Orange County Lumber Truck 06 - More Trouble Every Day 07 - A Token of His Extreme 08 - Applause 09 - Stayin' alive 10 - Cosmic Debris Line-up: Dweezil Zappa - Stereo Gibson Napoleon Murphy Brock - flute, alto saxophone and vocal Pete Griffin - bass Jamie Kime - guitar Joe Travers - drums Aaron Arntz - keyboards Sheila Gonzales - keyboards, sax and vocal Billy Hulting - percussion and marimba special guests: Napoleon Murphy Brock Steve Vai Terry Bozzio

By DAVID ZIMBALIST. NY Sun June 14, 2006 "This is a surreal experience!" That's no understatement, coming from a man named Dweezil. Frank Zappa's 36-year-old son was clearly touched as he surveyed his extended New York family at the Beacon Theatre on Monday night. It was a reunion more than 10 years in the making, and well deserving of the standing ovation. The journey for artists who wish to follow in their fathers' footsteps can be harrowing. Despite his death from prostate cancer in 1993 at 52, Frank Zappa produced a catalog of more than 60 albums, with styles ranging from 1950s doo-wop and rock 'n' roll to big-band jazz and contemporary classical music. Dweezil Zappa had to refine his guitar playing for years in order to do this tour, trading in his Eddie Van Halen licks and re-connecting with his father's far-reaching and sometimes overburdening legacy. Backed by an enthusiastic eightpiece ensemble fronted by the saxophonist and vocalist Napoleon Murphy Brocke - a member of Zappa's band from 1973 to 1976 - Dweezil tore through some classics from his father's seminal 1960s albums, "Freak Out!" and "We're Only in It for the Money." Zappa archivist and drummer Joe Travers was the engine behind an extremely tight and well-rehearsed ensemble, having just come off the European leg of the tour. The lyrics to "Hungry Freaks," "Daddy," and "Trouble Every Day" never sounded more contemporary, and Brocke's mugging and dancing were the perfect accompaniment. Dweezil then moved on to some of his father's more challenging material from the 1970s. The band reproduced nearly the entire "Roxy and Elsewhere" album from 1974 with noteperfect execution. The complex, Stravinsky-like meter changes and odd note groupings of "Echidnas Arf (Of You)" flowed almost as effortlessly as in the original version. But it was during Dweezil's guitar solos, particularly in "Inca Roads," that the son most successfully infused his own voice into that of his father's, making it an evening of interpretation and exploration rather than mere reproduction. The audience, comprised of teenage fans and veteran Zappa admirers alike, came prepared for anything. Young and old belted out the lyrics with abandon. And people literally jumped at the chance to participate in a reggae version of the instrumental "King Kong": Dweezil con ducted both the audience and the band in much the same way his father did, using hand signals and gestures as cues. The highlight of the evening came when guest drummer Terry Bozzio and guitarist Steve Vai, both Zappa alumni, took the stage to help perform "The Black Page," parts I and II. Originally written as a drum solo much in the style of Zappa's favorite composer, Edgard Varese (specifically the piece "Ionization"), "The Black Page" Part I is a virtuosic study for percussionist and audience alike. The fact that Zappa set this incredibly complex piece to a disco beat and wrote a melody for it in Part II highlights the two questions he wrestled with throughout much of his career: Should art be entertaining, and, more important, can entertainment be art? In Zappa's universe, the answer to both is a resounding "yes." Songs like "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" or "St. Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast" might appeal more to serious music fans were their titles more conservative. But they wouldn't be half as fun. Dweezil will continue to follow in his father's footsteps when he resurrects the ultimate Zappa tradition: a Halloween concert at the theater in Madison Square Garden. In the words of Suzy Creamcheese, Frank's ubergroupie: "Wowie Zowie!"

I heard P/O at a New Brunswick, NJ bar for $10 about 10 years ago. With Ike Willis even.

Exactly.