Original_To:  BITNET%"ALLMUSIC@AUVM"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Wed, 29 Jul 1992 08:21:00 CDT
From:         CV01@SWTEXAS.BITNET
Subject:      Better late than never?

   ADVISORY:  If you suffer from a short attention span, do not attempt
to read this post.  It contains many words -- and some of them are
intended to provoke thought.


>Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 12:08:00 EST
>From:         "The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny"
>              <ALEVIN@RCNVMS.RCN.MASS.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Nothing important -- I just felt like chatting ...
>
>
>Chuck (or anyone else): Have you heard McMurtry's new one yet? If so, what
>       did you think of it? Does David Grissom play on this one?

Adam,

   I haven't heard the whole thing yet, but there are a few cuts getting
some local airplay.  What I've heard sounds good -- it sounds like a
slightly more mature McMurtry.  Supposedly, _Candyland_ is a more coherent
whole than _Too Long In The Wasteland_, which was tremendously well-crafted
in certain parts, but very uneven.
   It sounds like Grissom is on this one, but I haven't seen the liner
notes.  The local PBS affiliate just re-ran the Austin City Limits with
McMurtry on it, and I had forgotten how much Grissom was the star of that
show.  Especially enjoyable was the little Hendrix-style "sound-painting" he
did on "Too Long In The Wasteland".
   BTW, my synapses and I seem to have gotten into a little argument --
didn't Grissom play with the Joe Ely band before this gig with McMurtry?

   Sonia asked who McMurtry is.  James is the singer/songwriter son of Larry
McM (Lonesome Dove, etc.).  He's Texas born and bred.

   Later, Adam also said:

>John Zorn/Naked City:
>       When I was in Tower I saw two Naked City discs. One was an American
>release (the one I picked up) with a picture of a guy lying in the street
>with his face blown away. The other one which was an import had a topless
>Asian woman on the cover. Are these the same? If they are, it says something
>about censorship. It's not ok to show someone nude, but it's ok to show
>someone with his face shot off. BUT ANYWAYS...

   As Michael mentioned, they aren't the same, and be glad you didn't grab
the other one.  The other CD is _Torture Garden_, and that's exactly what it
is -- torture.  It's nothing but short excursions into hardcore
thrash/punk/jazz (I couldn't even make it through the whole disc).  At least
on the other Naked City the thrash is used as interludes.  _Torture Garden_
is definitely not recommended for those with high blood pressure, but it
would make a fine weapon for those instances where you have a neighbor who
plays their music too loud at all hours.  Just turn your stereo on 11, start
the disc and leave your house immediately.  Come back in an hour, and you'll
probably find your neighbor has moved and left no forwarding address (of
course the police may be waiting for you.  :*)

>This is another one of Zorn's
>eclectic collections of tunes. It starts off with a rockabilly Duane Eddie
>style guitar tune, then launches into a slow traditional jazz number.
There's
>a cover of an Ornette Coleman tune (I don't have the disc with me) which is
>a lot more palatable than the covers he did on the _Spy VS Spy_ album.

   That's "Lonely Woman", and they do a very nice job with it.  I wish they
had done _Spy ..._ in a similar fashion -- i.e., allowing the dynamics of the
original composition to come through, rather than overpowering everything.


>Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 13:21:29 EDT
>From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
>Subject:      Spanish castle magic
>
>
> [info on BRC]

   Thanks for the info -- it doesn't sound extremely promising.  Maybe I'll
just keep going for his stuff with RSJ and the Decoding Society.

>Re Hendrix:
>I dunno, I just never connected to Hendrix as deeply as to his
acid-drenched
>peer group.

   And Jimi wasn't acid-drenched?!  :*)

>I loved the San Francisco bands; I taught myself to play all of
>Jorma Kaukonen's solos with the Jefferson Airplane, then started to study
>John Cippolina.
>
>If I had to formulate reasons, I would say it was some combination of tone
>(I prefer the stinging sound of a Gibson guitar to the timbres of Fenders),
>note choice (too many thirds, not enough fourths), and the cumulative abuse
>of "Red House." I also relate better to a more tentative or clinical
approach
>to string stretching-- I like Peter Green's touch (which is really B.B.
King),
>and Cippolina's whammy bar technique, but Hendrix's stretches are too broad
>(ditto Jeff Beck).

   Fair enough.  Somehow, I had a feeling that the Fender/Gibson issue would
surface among the reasons.  :*)  I personally enjoyed the mutilating the
strings approach that he used.  Maybe partially because I had never heard
anybody take it so far before.  I was also impressed with his "orchestral"
approach to the electric guitar, which in part relates to your previous
mention of him as a studio wizard, and in part relates to his amazing
control (?) over the multitude of sounds that could be dragged "kicking and
screaming" from a Strat.  I *do* believe that he had the right tool for the
job too -- a Strat seems to lend itself to the instrumental histrionics that
were such a big part of his sound.  (Of course, Sharrock sometimes does the
same kinds of stunts on his Les Paul Custom, but that's a story for another
day.)

>Bob Blumenthal, who writes about jazz for the Boston Globe, used to talk
about
>a quality of music appreciation he called "metabolism," some visceral
response
>where you knew certain kinds of music were right for you, and others were
just
>wrong, no matter how diligently you listened, regardless of any
intellectual
>appreciation you might develop. It's like your antennae notion, except it
may
>prove to be resistant to any kind of studied approach to music
appreciation.

   I agree -- for all my apparent efforts to intellectualize what music
means to me, there is a visceral response that transcends any attempts to
verbalize it.  As an example, last night I first heard _Koln_ by Last Exit.
There is a guitar passage in the first song on that disc that made me feel
like I was plugged directly into the amplifier.  I could sit here and make
feeble attempts to say: "Oh, he was borrowing from Hendrix's technique", or
"He had the phrasing of so-and-so", or "He sounded like Albert Ayler on
guitar", blah, blah, blah.  None of that would do this justice.
   I can appreciate a lot of music from a distance -- i.e., in a studied
way.  There's nothing wrong with that, and I will like that sort of stuff
enough to listen to it every so often.  It's the stuff that hits me in the
solar plexus that will be my steady fare.

>As you also point out, you have to speak the language. I'd be at a total
loss
>listening to Derek Bailey if I hadn't already gotten into Frith and Kaiser.
>(Kaiser is awfully fond of the ground Bailey walks on, and Frith also cites
>Bailey as originator and/or inspiration of much of his more arcane
technique.
>Tony Oxley was the drummer for the original trio where Bailey came up with
>this stuff.) But there are also musical vocabularies I am familiar with
that
>I don't find especially interesting. Chopin doesn't speak to me. Neither
does
>Miles, unless he's got Gil Evans as an interpreter.

   First of all, I like the metaphor of Gil Evans as an interpreter.  Isn't
that exactly what an arranger is supposed to do for us?  If you don't speak
the language, then you have someone translate for you.
  The concept of "speaking the language" seems related to "n.n."'s idea of
having a "road map".  Whether it's cultural, stylistic, emotional, etc.,
it's the way to focus in and facilitate enjoying a certain kind of music
(and it helps keep music appreciation from being a sterile,
over-intellectualized affair).  "Your mileage may vary", but it's nice to
have an idea of where you're departing from, and where you think you're
headed -- it seems to make the scenery along the way more enjoyable.
(Excuse me, I seem to have come down with the "metaphor flu" recently.  :*)

>>Do we expect everything in
>>music/literature/art to be autobiographical and literal?  Or do we just
>>decide that it's autobiograhical when it threatens us?
>
>Good question. Ask Salman Rushdie.

   Very nice.

>Zappa made that point at the PMRC hearings-- in fact he went on to suggest
that
>the decision *not* to apply labeling to country music was protectionism for
the
>major industry of Nashville (in Gore's home state, you will note).

   Not to trivialize that aspect of it, but I would suggest it goes much
deeper.  Face it, country is Amurrican music -- it's the music of many of
the same people who are the most vocal about the decline of Family Values
(tm).  Ironically, it is probably the only music where you can constantly
hear adultery, drunkenness, etc. juxtaposed with baptist ideology, and not
have it be considered sacrilege.
   Face it, the same sorts of folks who are getting their shorts in a wad
over Ice-T would say (re country music) the regional equivalent of:  "Aw
shucks, they's just some good ole boys havin' a liddle fun."  Now, put a
black man or woman behind a similar message, season with racial distrust (if
not outright bigotry), throw in a pinch of Rodney King vs. the cops, add a
heaping pile of the L.A. riots, and you get ... well, if the posting I just
read is true, you get death threats from cops, and the song being pulled.


      bye,
      cmv ("chuck -- who wonders more each day about what is meant by law
            and order.")
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