On Time & In Time

Britannica.com has an historical overview about time and its measurement.

George Woodcock writing on "The Tyranny of the Clock" provides an important note on the political economy of mechanical time:

Modern, Western man [] lives in a world which runs according to the mechanical and mathematical symbols of clock time. The clock dictates his movements and inhibits his actions. The clock turns time from a process of nature into a commodity that can be measured and bought and sold like soap or sultanas. And because, without some means of exact time keeping, industrial capitalism could never have developed and could not continue to exploit the workers, the clock represents an element of mechanical tyranny in the lives of modern men more potent than any individual exploiter or any other machine.
***
The problem of the clock is, in general, similar to that of the machine. Mechanical time is valuable as a means of co-ordination of activities in a highly developed society, just as the machine is valuable as a means of reducing unnecessary labour to the minimum. Both are valuable for the contribution they make to the smooth running of society, and should be used insofar as they assist men to co-operate efficiently and to eliminate monotonous toil and social confusion. But neither should be allowed to dominate mens lives as they do today.

Now the movement of the clock sets the tempo men's lives - they become the servant of the concept of time which they themselves have made, and are held in fear, like Frankenstein by his own monster. In a sane and free society such an arbitrary domination of man's functions by either clock or machine would obviously be out of the question. The domination of man by the creation of man is even more ridiculous than the domination of man by man. Mechanical time would be relegated to its true function of a means of reference and co-ordination, and men would return again to a balance view of life no longer dominated by the worship of the clock. Complete liberty implies freedom from the tyranny of abstractions as well as from the rule of men.

Among the funkijazzical cuts I played on my radio show last Wednesday was a wicked cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "In Time" recorded by a group led by Maceo Parker and featuring fellow funkateers Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, and Bootzilla himself, Bootsy Collins.

In preparing for the show, I discovered a tune recorded by The House Guests (the group Bootsy formed after he left James Brown and which morphed into Funkadelic) called "My Mind Set Me Free" which appears on a couple of hard-to-find funk compilations (I found it on SoulSeek; see this discography for more info). The other single by that group, "What So Never the Dance," is my favorite track from the best-of-Bootsy compilation.

Well, the countdown clock is getting close to The One, so here's to keepin' the funk alive in '05.

Heads I win, tails you lose ("How do you spell relief?")
Would you trade your funk for this? ("you deserve a break today")
Or that? ("have it your way")
A funk a day keeps the nose away; ain't it true?
I ain't gonna hold the lettuce, the pickles or the mustard.
***
Mind your wants 'cause someone wants your mind.
--George Clinton, "Funkentelechy"

Holy Ghost

Last November marked 34 years since the 34-year-old body of Albert Ayler was found in NYC's East River. Revenant's spirit box is a wonderful tribute to the late musician, and a bargain: 7 (+1) discs of music, 2 discs of interviews, and a book of insightful essays which by itself would be worth $20.
The track of Ayler performing with Cecil Taylor's trio in 1962 is, as Mats Gustafsson calls it, the "missing link" in the Ayler discography, the key which opened the door to Ayler's revolutionary "Spiritual Unity" trio. As Marc Chaloin notes in his essay, Ayler had not "thoroughly integrated the pianist's universe" (as had Jimmy Lyons) but rather "appears like a precious fellow-traveler to Taylor -- who in turn provided him at a crucial juncture with just the congenial musical environment he needed to fully come into his own." (An interesting parallel is the 1958 recording of John Coltrane with Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot -- also poorly recorded -- in which we can hear Trane develop certain aspects of his music heard in full bloom in the "Kind of Blue" and "Giant Steps" recordings of 1959. But the Ayler-Cecil meeting led to a much more radical restructuring, centered around Sunny Murray's expansive rhythms.)

A couple of weeks ago, as I was starting to dig into the Ayler box, I caught a screening of Michael Snow's film "New York Ear and Eye Control," which has a soundtrack by an expanded version of Ayler's group. I had seen the film once before, years ago, but forgot about the sequence of musicians posed before the camera, including Ayler in shadows, his luminous eyes cutting through the image to give the sense of an inner light shining through. (This footage is included on the "Digital Snow" DVD-ROM.)

This is "angry" music? The man wore a green leather suit!!

"I'm going to give the American people another chance."

-- Albert Ayler, 1970

Here's that chance.
Ho, ho, ho.

Voices of Sanity, Wages of Fear

Stan Hister in an important addendum to Thomas Frank's analysis of the problems with contemporary liberalism:

A long time ago, as the popular image of the worker went from Tom Joad to Archie Bunker, the left stopped caring much about the plight of the working class. Identity is what came to matter: politics became increasingly personalized (and almost as niche-marketed as cable tv), while economics receded into the background. But this shift away from class was also a shift away from any challenge to the system. In the old left-wing paradigm, the fight against racism or the oppression of women was seen as integral to the fight against capitalism. But with identity politics the goal isn't revolution anymore but inclusion. Which is why identity politics has never been radical in any meaningful sense - because its goal is fundamentally conformist.
The issue of same sex marriage illustrates the larger problem: gays and lesbians want 'in' - to a reactionary institution that is collapsing all around them. Of course they should have that right and of course the right wing campaign against it should be opposed. But the problem isn't inclusion as such but making a virtue of it. Same sex marriage isn't just about spousal benefits or adoption rights (which could be accommodated outside the framework of marriage), but above all about 'acceptance'. But acceptance of what and for what? Why should gay marriage be any less "legalized prostitution" than straight marriage, why should it be any less emotionally stifling, any less prone to abuse? The larger social critique, however, all but disappears in the battle for inclusion.

Arundhati Roy in a piece adapted from a book based on an earlier speech:

If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terror and the logic that underlies terrorism are exactly the same. Both make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. Al Qaeda made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the actions of their government in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. government has made the people of Afghanistan pay in the thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people of Iraq pay in the hundreds of thousands for the actions of Saddam Hussein. *** One does not endorse the violence of militant groups. Neither morally nor strategically. But to condemn it without first denouncing the much greater violence perpetrated by the state would be to deny the people of these regions not just their basic human rights, but even the right to a fair hearing. People who have lived in situations of conflict know that militancy and armed struggle provokes a massive escalation of violence from the state. But living as they do, in situations of unbearable injustice, can they remain silent forever? *** Terrorism is vicious, ugly and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war. They are people who don’t believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

An interesting, if useless, statistic from William Blum, quoted in an article by Mickey Z, about the $400 billion spent annually on the U.S. military:

One year's military budget in the United States is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

The U.S. has 4% of the global population and accounts for 45% of global military expenditures. The U.S. military budget accounts for 51% of discretionary spending, followed by education ($55B, or 7%) and health ($49B, or 6.3%). In a true free market, capitalists would bear the full costs of security for their imperial adventures, but we know their game is to socialize costs and privatize profits while promoting ignorance, fear, and passivity through their ministry of propaganda (the mass media).

“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”
--Clarence Darrow

The current temperature is 10 degrees Fahrenheit, or 261 Kelvin. Here's a tip on overcoming frozen balls.

Chastity Belts Under the Christmas Tree

One thing (the only thing, really) I miss after cancelling my cable TV service is The Daily Show. Thankfully the occasional great clip is posted at onegoodmove, and one doesn't need a subscription (yet) to The New York Times to read Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. Rich's article (also here) on the no-nothings is on target, though he should have put a little more emphasis on the degree to which the religionists' moralizing is less about protecting children and more about defending patriarchal (i.e., authoritarian/capitalist) order. Richard Goldstein gets it right as well, though I've never seen the show he discusses:

Religious conservatives are perfectly willing to be entertained by immorality; they only require that it be punished, at least eventually.

Since those who suffer most from the theocrats' ignorance-only approach to sex ed tend to live on other continents and have a darker epidermal hue, it won't be long before "African HIV Survivor" becomes the next hit reality show, the latest way for one community to feel superior to another while denying its own problems and their actual causes.

The feudalists set up these fictitious culture wars, propping up theocrats as straw men, while they do the dirty work behind the scenes to keep a few men fat and happy and all others begging for gifts. "Women and children first," they all say, repeating the same old story: "It's OK, my dears, everything will be all white if you place your trust in the heavenly master and his invisible hand."

Trees With Balls

Among the great alternative holiday tunes from April Winchell's site (scroll a bit past halfway down to "Seasonal Favorites") is "Hang Your Balls on the Christmas Tree" by Kay Martin and Her Body Guards.

Also on Winchell's page, under the "Terrifying Christian Recordings" category, is a truly chilling recording of "Happy Birthday Jesus" by Little Cindy; this track is included on John Waters' compilation of his favorite holiday music, offered with his wishes for "a merry, rotten, scary, sexy, biracial, ludicrous, happy little Christmas." Waters elaborates here on his love of the holidays.

I'll be covering the 10am-12:30pm slots for the WNUR Jazz Show on Wed, 15-Dec, and on Wed, 29-Dec. I'm gonna slip in some less well-known holiday music, perhaps the aforementioned Ms. Martin as well as a nice tuba+guitar version of "Frosty the Snowman" (also at Winchell's site) which seems appropriate to play tomorrow in advance of Melvin Poore's solo tuba performance at the Empty Bottle (though I doubt he'll do any holiday tunes).

Read here about some alternative Santa legends. I like the 13 wicked Icelandic Santas (Jolasveinar).

More on Peter Brötzmann & "Fire Music"

The following are selections, slightly edited, from the discussion at Bagatellen which followed my initial response to Adam Hill's piece:

Adam:

ah, once again the argument that if someone doesn't like something, they just don't get it, though Jason G's argument is more passionately made than the typical old saw of this kind. To lump me in with the "oppressive" "conservatives" hilariously undermines his own point about reactionary reductions. (Perhaps Santa will bring you a text on critical thinking)

Jason:

Have you heard Brotzmann in person? How often?

Adam:

As with just about any improvisational musician, I have no doubt that seeing Brotzmann live is preferrable to his recordings. That said, he releases a large number of recordings under his name every year, and you can buy recordings of his dating from the late 60's to the present day. Is his sound not represented on these? Any of these? Even the live recordings? Even though most of his recordings are done outside of a studio? If not, how could we possibly evaluate them? And then, why release them? See what I'm getting at?

Look, I respect your passion for his music. And you just have to take my word for it when I tell you I'm not a reactionary conservative interested in oppressing any art form. I am interested in serious discussion, sans the personal smacks, which are understandable, but tend to get my lesser angel worked up.

Jason:

Though your piece definitely pushed some of my buttons, I had no intention of responding with personal flames, so I'll take back the “reactionary conservative” label (for now). I do have issues with what I see as the political implications of your piece, e.g., ignoring or diminishing the socio-political contexts from which the music arises and upon which it comments, conflating a genuinely radical counterculture with the capitalist-friendly hedonist-hippies of the Sixties, etc. (Have the authoritarian systems of Western free-market capitalism and various Euro-Asian totalitarian/fascist regimes been dismantled? Funny, I hadn't noticed.) But I decided to ask about seeing/hearing Brotz live instead for a particular reason. You didn't answer the question, but here's what I'm getting at:

I really don't think the “live/Memorex” issue is the same regarding Brotzmann [as] it is regarding “just about any” improv musician. Brotzmann's music suffers more than most if you only focus on the recordings for this reason: The intensity and complex texture of his sound is at the core of his music (as it is with, say, Borbetomagus), something which is simply impossible to be faithfully reproduced by the best recording played on the finest stereo. It's not a sound you merely hear with your ears, but a penetrating, enveloping sound that vibrates throughout one's body, from feet to crotch to stomach to the hairs on your chiny-chin-chin. You can crank up the stereo, but it doesn't really help. That's one, important, aspect, but it has other implications: it becomes misleading to evaluate the nature of his interaction (or “communication”) with fellow performers on a recording, where you can't hear what they're really interacting with -- not clusters of notes which are more or less dissonant, more or less dynamic, but thick sonic brushstrokes which no currently-known recording technology can accurately reproduce. And then there is the visual element, but I'll stop here. ***

So that's where I'm coming from, regarding Brotzmann in particular. [] I think anyone who discusses jazz & improv music(ian)s without hearing the music in person is missing a lot; with a musician like Brotzmann, s/he is missing almost everything [well, at least “a lot more”].

To make visual art analogies: you get more of the essence of a Mondrian painting in a reproduction than you do of the essence of Pollock painting in a reproduction; you get more of the essence of a Lubitsch film on home video than you do from a Brakhage film on home video. Brotzmann is more Pollock/Brakhage than Mondrian/Lubitsch. So...

You ask: “Is his sound not represented on these? Any of these? Even the live recordings? Even though most of his recordings are done outside of a studio?”

The answer is: No, his sound is not [fully] represented on record. (By asking the question you answer my question about hearing him live.) [But a more accurate reproduction of] his sound can be mentally reconstructed [while] listening only after having had the opportunity to experience the music in person. (I think of it as a sort of retroactive, subconscious “filling in the blanks” process. Don't ask me to elaborate.) [Some recordings are certainly better than others, and it's not as problematic with certain musicians as it is with others, but there's no way to know unless and until you have heard the musician performin person.]

“If not, how could we possibly evaluate them? And then, why release them?”

You can evaluate the records after having heard him live, preferably multiple times in different contexts. I know all the problematic implications of this, regarding access to live performances, etc, etc. I just can't avoid the conclusion that it's an absolute imperative if you're going to seriously, competently discuss improvised music in general, and Brotzmann's music in particular.
Why release them? Well, in a culture in which information is allowed to circulate only [about that which has been or has the potential to be commodified], it becomes unavoidable to have to put out records. For another thing, as a source of income, records are necessary, if insufficient per se, “in order to survive” [i.e., they may bring in a little money, but more importantly serves as a promotional tool for performances]. But my argument is not that the records are completely useless (see my “fill-in-the-blanks” explanation above).
Once Brotzmann's body gives out, the recordings will become the artefacts which best inform future generations, however imperfectly, about his music. Gary Peacock and others [Amiri Baraka] have commented on how inadequately Ayler's sound [his Sound] is captured in even the best recordings. [In a way that doesn't necessarily “make sense” [though cognitive scientists may be able to explain it], hearing Brotzmann live helps one “hear more” of this unreproducable element of Ayler's music when listening to the reproductions.]

[References to Brotzmann and the blues tradition, to the socio-political context/implications of his music, and to] the title of Mike Heffley's imaginary dissertation: "Mississippi Blues, Rhenish Folk, and the Unbearable Whiteness of Brötzmann."

Adam:

a thoughtful post. i'll have to take your word for it in regards to seeing him live, because no, i have not seen Brotzmann live, though I don't doubt it could be stirring, especially surrounded by other brave men. however, i just can't agree with you that he (or any other jazz artist) cannot be evaluated unless or until seen live. i do like your analogies, though i think all the plastic arts suffer in reproduction, and I'm not convinced that an audio art form suffers in the same way.

as i tried to make clear in my piece, it's really aesthetics. i do not like Brotzmann's excessive intensity, his howling squalls, his choice of visceral over intellectual. *** i hope i've made myself a wee bit clearer, so that you might see my objections to his playing are based on aesthetics that do not necessarily lend to a socio-political agenda.

[Jason's note: Part of my point in this discussion was to insist that one cannot so easily separate aesthetics from socio-political concerns. That kind of separation is symptomatic of Christian/Cartesian dualistic notions of mind/body, intellect/emotion, man/nature -- false or irrelevant notions which only serve as conceptual frameworks in support of those systems of oppression from which they arise.]

Derek:

One thing that I find laughable is the contention that Brötz can’t play the blues. That he isn’t a bluesman- that he’s a victim of the “unbearable whiteness” of that dissertation title. To my ears there’s a real sense of blues in his music. ***

Jason:

Oh, I absolutely agree that there's a lot of blues in Brotz's music. Maybe I misunderstood Heffley's point in his imaginary dissertation title, but I take the "unbearable whiteness" as a reference to post-WWII Germany. Brotz has said "I have the European blues or the after-war blues." In keeping with Cornel West's definition of the blues tradition, there is much dialogue, resistance, and hope in Brotzmann's music.

My point about live/records is more about a critic's responsibility: It's irresponsible for a critic (emphasis on critic) to conflate the aesthetics of a recording with the aesthetics of the music. Beyond the purely acoustic sound qualities, I include a lot of visual information in my definition of improvised music "aesthetics." For example, the ability to see a drummer decide when and where to hit a particular cymbal in a particular way, to watch a sax player decide when and where to start/stop blowing, provides a great deal of information about the shape, flow, and interactivity of a lot of improv music. After you've had the live experience, you hear the aesthetics of recorded music differently and I'd say more accurately. A critic who dismisses or ignores the live experience not only misses a great deal of this aesthetic information but also shows a lack of interest/understanding about the socio-political affinities of the music. Once again: We're talking about more than a mere commodity -- it's a living music. Maybe I'm adhering to an antiquated, pre-Internet/blog notion of "criticism" proper, but I think it's appropriate to hold critics to a higher standard for the writing they generate for public consumption.

Adam:

a few comments about aesthetics.*** positing that reproduction of say a Rothko painting is only a 'slightly worse version of the thing' and that a recording of say Giant Steps is a distortion of its essence, a cheap knock-off of sorts, is extremely unconvincing no matter how many technical and personal factors one cites. Besides the truly faulty analogy, it's trying to have it both ways. You know those recordings you've loved all these years? You shouldn't love them, at least not unless you've seen those artists live on dozens of occasions and have taken in every possible element of performance. C'mon! That kind of criteria is absurd, and to dress it up as a critic's responsibilty is tantamount to say nothing should be evaluated and criticized. And then to add the layer of socio-political connotations, well, what the hell, why even bother to trust the immediacy of music at all? Afterall, we're just kidding ourselves when we respond to it as it plays on our stereos.

Jason:

one last shot, Adam:

Ayler is dead. Brotzmann is not. That matters.
A serious critic will understand how this fact relates to the aesthetics and politics of creative/jazz/improvised/Great Black musics and enables a basic understanding of why musicians working in this tradition have something unique to offer in our culture of alienating commodification.
Serious criticism (contra hobbyist opinionating) about jazz/improv musics does not require the impossible (hearing dead people) but should have reasonable prerequisites (hearing live people in a live context -- at least once -- before discussing their music and its "relevance").
Brotzmann is very much alive. If you can make your way to Chicago on January 12, I'll gladly pay your admission to the Empty Bottle to hear him perform with the members of the DKV Trio.

Happy listening...

Peter Brötzmann & "Fire Music"

An article by Adam Hill at One Final Note prompted much discussion at Bagatellen. The whole piece is ridiculous, but Hill's discussion of Peter Brötzmann's music was particularly disturbing to read in a publication that generally has some decent, informed writing about jazz & improvised musics. Hill asserts:

Brötzmann still enjoys playing [the sort of free music that come off as little more than brutal balls-out blasting] even though this bombastic and dense style has by now congealed into little more than a cliché. To so brazenly forgo subtlety as if it’s little more than sentimentalism, and subsume it with histrionic pyrotechnics, is far too easy a refuge. It’s low art blown big with hot air.

I posted the following response at Bagatellen:

To characterize Brötzmann's music as only about "overblown," "screaming," "raucous", "wailing", "bombastic", "histrionic," "simplistic," "angry", "hectic" or "abrasive" sounds (maybe Santa will replace that worn-out thesaurus) seems to miss almost everything about his music. His musical language incorporates certain techniques and sound elements -- hyper-visceral sounds which, yes, to some degree had to do with a certain time and place, i.e., the 1960s European art scene and counterculture. But he uses those elements as part of what he does as an improvisor, in exactly the same way that Johnny Hodges incorporated his "searing tone and slithery motion" (per Kevin Whitehead) in his improvisations. I wonder if Adam Hill would dismiss Hodges for anachronistically repeating his "cliches" and ignore the consistent creativity of Hodges' improvisations in the manner he has dismissed and ignored Brötzmann. How 'bout Sonny Rollins or Max Roach? Is an artist expected to create a revolutionary new style every few years? If someone like that exists, I'd like to know his/her name. Off the top of my head, among 20th-Century artists, only Picasso exhibited that kind of capacity from decade to decade (or from day to day). (Duke, Miles and Trane covered a lot of ground, but not to that degree.)

Writers like Hill tend to take music(ian)s which provide some initial discomfort, reduce them with the labels of "shocking" and "avant-garde," and then later, once their own discomfort has faded, criticize those music(ian)s for failing to provide what they had perceived as its only worthwhile quality, ignorant of the fact that the music(ian)s were never as one-dimensional as they thought, but were very much, dare I say, part of a tradition. The more I hear Brötzmann -- who I've heard on average once a year since the mid-1990s -- the more I hear the spirit of Coleman Hawkins.

Again we're faced with the huge deficiencies in perception and understanding of the visceral and structural elements of improvised musics. For the moralist with regard to sound (as Hill appears to be), the criticism seems to be about what sounds are proper material for "music". That's fine, but just state that up front ("I don't like Brötzmann's tone/volume/vibrato/whatever") rather than complain about cliches or irrelevance while ignoring the experience of listening to the music. Or just admit "I don't get it". (It's not hard. Here, I'll start: "I don't get Keith Jarrett." Now you try.)

Part of the problem may be that Hill is using reproductions of performances rather than live listening experiences to draw his conclusions. I treasure my records as much as the next guy, but we're dealing with a living music, people.

But even regarding Brötzmann's recordings, there is an astonishing diversity among just his solo, Die Like a Dog, and Chicago Tentet projects, and duets with Walter Perkins. Still, it's impossible to overstate the error in mistaking his records for the entirety of his activity as an artist -- not just in music but in visual arts as well, as evidenced by the work included in the current exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey: http://corbettvsdempsey.com/

Adam Hill's writing is a sobering reminder about the oppressive, pre-Cagean attitude towards what types and qualities of sounds are proper materials for "music" -- and for that matter, towards the purpose(lessness) of art-in-life. Unfortunately, this reactionary conservatism is a sign of our times. Four more years!
(Speaking of which, I can't describe how life-affirming it was to hear Brötzmann "bark 'n bite" in duo with Robert Barry this last November 3. Gustafsson was "ferocious" with a different group that night as well.)

-Jason