What the fuck?!

I went and saw a showing of "Food, Inc." last night - not because I want more information about how fucked our food system is, but because I was meeting some people there that I had to talk to about a catering gig. ANYWAY - of course, the movie highlighted how fucked the food system is (surprise!) and instead of feeling relieved at my own divergence from our popular food culture, I started feeling incredibly upset for the poor and low income communities that are adjacent to my own. Not to confuse you, I am poor. I am currently without steady employment. But what I've found is that in Chicago, a low income person like myself is eligible for $200 a month in food stamps. $200 a month! For that much, I can afford to eat exclusively organic food! This just highlights that regardless of your income level, you CAN afford to feed yourself and your family in a healthful and sustainable way. At this point, it is simply education and priorities that contribute to the recent statistic that 1 in 2 minority children born after 2000 will get diabetes. And that obesity, not just being over-weight, is hitting MOST people in our country. I don't really know what I can do, but I feel compelled to do something. Anything. Thoughts?

Furniture Music

Just read these liner notes from the Ken Vandermark solo album "Furniture Music". Really cool shit:

“Nevertheless, we must bring about a music which is like furniture — a music, that is, which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration.” — Erik Satie

This album has been under personal consideration for quite some time, several years in fact. Throughout the time I have worked as an improvising musician I have been fortunate enough to work in a wide variety of settings — from duos to large ensembles, groups that work with predesignated material or bands that are free from this, ad hoc settings as well as long term collaborations — but the issue of creating what I could consider as “my own” solo improvised music remained elusive despite my many efforts to deal with it.

There have been a number of reasons for this. The legacy of improvised solo reed music now goes back decades, even if you begin to examine it after the early works by masters like Coleman Hawkins and Eric Dolphy. My own awareness of this more recent history began with Joe McPhee’s album, Tenor, which I heard when I was seventeen. After this I found the solo recordings of Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, and Evan Parker. During a period in the mid 1990s the Duets Dithyrambisch double CD on FMP (with Evan Parker, Hans Koch, Wolfgang Fuchs, and Louis Sclavis) became a “textbook” of extended techniques for me. (I owe John Corbett a good deal of thanks for his introduction to many names and recordings [in some cases the people] from the European improvised music scene while I’ve lived in Chicago.)

To me, it started to seem as if performing and recording solo music was a necessary aspect of creative expression. Almost all of my favorite contemporary improvisers have done important unaccompanied work. This includes almost every kind of instrumentalist in addition to reeds: drummers (Han Bennink, Paul Lytton), guitarists (Derek Bailey, Joe Morris), bassists (Barry Guy, Peter Kowald, and recently Kent Kessler), trombonists (Paul Rutherford, George Lewis), violin/violists (Mat Maneri, Leroy Jenkins), pianists (Cecil Taylor, Misha Mengelberg), trumpeters (Axel Dörner, Bill Dixon), musicians who utilize electronics (Kevin Drumm, Thomas Lehn), vocalists (Jaap Blonk). However, aside from the players I mentioned earlier, reedists Mats Gustafsson and Ab Baars have inspired me to find my own way the most. Their solutions to the issues of performing unaccompanied, since the innovations made by McPhee, Braxton, Brötzmann, and Parker, are to my ears the most strikingly personal of my “contemporaries.” I felt that if I was going to be successful in my exploration of the solo format, I would need to develop methods that would hopefully stand up to and apart from their work and the ideas of the previous generation.

For a very long time I was unable to develop an approach that would fulfill this obligation and warrant documentation. When I used pieces by other composers as an unaccompanied soloist it always felt like something was missing. If the music worked it was because I and the listener were sustaining an illusion that supplied missing components (a rhythm section for example). If I played without compositional materials it seemed to me that I was delving into territory better realized by the musicians who had developed the ideas in the first place. My own compositions up to this point were written for specific ensembles and players and didn’t function well as solo source material.

Periodically I’d try different concepts at home and in a rare solo concert, give up on the results, and come back to the problem again some time later. The first solution that yielded workable results was an extrapolation from the “language types” of Anthony Braxton. In the middle ’90s I wrote “sound components” down on cards and would select a number of these from a deck of thirty or so (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). Then I’d place these in a series, improvising from one card to the next. What resulted was something that in the end sounded more like an academic exercise than music. It also didn’t allow me the freedom to move in the directions that the spontaneous playing might indicate, so this was abandoned and no other ideas seemed to lead anywhere that was useful for a period of several years.

The, in June of 2002, I was scheduled to play on a concert of solo music with Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, and Mars Williams. The performance took place in Montreal during the second North American tour by the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet. The four of us were to play for about fifteen minutes each. As I waited for my turn to go on, I became more and more tense; I knew that my lack of success with the solo format was going to be more than apparent when played side by side with these other musicians. Most likely, my fears were realized, but one piece indicated what would be the way for the solo music to come. I had tried it before on tenor, but on this night I chose to use the baritone and suddenly something clicked. The piece was a reinterpretation of Jaap Blonk’s version of Tristan Tzara’s “(brüllt)” found on the CD, Flux de Bouche.

Based on a dadaist poem by Tzara, Jaap’s performance was an extreme repetition of the word “brüllt” (which, according to his liner notes, means “roar” as well as “scream”) until his voice gave out. With the baritone’s large overtone range I felt that I had discovered a way to recreate the intensity of Jaap’s approach to Tzara’s text. His schematic gave me a template which I was able to reinvent in later solo concerts. It provided me with a specific set of parameters to follow, but it also allowed for flexibility in interpretation and an open way to interact with the performance environment (Parameters: low Bb hit as hard and as long as possible. Variables: rhythm, duration of tone, complexity of overtone structure, motion of overtones). This conceptual breakthrough led me to a number of connections between a set of artists whose work I have long admired:

Bernd and Hilla Becher
Samuel Beckett
Morton Feldman
Mississippi Fred MacDowell
Piet Mondrian
Mark Rothko
Erik Satie
Michael Snow

The creative action of these individuals has a commonality in its use of fluid repetition. Through studying their catalogs I was able to “break the code” preventing me from finding my own self contained approach. By creating a solo music based on “typologies” (borrowing a term used by the Bechers for one of their photo collections) which represented open patterns, I was quickly able to develop a series of workable pieces. Here are simplified descriptions of the template methods used on this album; I’ve also included the manner in which some of the ideas from the artists listed above have impacted the music.

Resistance: exploration of difference tone motion in the upper register of the Bb clarinet.

Horizontal Weight: use of an image from one of Franz Kline’s black and white paintings as a source for a graphic and emotional score

So Is This: (the title is taken from a film of the same name by Michael Snow) interpretations of a “structural” film from Snow that examines pattern variations in a leaking faucet on dishes in a kitchen sink

Lines: attempt to spontaneously construct an open ended solo phrase using Lennie Tristano’s piano style as a model.

Immediate Action: use of pitch based speed to try to express the motion contained in a Jackson Pollock painting.

Panels: intersection of the visual aspects of Piet Mondrian with the flow of an Erik Satie piano piece.

Color Fields to Darkness: exploration of an open sequence of bass clarinet overtones to aurally represent the shift in color of Mark Rothko’s paintings towards black.

Would a Proud Man Rather Break Than Bend: approach towards an improvised blues with Mississippi Fred McDowell’s elliptical guitar phrases in mind.

Beck and Fall: integration of the physical action (Act Without Words I) and language patterns (End Game) of Samuel Beckett with the “crippled symmetry” of Morton Feldman’s music.

Melodica: construction of a sequence of “pure” melodies in the time of performance.

Indeterminate Action: utilization of Irvine Arditti’s approach to the “Freeman Etudes” by John Cage (move as quickly as possible through the violin sound combinations in the score), improvised and applied to extended technique possibilities on the bass clarinet.

Leaves: incorporation of the image and sound from the park scenes in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, and the newspaper sequence from his film Red Desert, then cross cutting them (I owe a great deal of debt to Axel Dörner’s sound innovations for inspiring the first part of this piece).

(brüllt): the methodology of this composition has already been discussed.

I’ve included second versions of five of these pieces in the hope of illustrating the improvisational variety possible with this typological system. They were recorded at a solo concert held at 3030 in Chicago; the performance took place between the two “studio” sessions documented in my living room.

The search to find something worthwhile to say when improvising on the stage or in the studio can always be difficult. My attempts to find a workable and self-contained approach to solo improvisation has been particularly challenging. I feel that I’ve found something personal to express from the results of this struggle; my wish is that in experiencing this music the listener may agree.

— Ken Vandermark, March 2003

drunken spewing

found this recording from months ago - thought id put it in writing. ah, memories :)

i sit here and i listen to the shit ive been recording and i think what the fuck its all going out of my mouth and out my guitar and into the abyss of nothingness what does it mean it needs to have some sort of significance or something thats my fucking plague its my plight is that i feel like i need to fucking use all my fucking potential have some sort of significance i have to fucking make my mark i have to be something special but really thats not at all important whats important is finding meaning and joy the irony is that the things that i find meaning and joy in are probably that things that would actually push me to the things that i want out of my life but the problem is that i know that thats the case and therefore cant actually allow myself to endeavor into those things i mean am i supposed to be a songwriter it seems like that could have been something that i could have pursued still can pursue but the fact that im aware of that the fact that i know that the fact that im thinking about that putting pressure on myself and creating expectations for the future is actually pulling me down so its like this evil cycle of you know wondering if i could make something of myself in such a regard but its impossible for me to do so because im aware of the fact that i have potential in this way if i was completely unaware and ignorant of this fact just allowed myself to pursue it out of pure joy out of pure search for meaning then maybe so maybe i could actually fucking do something with it but the fact that im aware of that the fact that im obsessed with this whole idea of utilizing my potential in some way in order to make some sort of significant mark to try and find meaning in my life to try and do something with my self find my purpose is actually counter-intuitive or not really counter-intuitive but rather just destructive and so maybe thats the reason im imbibing in substances cause maybe thats the reason im trying to escape is it calming the demons like with kerouac or is it is it a tool i dont know i mean i feel like at this at this juncture of my life i feel like im at this turning point you know im watching all these fucking videos late at night you know just fucking pouring all these inspirations into my brain you know hunter s thompson jack kerouac tom waits these fucking people these heroes these idols rather im worshipping idols i sit here and i drink my beer and i worship these idols and what happens is i watch these people and i let their influence come through me as opposed to just letting it happen naturally i think oh i need to i need to find the person that i have that i can be that these people have these people who are really fucking self destructive and crazy i mean maybe with the exception of tom waits although he was on a self-destructive path for many years until he met his wife and she changed everything but what the fuck do i have to self destruct do i have to be fucking nuts in order to to find that would i choose that would i rather be crazy and and tap into that genius tap into that that insane genius that those people have done or would rather be a socially normal person i mean its hard to say i cant fucking decide just right now im self conscious of myself talking on this fucking tape recorder im aware of the fact that ive been influenced by hunter s thompson in the past thirty or forty minutes its that yeah is that whats speaking through me or this my true self i mean its hard to know were not really truly ourselves anyway were just a fucking amalgam of everything thats come before us and the things that weve chosen in the past and i just have to fucking find have to find peace have to find meaning in things and be completely unaware of it i need to be completely unaware of the meaningfulness i can provide i have to realize that everything i do is completely pointless and then maybe ill be totally free and and stop thinking that i have potential stop thinking that my intelligence and my talent my skill and my capabilities are worth a shit because yeah i mean i do feel like theres something there to be had but my awareness of that is quite possibly my i dont know its my its the bane of existence

Jesus H. Christ!

Have any of you guys seen "Hair" before? Oh my God! I just saw it for the first time last night and I was on the verge of sobbing the whole time - an excess of joy brings tears. The music was unreal, the dance, the story, the way freedom and passion manifested itself in the performers... Ugh! I can't handle it. Nothing will ever be the same.

Back in the Black

I am now both jobful and soon to be homeful. I am going to be living in a neighborhood with trees that's less that a block from the lake and has a huge dance studio/performance space as its front room. I've also started work at a vegetarian restaurant that's less that three blocks away from my new place. Balance is being restored, synchronicities abound, and Spring is in Summer...

All is not lost!

Though many of us know how lackluster the food culture in America's southeast can be, I experienced a wonderful little bright spot the other day when driving through Alabama. From the highway, all you can really see in driving through Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and probably most of America is Exxon's, Burger King's, Waffle Houses, Walmarts, and all the shit that makes you think the country is going to the birds. However, in looking for a vegetarian place to eat on a road trip with my mom, we found a place called Grace's Fajita Shack or some such unassuming name. Let me tell you, it was amazing - a little pink house with a walk up window and a hand done menu advertising that all of their food was prepared in house (pun intended) with local and organic produce! In ALABAMA! I also saw a sign for buylocalalabama.com. It really shifted my thinking as far as some of the harsh criticisms I often level against the southeast. Apparently, there still are people down there who are trying fight the continual degredation of our food supply. Yay!

How?

One of us has stopped changing, or maybe we've just stopped trying - And it's too late, baby, now it's too late.

Time. The Mystery. Intricate interweaving.