This Month's Listening - May 2007

1. Weather Report “Live in Montreux”
This famous concert, hitherto only available via bootlegged TV broadcasts, has finally been released on DVD. Needless to say, I ripped the audio from the DVD to my iPod…
This release contains the full drums and percussion duet "Rumba Mama" which was released on “Heavy Weather” in 1977. This release confirms that the “Heavy Weather” version was edited almost out of existence, since here we get to see a 7 plus minute percussion exchange between Alex Acuna and Manolo Badrena.
The concert features the transitional band that would record “Heavy Weather”, with Jaco Pastorius bringing his unique bass voice to Weather Report for the first extensive tour. Leter, after the release of “Heavy Weather”, the band would drop Badrena and Acuna and replace them with Peter Erskine for the 1978 album “Mr. Gone” (the title of which could well have referred to the quality of the compositions, which were only occasionally in the same class as those on “Black Market” and “Heavy Weather”).
One fascinating aspect of the compositional process for bands whose musicians are great improvisers is the emergence of compositions from improvisational fragments in earlier tunes. I have not listened to enough of this concert to find out what was here. However, on “Live and Unreleased”, there is an excellent example of thematic development. There on disc 2, 6:14 into a live version of “Directions/Dr. Honoris Causa”, is Joe Zawinul quoting, on Fender Rhodes, part of what would later become the main theme of “Birdland”.
On another live concert recording from Japan in 1978 – during the introduction to the extended version of “Gibraltar” that the four-piece band was playing during the 1978 world tour, Zawinul can be heard playing around at around 1:44 with a melodic fragment on synth that sounds like part of the theme of “Madagascar” (the closing tune on 1980’s “Night Passage”).
The only problem with this re-release is the over-use of a dynamic noise filter on the sound. This works well for louder sections of tunes, but in the numerous quiet passages, the filter keeps cutting in and out, leading to an irritating "hiss - no hiss" transition.

1. Pat Metheny Group “Live in Warsaw 1995”This concert, liberated from the vaults of a radio station, is one of the few examples of a high-quality recording of an entire PMG concert from the 1995 "We Live Here" tour. A number of the tunes here are available on the “We Live Here Live” DVD; however, there are a number of other tunes that show hints of the evolution that would occur with the release of “Imaginary Day” in 1997. The highligt on this concert is a live version of “We Had A Sister”, originally written for Joshua Redman, which starts with a series of crashing staccato chords from Metheny’s acoustic guitar, during which he plays a pattern not far removed from the opening of “Imaginary Day” itself.

3. Mitchell Froom “Dopamine”
Mitchell Froom, like Daniel Lanois before him, was better-known as a producer (his credits including the Crowded House album “Woodface”).. I first heard of "Dopamine" because of the use of an edited version of the tune “Noodletown” as the theme music for “Session at West 54th”. However, the whole album is a highly interesting collection of tunes utilizing different sound textures and palettes.

4. Brad Dutz “Krin”
Brad Dutz played for a number of years with Scott Henderson and Gary Willis in Tribal Tech, where he contributed tuned and untuned percussion and the occasional composition. Here he shows off his quirky compositional style, built around lengthy and intricate themes (shown on “Snowy Egret”, which resembles the theme that Dutz wrote for “Robot Immigrants” on the 1989 Tribal Tech albumn “Nomad”).

05.29.2007 • Music I'm Currently Listening To • PermalinkPermalink

Here is a small example...

Link: http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/how-i-became-a-music-pirate-245644.php

...of the sort of mess that consumers can get into when they try to purchase music files that are protected by DRM.
Although there is a religion thing at work in the discussions (many people seem to be virulently opposed to the iPod, making statements that are at best shaky and at worst false about it's ability to load MP3 files - nearly all of my music is on my iPod in MP3 format), the bottom line here is that the mainstream music industry corporations are doing a really good job of pissing off their consumers. I have trouble thinking of any other industry that so often ends up impeding, angering and sometimes suing its customers. Truly an example of biting the hand that feeds.

04.22.2007 • Music Industry • PermalinkPermalink

Article about Eva Cassidy

Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20010617004225/http://www.washingtonian.com/people/evacassidy.html

Eva Cassidy was only 33 when she died in late 1996 from melanoma. At the time she was a well-kept secret, with only a handful of songs released. She was not really a songwriter, being primarily a song interpreter.
Following her death, her work became more well-known, to the extent that three of her CDs, starting with "Songbird" in 2001, reached #1 on the album charts in the UK. Many musicians and singers have raved about her work for some time.

02.13.2007 • Artists • PermalinkPermalink

Notes on "Gandharva" by Beaver and Krause

Link: http://www.richieunterberger.com/gandharva.html

Those folks who have seen my vinyl record collection will know that one of the centrepieces of the collection is a pristine copy of "Gandharva". The second side of this LP was recorded live in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in late 1971. This article sheds some new light on the recording process for "Gandharva", including Bernard Krause's insights about Gerry Mulligan's approach to song credits:

"We just called him up. Always cynical, with a rather nasty contentious edge to his personality, he agreed to come if we put him up in a nearby 'class' hotel on Nob Hill, [and] provided him with all the room service he could handle [and] an electronic keyboard instrument. We did. He did. And we all hit it off pretty well. Later did a movie score together titled Final Programme, recorded and released in England. We were friends until he retitled 'By Your Grace' and recorded a cover of the same tune under a different name so he could claim our half of the copyright. Turns out others had suffered the same experience while working with him."

02.13.2007 • In Their Own Words • PermalinkPermalink

Tune of The Week - All That You Dream

"All That You Dream" is the second song on Little Feat's 1975 album "The Last Record Album". I first heard this playing in a record store in Manchester in 1975, when it was still only available on import. (At the time, some albums would be released several months earlier in the USA, often with superior packaging to their UK versions). I remember not really understanding the music at the time, but I bought the album anyway when it was finally released in the UK, on the grounds that other leading musicians of the time always raved about Little Feat, therefore they must be good.
"The Last Record Album" marked the beginnings of a move away from New Orleans-influenced boogie towards more complex, jazz-influenced songs for Little Feat. This trend may have been partly responsible for Lowell George's later decision to leave the group. The shift led to a greater songwriting involvement by Paul Barrere and Bill Payne.
"All That You Dream" is Little Feat, with John Hall (from the group Orleans) playing third guitar. Sam Clayton's percussion is almost totally absent from the track, although his voice can be heard in the vocal mix. The tune is therefore carried totally by kit drummer Richie Hayward.
Hayward has always had an ability (shared by a limited number of drummers including the late John Bonham) to play exactly on the beat, instead of slightly ahead of the beat. On this tune, he exhibits that capability throughout, which gives the whole tune a floating, elastic feel. The overall feel is enhanced by Hayward's minimalistic groove-based playing, with few fills; any drum accents are sparse and intended to enhance other instruments. Overall, the final recorded sound is basically sparse and streamlined, with great use of space.
Throughout the song, Barrere and Hall's guitars interlock and weave complimentary patterns, with Lowell George's slide guitar playing legato lines mostly in the chorus.
"All That You Dream" starts with a twice-repeated 4-bar intro led by unison bass and guitar, before launching into the chorus, which in the song precedes the verses.
After 2 verses, the intro is re-used as a backing for a Bill Payne electric piano and synth solo, repeated 4 times before a lead-back via an instrumental instance of the chorus.
After the lead-back chorus, there is a unique moment as the band instrument collection sound seems to fall away during the first line of the third verse, with only a single guitar accent intruding; the use of space proving the wisdom of Ry Cooder's saying "never play a note where none will do". A harmonically-modified variant of the intro is used to end the song, and the slide guitar vibrato from Lowell George at the end creates the illusion that the pitch of the ending is actually rising. The ending demonstrates that you can often spot intelligent bands by their song endings; a band relying mostly on cliches to end it's songs will often be of limited interest on a more general musical front.
I spent hours playing this tune when I first got the album, and today it remains my favourite song on what is an excellent album. Interestingly, the live version (released on "Waiting For Columbus"), suffers by comparison by being too busy, with both Hayward and the band playing too much, and the "floating" feel of this version is also missing.

01.30.2007 • Tune Of The Week • PermalinkPermalink