Vinylphreek

My Lunch With Joe

Sunday morning comes and I get a phone call from Joe Boyd. If you don't know him by name you certainly know some of the little bands he has worked with over the years like Pink Floyd, REM and Nick Drake to just scratch the surface. Joe is my mentor as a record producer and he is also a great friend. Joe has ties to this area that are wide and deep as you will discover when you read his astounding memoir "White Bicycles". Anytime he is around we try and grab a meal together and share a few thoughts and laughs. As usual Joe was full of extraordinary information and insight about music history and to be fair life in general. He is a Londoner and I sent a panicked e-mail to him a few weeks back to make sure he had survived the riots fully unscathed. He said he could barely tell they happened where he was; Joe has a real gift for understatement. In addition to his remarkable career as a much loved producer of "White People Singing in English" (as he would snarkily put it) Joe is also recognized as THE founder of the World Music movement. As usual, Joe distances himself from something once it achieves ubiquity. However I am thrilled to report that he is slogging his was through his second book, and by his own estimate has reached the halfway point. This book is about World Music. I was thrilled to have him share a fascinating anecdote about "Pata Pata" the Miriam Makeba hit of the late 50's that was produced by none other than the recently departed fellow Philadelphia record wizard Jerry Ragovoy....Anyway it was simply delightful to spend a few hours with Joe and catch up in person as our respective domiciles make more than an annual or semi-annual meeting unlikely. Please do yourself a favor and buy White Bicycles today and read what is perhaps the most gorgeous and lovingly crafted memoir of a life immersed in music. And when his new book comes out tell them I sent you....

Revisiting the Trio

On Tuesday I spent an afternoon with my good friend Phil Nicolo at Studio 4 in Conshohocken. We have worked on many projects together over the years and he is one of my favorite people in the music community. We share a love of audio gear, musicality and the Beatles among many other things. Tuesday I woke up made coffee and read the NYT online which is pretty much my daily routine. I was interested to see that the so-called Genius awards aka The MacArthur grants were made public and I was, as always, curious to see who made the list. Along with the usual academic types one name popped up that made me very happy, Dafnis Prieto. That may not mean a lot to you but it was extremely interesting to me because that was exactly who played drums on the album I was about to remix that very morning! I put together a trio about 18 months ago with flautist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Dafnis Prieto and recorded them at my studio, Range Recording in Ardmore in January of 2010. I self-financed the project (insane) and finished mixing it in May of that year. I have spent the past year on and off trying to find a label for it. Thus far I have not found the right home. I really liked the mix I did originally with my friend Brian Ritrovato but I felt that it could be a bit more polished and that perhaps working with Phil could achieve the result I was looking for. The net outcome is that I think Phil and I nailed the 9 mixes in short order (about 4 hours) and it was a pleasure to revisit this recording with a fresh set of ears, namely Phil's. Obviously I am thrilled that Dafnis won the award as he is one of my favorite drummers of this or any other generation. While he is still quite young I feel confident that he will eventually join the ranks of Max Roach, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Shelly Manne and the other great kit drummers in the history of Jazz. I guess my extravagant confidence in him is shared by others. Anyway, listening back to the very HI-FI minimalist recording that I did I was struck by how a great artist like the three that came into my studio that cold January simply are themselves. They did not need a lot of sonic assistance to get them to sound great. They played their instruments and listened intently and it was my job to take a picture of that concentration of creative energy. It is a hard time to sell music to people, they steal it often and the economy since 2008 has not left many folks with a great deal of leftover income to invest in non-essential purchases. But when I sat down in the audio lair with Phil listening to the album again I was struck by how personal it was and how filled with honesty and humanity all the tracks seemed to me at that moment. I suppose that I could have saved my money and not made that album, I guess the world has a lot of music already, but when I listened to it carefully I decided that despite its orphaned status that sometimes you need to climb out on a skinny little branch and just follow your instincts...apropos of that, I would do it all again.

Moon Hotel Lounge Project goes LIVE!

I have been friends with Tom for many years now and we have spent literally countless hours sharing music, ideas, food, wine and sundry items during that span of time. He has always been a loyal friend and a brilliant observer of the sounds that surround us. I developed a grand passion for Brazilian music as a result of my friendship with him and our mutual homeboy David Gold. For those of you out there that don't actually know me I participate in a long running and highly guarded music club (now all the rage if you read the London papers) that goes by the acronym MMM. It has a very eclectic and astute membership and is the stuff of legend in Philly muso circles. Many have asked but few are chosen. Some of us are producers, label owners, engineers, writers, scientists, lawyer and other professionals but all have (in one way or another) dedicated their lives to the mysteries of sound and song. Tom surprised and delighted us all a few months back in South Philly by playing a rough mix of his own project (then untitled) and we were uniformly impressed by its excellence. He enlisted some of Philly's finest cats to assist him in the project and the results speak for themselves. He has garnered quite a bit of press, some laudatory and a few well-placed brickbats for good measure from the makers of Haterade.

The title "Into the Ojala" does not describe anything concrete about the music but it does serve to wrap a few well-chosen words around the musicmaking therein. I am not here to tell you what this is but I am here to tell you I am excited by the prospect of seeing it live for the first time tonight. If you love jazz, Brazil, Steely Dan and the Ramada Inn I suggest you brave the elements and get your ass down to this gig and show some love to one of the most remarkably creative, sensitive and intelligent people it has been my honor to call a friend...
the details

Bio Ritmo and the 45 are alive and well...

I am pretty happy to report that the tracks I mixed this Spring at Range Recording Studios in bucolic Ardmore, PA are now available to the public. Well at least two of them are. The two that are available have appeared in what might be my favorite format of all time the 7" 45 rpm vinyl record. I suppose that nostalgia has something to do with that sentiment but also as a DJ myself I love carrying a few boxes of 45's to a gig and watching people bug out when I start spinning them. The great thing about the new Bio Ritmo 45 is that the joy contained therein is so infectious I was tempted to send a copy to the regional office of the CDC for testing. Anyway, vinyl is alive and well, Salsa of the most indie sort is alive and well and both Bio Ritmo and yours truly are also alive and well. Please support them by clicking here...Bio Ritmo and yr boy...

Devotchkas at the Bordello

I go to a lot of concerts. It's partially work-related and it's partially the fact that nothing is like live music. Last night it was Devotchka and Gogol Bordello. These two bands are fairly dissimilar on a variety of levels but they are united in compositional excellence, musicianship and a large dose of Balkan goodness. I have been watching fairly carefully over the past few years and I am seeing a surprising and rewarding lurch towards a battery of instruments that have been largely ignored or at best under-represented in popular music. The tuba, the solo violin, the accordion and various other creatures that are more likely to be found playing in the sandbox of classical and folkloric ensembles have found a new life in the mosh pit.

Unless you are a pretty avid follower of the so-called "indy rock" scene these are probably two bands that you have never heard of. That's a shame because in an age of monoculture they would be pretty well known but in our decidedly fragmented age of micro-audiences and sensory overload they are simply crowd surfing on the margins. But lest you think they are not getting through let me put it to you this way, as they show was well underway there were dozens of people in the parking lot willing to pay $300 for a ticket to this show. That is not an exaggeration that is a fact. The reason is simple and old as dirt, they play their asses off and deliver a gritty, expansive and heart felt performance when so much that passes for popular music is simply computer enhanced dog turds with a beat.

Devotchka who is definitely the less well known band is based in Denver, Colorado and that alone puts them in a cultural gene pool that is not exactly setting the world on fire. But it just goes to show that on a profound level the old centers of hipness no longer have the bragging rights that they used to enjoy. Not by a long shot. In fact, it could be argued that the reverse is now true. The further you are from the clusterfuck of NY/LA the more likely you are to ignore the trendiness that permeates those established proving grounds and just play what pleases you, damn the torpedoes. The Devotchka folks seems to be drinking home made Kool-Aid with a chaser of slivovitz and you know what it really suits them. They have bass lines, but they are played on a bass viol, they have string lines but played a guy that looks like he should be living in Crown Heights and he is playing them on a violin.  They do have the post Radiohead obligatory ethereal electronic textures woven into their sonic sarouks but in this case they are teased out of a theremin, truly from thin air. Sure drums and guitars make a pretty splash but these more familiar suspects are simply members of the cast and not the featured players. In the very recent past these far more exotic instruments would have been little more than window dressing for a meat and potatoes rockstravaganza but in Devotchka, in 2010, they are integral elements that share the stage without seeming like Carmen Miranda's headgear. I would say that rock and roll has grown up and moved out of the suburban basement and into a bazaar reeking of hashish and sweating fez merchants. I'm happy to say, there goes the neighborhood.

Gogol Bordello is a full on assault if Devotchka was a subtle KGB operation. While this band was formed in Brookln it is led by a guy named Yevheniy Oleksandrovych Nikolayev Simonov,and friends that mouthful is not exactly coming from Berkeley. He is also half Roma, which to the uninitiated means his pop was a Gypsy. Gogol is of course one of the most beloved Russian novelists though in the West he is less well known than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky which is a shame because he's much funnier. If you don't know what a bordello is I can't help you. Anyway, this carnivalesque aggregation inspires roars of approval and ferocious body slamming the moment they hit the stage. The crowd is an eclectic bunch too, tattoos and mohawks and a lack of underwear are definitely common but there is also the pretty bi-racial college girl with a cell phone taking video and college professor types (I'm looking at you Levinson) drinking big beers on the balcony. But what glues this whole thing together is a Gypsy punk sensibility that needs to be seen to be believed. Go to youtube after you read this and see what I mean. At most shows when a band boldly announces they are playing some new songs that is code for "it's time to hit the bathroom and catch a smoke in the parking lot". Not so here, the sweaty thongs erupts in euphoria and they smash into each other with even greater and more reckless abandon. My job is not tell you how great the drummer is (he's a freaking skinhead in kilt) or how killer that accordion player is either it's simply to let you know that something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones? 

Mixing it up with Bioritmo...

 


I spent last Thursday and Friday at Range with super-engineer Brian "Retro" Ritrovato in mixdown mode. It was a great time because we got to work with my old pals Bioritmo the kings (and queen) of Alternative Salsa. I've known these folks for about 15 years and we have always had a great time sharing our passion as amantes de la musica latina. They have changed various players over the years but the core of the band has been and will always be on of my favorites. They are not afraid to "go out on a skinny little branch" as my pal Rich Medina would say and do it their own idiosyncratic way. When most Salsa bands have stuck to the tried and true formulas Bioritmo has been fearless and funky in their pursuit of new flavors and approaches. This last round of tracks did not disappoint. They have been using more drum kit lately as well as Farfisa (aka Farcheesa) organ and some hip Brazilian minor percussion like Quica. They bring a cheeky great sense of humor to their music, always a big plus and are not afraid to go for that 70's porno soundtrack/Mannix vibe when appropriate.

Brian and I used some of our trademark secret tricks to get the tracks to their highest dopeness quotient. It didn't take much though 'cause these folks kill it no matter what the song. My personal favorite of this batch was a cover of the song "Carnival" from the legendary masterpiece La Maquina Del Tiempo by Cortijo in the mid-70's. While it was roundly panned in its time, history has made a mockery of that shallow view and the album is now revered by all true heads in the progressive wing of the Salsa universe as a work of unbridled experimentation and genius. Brian listened back to the song and said it "sounds like Mr. Bungle". Guess what, it really did. Maybe with a bit more Afro-Cuban flavor but the overall kookiness of it definitely had a Mike Patton vibe all over it. Brian came up with an insane treatment to the Quica part that we used sparingly but when it kicks in-WATCH OUT! I tossed in my two cents worth and we came up
with a sound that was just bananas. I heard back from keyboard mistress Marlysse Simmons and she said everyone is digging the sound.

I urge everyone to check them out live and pick up their records as they truly are saying something new and nasty. I love working with people that pull out the machetes and blaze a new trail, Bioritmo fits that bill all the way down the line...

Art Ensemble of Chicago: Long May They Run.

Last night was a transcendent evening of Avant Garde music. While all the original members of this illustrious aggregation are no longer with us in a corporeal sense their spirit of invention and excellence
is very much present. Reedman Roscoe Mitchell and drummer Famoudou Don Moye are still major forces in creative Black music. They no longer paint their faces and the vocal aspect of the band was absent but the music itself was as brilliant as Obsidian. Ably assisted by William Parker on bass and Gimbre (a North African log plectrum) as well as Hugh Ragin on Trumpet and a Conguero (who went by one name which I missed) the band bristled with energetic solos and striking ensemble passages.

I don't think that mellowed is exactly the right word to describe a band of this power and authority but on some level this is true. They certainly were still capable of the full on frontal assault that marks their earlier output but they also exhibited passages of quiet lyricism that showed another angle of their story. Roscoe Mitchell played a straight soprano sax with demonic intensity, exhibiting the multi-phonics and extended techniques that have been a part of all post-Coltrane saxophone masters. But he did so not in a blustery display of his formidable chops but rather as though he were searching for a sound that could only be achieved with these advanced approaches. One thing I noticed ,which makes their work so captivating is rather than simply blow their brains out all at the same time, which gets tiresome quickly, they were very careful to make sure that they gave a wide berth for everyone to say their piece in peace. This was a sign of the respect they accorded one another and when they needed to come together again as an ensemble this was a satisfying moment of Umoja instead of a "been there done that".

For me the greatest revelation was the playing of Famoudou Don Moye. Because he has played largely with the Art Ensemble for his entire career he is not a cat that has spread his musical seed far and wide
like Jack DeJohnette or Roy Haynes to give only two examples. No, Don Moye has stuck pretty close to home and for that reason his talent can only be experienced within this context. This kind of loyalty is admirable but it is also limiting in the sense that we have been deprived of his skills except with the confines of one remarkable band. It was my first time seeing him and while I admired his playing on their many recordings over the decades I was unprepared for his gifts. He played the entire kit, tapping out furious /cascara /on the side of his floor tom in one moment and then offering delicate splashes from his modest array of cymbals in the next. The thing that impressed me the most however was his complete mastery of the brushes on the whole kit. Very few people have a command of this subset of drumming and Don proved that he was one of the chosen few. He also got up from time to time and played the Bongo and Conga array that was erected next to his kit. His incredible musicality on hand percussion was a thing to behold. He played wonderful West African derived patterns and solos that fit perfectly with the rest of the band. I was stunned by this comprehensive mastery of all things rhythmic.

In the end the return of the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Philadelphia after what I think was 30 years was nothing short of triumphant. The sold out crowd cheered vigorously but were still respectful of the band while the did their thing. The audience was filled with mostly older people and was a decent mix of gender and race and hair. But when it was over the audience came to their feet and cheered. They cheered the music, they cheered the artists but most of all the cheered the endurance of an institution that has continued to remain vital and relevant for decades on end. I only wish that Philadelphia had a group that were such powerful spokesmen or women for the vitality of their hometown. Three more cheers for Chicago, they show us all how it's really done.

Jef Lee Johnson: The Houdini of the Guitar Speaks...and I put my two cents in as well.

http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/03/04/jef-lee-johnson

Philly Magazine and yours truly...

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/pulse_how_we_spend_trends_getting_the_spins0310/

Something about Jack Rose

 


The guitar probably has more practitioners than any other instrument in recent history. By the law of averages therefore you stand a better chance of finding a guitar maverick than you do finding one playing the French Horn. This is not a slight it is just a fact. On the other hand, you will also find many more people that are doing something pretty similar as well. That's the law of Large Numbers for you. And then you have Jack Rose. I have no idea whether being from Virginia had any direct bearing on what Jack did but I find it hard to believe it was irrelevant. Likewise, Jack's greatest album "Kensignton Blues" bears the unmistakable blue collar stamp of Philadelphia as well. The city/country dyad is one of the oldest in the book and I hate to trot it out again but I hear that geographic tension in Jack's playing. The feedback drenched Indian inflected Raga of "Amp" positively reeks of the city and its sandpaper meets trashcan soundtrack. "Kensington Blues" by contrast makes me feel like I'm bouncing down a rutted brown road with a six pack and a pretty girl working our way down to a hidden swimming hole deep inside a mountain holler.

Jack certainly was a virtuoso in one sense of the word, he was a master of his instrument. But on another level his entire approach was never to impress you it was instead to make you deeply feel something. I clearly remember the first time I ever heard Jack Rose. It was Kensington Blues and the owner of that label (Anthony Vogdes) dropped off a test pressing to my house in a pizza box for me to hear. I was with a friend and we put it on immediately. We sat on the couch silently and let the sound wash over us like a wave, when the album was over I remember thinking that some people were still capable of saying something startling and new even in age that is known for its repetition and jaundice. Sure Jack had influences, every great artist does. But like the people he admired his voice will forever be his own and when we look back people will say that in his rough hands the trusty old wooden guitar was indeed being born again.

TIME LOVES A HERO

 


There can be no doubt that straight 4/4 is the dominant time signature for American popular music. Virtually everything you hear on the radio stays within these familiar confines. But whether it be "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck in 5/4 or the tricky compound rhythm of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" where the Bonham is playing in 4/4 but guitarist Jimmy Page is playing in 3/4 against it, the world is full of many roads. Thinking about your music with all these possibilities in mind is a very powerful tool to expand the horizons of your approach. One of my favorite bands is Ween and they often use the Cha Cha rhythm of Latin music as the basis for many of their songs, while technically the time signature remains in 4/4, the beat of these songs is quite different than what we are normally accustomed to hearing in the usual rock band setting. Another main difference that is often overlooked is the distinction between playing swing versus straight. Jazz bands also play in 4/4 but they frequently, as the name implies, swing the rhythm and that immediately sets what they are doing apart. Try playing one of your songs with a swing feel as opposed to a straight 4/4 and you will discover that it completely transforms the mood and character of your composition.

The other thing that I love to hear is groups that can play music using clave. This is the two measure feel that dominates Afro-Cuban music and it has been used to tremendous and legendary effect by Santana in his classic version of "Oye Como Va". The clave can be played in either a 3-2 pattern, sometimes called "forward clave" or reversed and played in a 2-3 pattern. Once again, even though the feel seems radically different you are still technically playing in 4/4. This takes some getting used to and I would advise that you simply play the clave pattern itself for awhile before you try applying it to your own stuff. Another sweet thing that can transform your feel is playing something in
2/4. This pulse is in many cases associated with old time Gospel music and will impart a "churchy" vibe to whatever your playing, if done correctly.

As with all suggestions these are just raw ideas and they need to creatively applied to whatever you are doing in a "measured" fashion, if you don't mind a really bad pun. But this fundamental aspect is overlooked by many bands and when they begin to incorporate this kind of rhythmic nuance into the creative process it can result in something truly distinctive and really sets what you are doing apart from the pack. If you want a more dance floor friendly feel try asking your drummer to play every beat of the measure on the kick drum. This is called "four on the floor" and can immediately make a rock song feel more insistent and pounding like house music. I could go on ad nausea about these subtleties but the real acid test is how they apply to what you are trying to achieve. After driving these ideas around the block you may still decide that a straight up old school 4/4 back beat is still the thing that works best. But after trying these great variations I bet you will instinctively approach your music with a much more open mind moving forward and in the end, that can only be a good thing. I almost forgot, in the immortal words of the Godfather of Soul, it never hurts to "give the drummer some".