Varèse just got MORE badass
Varese stares into the camera with Gallic intensity, daring you to listen to sound recordings of his jazzplorations.
Click on his ample hair.
Amirtha of SWEAT Lodge spins her wheels:
OK, let me just say: I dig Varese, who doesn’t? I spent the majority of my time in college obsessing over Ionisation, Hyperprism and Ameriques. I have always been equally magnetically drawn to Charles Mingus, a monster of a composer and improviser. I had always been told (or at least it had always been implied) that never the twain shall meet. That the universes in which each of these composers exist are parallel lines, with no correlation and no evidence of a relationship. I remember later hearing the anecdote about Charlie “Bird” Parker knocking on Varese’s door asking for composition lessons. Varese describes these fateful encounters: “He stopped by my place a number of times. He was like a child, with the shrewdness of a child. He possessed a tremendous enthusiasm. He’d come in and exclaim, ‘take me in as you would a baby and teach me music. I only write one voice. I want to have structure. I want to write orchestral scores.’ I promised myself I would try to find some time to show him some of the things he wanted to know.” While many of us may have heard these stories, the depth of the relationship between bebop and the classical avant-garde is sort of a murky musicological black hole. It always seemed like a lot of hogwash or hearsay (like the one about Sun Ra playing with John Cage on Coney Island???).
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Posted by: AmirthaK
Morton Feldman jaws with Amirkhanian
Morton Feldman, in a 1986 interview with Charles Amirkhanian, discusses Darmstadt, the waspyness of Elliott Carter, cancerous musical cells, his love of Allen Ginsburg, and “revolting” French students.
Click on his beret.
Posted by: JoeW
Private Joy
This is one of my favorite songs, despite myriad problems:
Private Joy -Rare live 1981 (w/lyrics) by endicott85
This is a fascinating, if not necessarily good, cover of it by LaToya Jackson:
“Private Joy”, lyrically = I control you sexually, I have power over you, I own you, you’re mine. It’s a secret, I won’t tell anyone because I’m kind of ashamed of you. You’re worthless without me, and very useful to me as a tool (specifically an orgasmitron). But man, that music. The opening synth hook. The harmonies on the chorus. The pre-chorus. The drums. And then there’s my favorite part, namely the lyrical tag at the end:
I strangled Valentino
You been mine ever since
If anybody asks you,
You belong to Prince.
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Posted by: druder
War on Sleeves
80s & 90s electric-ish avant-jazz had a keen sense of futuristic fashion. Behold Ronald Shannon Jackson & Steve Coleman & co’s future sounds & looks:
No word yet on the upcoming Sweat Lodge custom clothing to match our ethos.
Seriously though, this is crazy good music.
Posted by: druder
God knows what they’d be doing if they didn’t have a studio to play with
Posted by: Cory Fucking Bracken
Bob Ashley discusses hamburgers, commodities, and opera
He also talks about other things. Click on his face.
Posted by: druder
WIKI ACTION: WIRE! WIRE!
Long before the human race had settled on the 8-track cassette and the Minidisc as the most favorable means to carry sound forward for the pleasure of future progeny, the folks had to settle for outlandish wire-related measures.
Allow Wikipedia to paint a picture of a world of dials, spools, and hefty brown cases. And wires.
Click the picture!
Posted by: JoeW
Wendy Carlos SCHOOLS you in surround sound
If you think that surround sound is simply a matter of pointing speakers at one’s head from various angles, then Wendy Carlos will make you feel like a minor league rube in about 10 seconds. She’ll do it in a most fascinating way, so read her article.
Click on WC or her Moog.
Posted by: JoeW
