A few years ago Lucio Menegon (a.k.a. Reverend Screaming
Fingers) and I co-wrote music for a preview for a comic book.
It was basically scoring a movie trailer but the movie
was a comic book.
We didn't discuss it at all but when we got together
we had both written out an idea and picked F# minor as the key.
So it was fairly easy for us to join our two pieces,
smooth it out, make sure it fit the trailer, and then record
the thing at Lucio's studio with Chris Cawthray on drums. You can hear this, and buy it, along with another
piece, "The Outside Groove", that Lucio wrote to go along
with, I think, a trailer for an ebook. Check it out
here, and after that go take a look at his latest release,
Music For Driving and Film, Vol. III (The Desert Years), also in a
groovy, guitar-driven instrumental zone.
2018 November 12 • Monday
For the 543rd
Soundtrack of the Week we just wanted to do
something different. And so here we have what is probably
most of the score for a movie called Here at the Waters’ Edge
and it’s more or less by Leo Hurwitz and Charles Pratt. The score
doesn’t really have a composer per se, as it consists of field
recordings of sounds “in and around the Port of New York”.
Before you get agitated, let me assure you that I’m aware of
and even sympathetic to the ideas of found or ready-made art
and improvisation and chance operations as a form of composition.
Nevertheless, whatever “composition” content might be contained
herein must be minimal, it seems to me.
So what will you hear? Not much in the way of music, except
in a John Cage sort of way. The closest things to musical instruments
are rather magnificent foghorns and deep-throated ships’ whistles,
as well as what sounds like trolley bells (though I believe that
NYC’s streetcars were already gone by the time of this recording).
You’ll also hear the sounds of waves, trains, industrial machinery,
birds, children’s voices, airplanes and such. It’s described on the
back of the record as an “abstract symphony”, which seems fair enough,
though it could certainly be more abstract and more symphonic. The liner
notes also assert that it will “affect you deeply”, which simply
wasn’t at all true in my case, though I did appreciate it as an
interesting document.
2018 November 09 • Friday
Light in the Attic has released this incredible lost
album of surf instrumentals by Lee Hazlewood: Cruising' for
Surf Bunnies by The Woodchucks.
The only thing that anybody seems to know for sure about this
music is that it was recorded in October 1964 in Studio E of
United Recorders in Los Angeles, CA. Nobody knows who played on it, though Al Casey is nominated
as the likely lead guitarist. Apparently The Woodchucks
was a band name that Hazlewood used for several recordings
of instrumentals executed by session musicians of the day,
ienvitably referred to now as The Wrecking Crew. Almost all of the tunes are by Hazlewood and several
will be familiar to fans of surf music. The immortal "Baja" is here, split into two parts with
half on each album side. It's interesting to note how
slowly the band takes this song. It might be half the
speed of the famous recording by The Astronauts. "Movin'" is also taken much more slowly than
probably every other recording of it you've heard.
These performances don't sound sluggish, though,
more atmospheric. This possible emphasis on atmosphere might
explain why there are three versions
of Les Baxter pieces here, the singature "Quiet
Village" and the lesser known "Bangkok Cock Fight"
and "Cricketds of Karachi". Quiet Village is taken at a similar tempo
as "Baja" and "Movin'" but only the B section is really
recognizable as the Baxter tune. The "Bangkok Cock
Fight" is an uptempo, driving surf raver that doesn't
really sound, to my ears, much like the Baxter piece at all. "Crickets of Karachi" is a fairly straightforward
interpretation of Baxter's original, midtempo and a nice piece. The exotica theme presumably includes "Torn Sarong",
credited on this CD to "Y. Roche". I don't know who that
is or what the original of this might be. But it's
another cute kind of singsongy tune, very similar to
"Crickets of Karachi". Going back to Hazlewood's own pieces, "Johnny October",
is a genuinely haunting piece, suggesting the theme for
a surf western, if only such a thing existed. "The Nomads", with "D. Cole" as co-author, is another
surf gem, also somewhat haunting in both its sonic feel as
well as its chords and melody. We get another rare uptempo, driving number with
"The Man", which sounds as much like a hot rod piece
as it does a surf piece. Those two flavors are often
mixed together. Next is a very Link Wray sort of tune, "Angry
Generation", a slinky and sneaky sort of "Rumble"
like tune. The bass player really shines on this one. Finally there's "Batman", another much covered
Hazlewood piece. As played here it sounds like
most other takes on it that I've heard. This band is great, whoever's actually in it.
Cruisin' for Surf Bunnies is one of my
favorite surf albums. And it only took 54 years for it to come out!
2018 November 07 • Wednesday
Ace Records continues to put out amazing compilations of old rock and
roll, pop, blues, etc. This new release is one of their best and perhaps
most obscure: She Came from Hungary!: 1960s Beat Girls
from the Eastern Bloc.
The liner notes give an interesting overview
of what the political and cultural situations were in
Hungary in the 1960s. A governemtnal resolution called the Use and Practical
Spending of Leisure Time by Young People basically gave
permission for teenagers to form rock bands and many of
those bands had female singers. And now we can hear some of them! All of it is my kind of sing, swinging and stomping
sixties rock/pop with cool keyboard and guitar sounds. Márta Bencze's "Csak Fiataloknak" borrows a big chunk of
Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme and her strong
and soaring voice makes you wish she's recorded the
actual theme. (It ended up with words. Sarah Vaughan recorded
a vocal version.) According to the liner notes, the title
means "Only For Young People". More in the acid rock vein is "Ha Csak
Egy Fokkal Szebb Az Ördögnél" by
Gabi Fenyvesi. The fuzz guitar is definitely an asset here. A lilting 6/8 rhythm and jangly electric guitars,
one of them possibly a 12-string, gives Zsuzsa Koncz's
"Keresem A Szót" a Byrds feel, while parts of the melody
might remind you of "Hey Joe". "Könyörögni Nem Fogok" by Zsuzsa Mátray sounds like
a blend of The Rolling Stones with Booker T. & The MG's
on acid. As impressive as the organ and guitars and
drums are, it's definitely her voice that's making
this happen. Some nice soloing from the guitar and
keyboards, though. Sarolta Zalatnay's "Zöld Borostyán" has perhaps
the most interesting arrangement and some very unusual
phrasing of the vocal lines in places. There's
an acid wah-wah guitar freak-out at one point
and a driving breakbeat drum part throughout. If you were wondering where the harpsichord
and strings are in all this, then skip ahead
to the minor key and anxious-sounding
"Most Kéne Abbahagyni" by Kati Kovács.
This song comes close to recapturing
the symphonic bombast that used to be the
delivery vehicle for teen pop. And that's just a sample! There are 24 songs
on this CD and they're all great!
2018 November 05 • Monday
The 542nd
Soundtrack of the Week is a lovely score
we found on viny at Chicago's redoubtable
Dusty Groove record shop:
Ustad Vilayat Khan's music for The Guru.
It starts with a main title theme that uses both Indian
instruments as well as electric guitar and a drum kit
supplying a grooving backbeat. The theme itself is
delightful and jaunty, similar in some ways to the "Ode
to Joy".
You'll hear it several times on this record, in
different arrangements. The second track, "Jenny's Theme",
is a more syncopated arrangement of it with the melody
played on flute. "The Haunted Palace" is a suite of four different cues played
on traditional Indian classical instruments and is by turns
tuneful and textural, atmospheric and intense. There's some incredible
tabla playing here, courtesy of Pandit Shanta Prasad. Khan himself plays sitar while Ustad Imrat Khan,
Vilayat Khan's younger brother, is on
both surbahar and sitar and Ustad Shakoor Khan plays sarangi. There are also two vocalists, for the two ragas that close the
record, "Rag Malkauns" and "Rag Yanani". There's also an
instrumental "Rag Bilawal". All three sound like other Indian
clasical music pieces I've heard, as I believe they're intended to. "Rag Bilawal" is based on the main theme. "Rag Malkauns"
is a short number with powerful vocal and violin contributions.
"Rag Yanani" is almost thirteen minutes long and closes out
the record. It might be based partly on "Tom's Boat Song",
which Michael York sings on Side A. It's an excellent record, very different from the Bollywood
soundtracks I've listened to. I'd like to hear more like this.
2018 November 02 • Friday
Just in time for this Halloween I managed to read a book
that I bought last Halloween: the two
William Sloane novels To Walk the Night and The Edge
of Running Water presented in one volume as The Rim of
Morning by New York Review Books.
Both of these novels were written in the 1930s and provide
a certain kind of reading satisfaction that seems to come
almost exclusively from novels of that time. The writing
and pacing are perfectly modulated, the tone is always even,
everything is constructed with perfect deliberation and
solidity; the feeling is like being drawn forward inexorably
and smoothly on a perfectly natural current. Nothing is out of
place or sloppy; nothing seems contrived or a product
of authorial laziness or desperation. Also typical is the intensely atmospheric nature of
both books. Sloane appears to do this effortlessly,
which makes it all the more effective, but the reader
can also be aware of how well crafted and exciting
it is, while reading, which is a perfect combination. To Walk the Night has as its framing device
storytelling itself. "Bark" Jones has to explain
to his best friend's father all the events leading to and
surrounding the suicide of the recently deceased young man. The two sit outside the father's house on Long Island
and talk all through the night and Sloane is excellent
at balancing the story with its telling, as well
as describing the passage of time through delicate
observations of the light on the bay. The story builds and moves forward inexorably and
has a wonderful climax. While To Walk the Night
has less action and more ambiguity, it was my favorite of
the two. Its first line is "The form in which this narrative is
cast is necessarily an arbitrary one". The amount of pleasure
that sentence gives you is probably a good indication of how much
you'll like the rest of it. The Edge of Running Water is easier to describe:
mad scientist tries to build a machine to communicate with
the dead, more or less. Also in there are conflicts between locals and outsiders,
science and the supernatural, virtue and vice, grief and love... It's both more character-driven and more concerned with
action and proceeds in a fairly straight line from its beginning
to its end. Sloane again likes to end on a note of ambiguity,
leaving the fate of two of the characters unknown and
almost certainly unknowable. While perhaps more ordinary than To Walk the Night,
The Edge of Running Water is still very engrossing
and was a joy to read. Its first line is "The man for whom this story is told may or may
not be alive".
