In The Company Of Glenn

Weill

Several versions of "Surabaya Johnny."

Dagmar Krause, looking and sounding fantastic. (This is the first time I've played a Dagmar track in the presence of My Lovely Wife, and she hasn't left the room...and upon not leaving the room, said she enjoyed the rendition. A moral triumph.)

Megan Mullaley—yes, that one—who clearly admires the hell out of Bernadette Peters.

Ute Lemper, who might well own the damn song, despite my partiality to the Krause. And my preference for "you rat" over "you swine."

Yes, I know, this is a movie blog. But it's Sunday. And this material relates to a particular aesthetic, nein?

Hey. Hey. Whatchoostep.

Go ahead. Pretend you don't love Princess Princess.

G-d damn, do I miss Sonny Sharrock...

My bubbies at the Downtown Music Gallery just this week released a stellar reissue of Headfirst Into The Flames, a remarkable document of the extremely combustible free ensemble Last Exit, which consisted of beat super-mathematician and blues moaner Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, conceptualist/bassist Bill Laswell, underrated-by-Diamanda-Galas-at-the-very-least reed exorcist Peter Brotzmann, and the guitarist known to some as "Sweet Butterfingers," but known to me and a bunch of my fellow fans as the baddest motherfucker to ever get a specific (LOUD and SOUL-SHREDDING) tone and volume out of any Marshall amp setup lucky enough to have him pumping his Les Paul through it, that is, Mr. Sonny Sharrock. One of the more memorable pieces on Headfirst, the compositions of which were given titles from the writings of Kenneth Patchen (I infer that Brotzmann, who was in charge of the album's artwork, made these choices), is one called "So Small, So Weak, This Bloody Sweat Of Love," a blistering anti-virtuosic guitar solo by Sharrock that is joined by the ensemble about two-thirds of the way through...but they only chime in to lift him up and push him on. He ends alone, the gain and volume on his amp conspiring with his frantic fingerwork to create a galvanic analog to the "sheets of sound" he so loved in Coltrane, but which he could not emulate on the sax because of an asthmatic condition.

What Sonny created out of a lack of breath was something entirely different and entirely exhilarating. It was a sound I could never get enough of. Sonny had a softer side—he covered Kate Bush, memorably and righteously—and it led him up some blind alleys, at least as far as some of us fans of his more extreme work were concerned. (What was the deal with that electric piano player he brought down with him from upstate?, many of us wondered.) But when Sonny passed unexpectedly in May of '94, right after scoring a big record deal and an unusual gig doing music for The Cartoon Network's Space Ghost Coast to Coast, fans like me...who never stopped coming to see him, blind alleys or not...were left severely bereft. And we still are.

My downstairs neighbors just moved out...

and My Lovely Wife is at work. These two factors mean that now is pretty much the only time I'll have for a while to give the below-pictured disc a proper listen.

From the catalog description:

This is Otomo Yoshihide's second guitar solo release on doubtmusic. The concept of this work, however, is complely different from that of the first. Here, feedback sound issues from two amplifiers, each connected to one of two guitars placed on a tabletop. Due to this stereo effect, the feedback mutually interferes, producing beatlike fluctuations, creating black holes into which the sound suddenly disappears, sounding completely different depending on the position of the ears, creating the illusion that the sound is coming from only one speaker when the listener is in certain locations, and so on, thus turning into truly interactive music. Because these effects cannot be obtained unless the sound coming from the two amps mutually interferes, we recommend listening without earphones or headphones, through speakers, with the sound as loud as conditions allow. Depending on the positions of the speakers, the interference effect and sound image will surely differ as well.

To which I can only add: kickass!!! And: Ow!

Memo On Turner.

The Ike and Tina Turner Revue rock Madison Square Garden, November 1969; from Gimme Shelter, Albert and David Maysles, 1970

You gotta hand it to The Rolling Stones—they must have had quite a bit of confidence to put themselves in the position of having to follow the Revue, one of the most galvanic live acts of any damn genre or era. Just the two minutes or so of their rendition of "I've Been Loving You Too Long" in Shelter (which chronicles the '69 Stones tour for which the Revue was a frequent opening act, and of course ends at Altamont), sends shivers down the spine before exploding the inside of your chest.

Yes, I've heard all the stories of what an awful bastard the late Mr. Turner was. Maybe so. His records still give me a good deal of pleasure—I'm particularly keen on Rhythm Rockin' Blues, a nifty Ace compilation of his pre-Ike-and-Tina work, including the original "Rocket 88" from when he was in Jackie Brenston's band. It's one of the earliest—if not THE earliest—examples of fuzztone guitar, an effect Turner (I'm gonna go for it here) invented by accident. His amp fell out of the car the band was driving to Sun Studios, breaking its woofer; Turner put some paper in the crack in an ad hoc repair attempt; the material caused the woofer to vibrate differently; hence, fuzz. (UPDATE: No less an authority than Mr. Donald Fagen, writing in Slate of all places, credits Ike with the piano on "Rocket 88," citing Willie Kizart as the guitarist. One is loathe to argue with Donald Fagen; if the Ike-invented-fuzztone thing is merely an oft-printed legend, well, so much for the specifics of my thesis...still, that's some good piano...)

So, on the one hand: awful bastard. (One might, in Mr. Turner's defense, quote the wise words of Mr. Rick James: "Cocaine's a helluva drug.") And on the other hand: fuzztone guitar. Life and art fairly teem with such frustrating and perplexing giveths and taketh-aways.

Listen to this.

Derek Bailey, guitar, Bill Laswell, bass, Jack DeJohnette, drums, and unnamed DJDJ Disk (see comments), 1997.

If Joe Meek had produced the first Led Zeppelin LP...

...that's the sound I'm hearing as I listen to the new White Stripes collection Icky Thump.

And if you're wondering, yeah, I consider that to be a very good thing.

Scorsese's Wainwright hat trick

First let me thank my pal and frequent commenter Aaron Aradillas for reminding me of Martin Scorsese's exceptionally clever bit of what I'll call triple-stunt-casting in The Aviator, in which three musical Wainwrights embody three different eras and musical styles, all whilst portraying singers at Hollywood's Coconut Grove.

Here's Rufus Wainwright in stylized crooner mode, doing the Gershwins' "I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise." The period is the late '20s, as The Aviator's protagonist, Mr. Howard Hughes, struggles to finish his epic Hell's Angels.

Obviously both Wainwright and Scorsese and company are taking some poetic license here, as Rudy Vallee never smoldered quite so...

Next we're in the mid-'30s, Hughes is happily courting Kate Hepburn, and Rufus' dad Loudon Wainwright III (discussed in a post below) is an animated presence in a peppy vocal harmony group that evokes (slightly) the era's own Yacht Club Boys (who are in the recently released Fox DVD of the early Judy Garland musical Pigskin Parade.) "Happy Feet" also sounds a bit like the arrangements Geoff Muldaur did on his spectacular Bix Beiderbecke exploration Private Astronomy, on which several Wainwright's appear...

Finally, here's Martha Wainwright, like Rufus, a child of Loudon and the great singer/songwriter Anna McGarrigle. Now the movie's in the '40s, Hughes is in confusion and, soon, decline...and Martha's singing a bluesy torchy version of "I'll Be Seeing You."

The Wainwright theme practically constitutes a mini-movie. It also represents a very particular, very Scorsese-esque approach to attention to detail. Sure, the choice of songs and song stylings to fit particular decades was going to be a given. But to then further conceptualize in order to execute a pretty sophisticated and affectionate in-joke—while maintaining the integrity of your initial prerogative—is something else entirely. For that and other reasons, The Aviator is a movie I admire ever more when I return to it.

Julie Christie's brief art-rock career (UPDATED)

Christie

The divine Julie Christie's career is currently being rehashed in all manner of media as a consequence of her first major work in some time, the lead role in Sarah Polley's intelligent, affecting Away From Her. Hence, I thought it would be a good time to bring up a small kernel of her oeuvre that you won't likely read about anywhere else. (It's what I'm here for, really.)

The Mole

It can't be such a bad week, really,...

when such newly configured major works land in one's lucky, lap, can it?

Yes, that's Sly and the Family Stone's not entirely unapposite There's A Riot Going On in the middle of the four DVDs that constitute another milestone, Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema. Actually, the Riot CD is one of seven, a limited edition collection of the first seven proper albums from Stone's unique collective. Even without the epochal single "Hot Fun in the Summertime," it's a lot to take in. As is the Godard box, in whose existence I can scarcely believe, even though it's in my house right now.

More when I get over my good fortune.