Ten-Year
Anniversary Special
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Dan
Warburton's Top 40
1
Ludwig van Beethoven
LATE PIANO SONATAS
Maurizio Pollini, piano
(Deutsche Grammophon 2CD)
It was a toss up between this and the late string quartets (any
or all of them), but Pollini won. The only guy who ever played Beethoven
as if it was Boulez. Good old Beethoven. In Pollini's reading you
really get the sense of the composer struggling with the material,
banging out that G major chord in the finale of Op.110 like Carl Ruggles
"giving the chord the test of time". Or was that Antheil? Never liked
Mozart; he was always too damn perfect. Give me Ludwig van anytime.
2
Claude Debussy
PRELUDE A L'APRES-MIDI D'UN FAUNE
Well, it's just perfect. Yeah, I know I just said that was what
I didn't like about Mozart, but what the hell. Form, orchestration,
everything. Not one single note out of place. I rather like my old
Boulez version, even if the recording needs remastering. Beware of
conductors who try and play Debussy as if it's Mahler.
3
Bela Bartók
MUSIC FOR STRINGS PERCUSSION AND CELESTA
I'd take the scratchy old vinyl I grew up with (can't remember who's
playing, as the disc is somewhere in a box in the basement of my parents'
place), and definitely not the tortuously slow Seiji Ozawa recording,
though to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever recorded the piece
and followed the composer's (insane) metronome markings to the letter.
Even Boulez couldn't quite manage it. After Stravinsky's Sacre
this must be the most influential - in the sense of widely copied
- piece of the twentieth century. Ask Stan Getz (Focus). It's
also proof that serious mathematics can be rigorously applied to music
without its losing its ability to make the hairs stand up where you
didn't know you had any.
4
Igor Stravinsky
SYMPHONY OF PSALMS
I hesitated over whether I'd take the old Boulez version of Le
Sacre instead until I realised, while watching Fantasia
with son Max, that I knew that damn piece so well I could sing it
through in my head from beginning to end and therefore could probably
do without it, so I opted instead for the arch neoclassicism the composer
evolved into twenty years later. Fond memories of watching Lennie
Bernstein's Norton Lectures The Unanswered Question, perhaps
(though I prefer the old CBS version conducted by the composer to
Bernstein's own recording). The second movement presents the perfect
example of the old maxim "rules are meant to be broken": the third
entry in the fugue is scored for flute in its lowest (weakest) register,
while the first two voices feature flute and oboe in their middle
/ high (strong) register. You try doing this in your composition class
and watch the teacher reach for the red pen.
5
György Ligeti
REQUIEM / LONTANO / CONTINUUM
Wergo WER 60045 LP
I already wrote about discovering this in The Wire magazine a couple
of years back, so I won't bore you with the story again. Suffice it
to say that the "Dies Irae" is absolutely bloody terrifying through
headphones at high volume. Nice thing about the old Wergo LP, and
I suppose its CD reissue, though I don't have a copy, is that it also
comes with "Lontano" and "Continuum" (I'll also
take the plastic pochette from Lido Musique that came with the album
when I bought it at that long forgotten but rather wonderful record
store on the Champs Elysées in 1980 - ever see the film "Diva"?).
If somebody wants to buy me a nice present one day, a copy of the
full score of the "Requiem" would be grand; it's about three feet
high and I haven't seen it since I first heard the piece as an impressionable
teen in the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.
6
Iannis Xenakis
EONTA
Vanguard VCS 10030 LP
I saw Roger Woodward perform this with the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble
at the RNCM in Manchester when I was 15, and it totally took my head
off. Quite apart from the ferocious complexity of the final section
- I assumed Woodward was playing more or less the right notes, but
one can never be too sure: I remember him once screwing up the opening
of Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto - there was the thrilling sight
of trumpets and trombones blasting hell into the body of the piano
before setting off on a walkabout through the concert hall with their
music perched on those tiny clip-on stands used by brass bands. I'm
choosing the old Yuji Takahashi vinyl recording because the flipside
includes "Metastasis" and "Pithoprakta",
and I figure you can't do much better than that as far as Xenakis
goes. I was, though, half tempted to take the CD compilation of his
electronic music that appeared on EMF a while back.
7
Karlheinz Stockhausen
TELEMUSIK
Deutsche Grammophon LP 137012
Has this piece been reissued on a compilation somewhere (I wish
someone out there would write in and tell me if it has), or do I have
to make do with this old vinyl, which also includes "Mixtur",
never one of my favourite Stockhausen pieces, and sports some of the
most hideous cover art ever released? Whatever, this one is definitely
in the goody bag. Perusing my well-thumbed copy of Jonathan Cott's
conversations with the composer and re-reading Karlheinz's wonderful
story of how he apparently dreamt a piece that included all the music
of the world, I fondly relive the transcendental adolescent glee that
drew me to the piece in the first place, but while the monumental
and even slightly bombastic Hymnen has aged rather badly, the
tight structure of this seventeen minute masterpiece has stood the
test of time well. It's a damn shame Stockhausen fell out with Deutsche
Gram and lost that groovy lifetime contract with total artistic control
and all the trimmings: there's a whole generation of young cats out
there who need to know how fucking good this piece is, and while one
can admire Karlheinz for his artistic integrity, it's still frustrating
to think that the only way you're likely to get hold of this little
gem is by making the effort to get in touch with the Stockhausen Verlag.
8
Steve Reich
MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS
ECM 1129 LP
Give me the old ECM recording instead of the more recent reissue:
the chomping bass clarinets that pulse in and out of the piece's opening
section sound so much better. This was another one of those epiphanies
- coming across the sleek, polished surfaces of these clean eleventh
and thirteenth chords after four or five years of prolonged and probably
unhealthy exposure to Webern, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Xenakis
and Cage was one hell of a shock. It wasn't just the sound of the
music either, but the transparency of its form and structure: I was
instantly seduced by (and to this day remain sentimentally attached
to) Reich's idea of "pieces of music that are, literally, processes".
Music for 18 Musicians kick-started an interest in minimalism
that obsessed my own compositions for nearly two decades. It's a shame
Steve has really gone off the boil in recent years - I always thought
"Different Trains" was the first station on a branch line leading
to nowhere - but enough bitching: check out those maracas.
9
Charles Mingus
TOWN HALL CONCERT WITH ERIC DOLPHY
Again, the story of how this one came into my life was covered in
The Wire (#201, November 2000), so I'll spare you the nostalgia. If
pushed to choose one musician above others, the choice is simple.
Eric Dolphy. The quintessential mix of intellect and emotion, technical
excellence and raw soul power, awareness and total assimilation of
tradition and pushing the envelope. Someone once said that
Dolphy represented for Mingus an equivalent of Ornette Coleman that
he could understand. Quite apart from Dolphy and his legendary solo
on "So Long Eric", not to mention his devastating work on "Meditations",
this Mingus sextet was one of the killer groups of the decade, and
their 1964 European tour was thankfully well documented on record.
The contributions of Johnny Coles, Clifford Jordan and Jaki Byard
are outstanding, and the Mingus / Richmond interplay was never better.
10
Eric Dolphy
LAST DATE
Though most people know this album for the rare (and fateful) snippet
of Dolphy speaking at the end ("When you hear music, after it's over,
it's gone in the air.. you can never capture it again.."), it's a
fabulous treasure, thanks to the inimitable piano playing of Holland's
Misha Mengelberg. I put it to Misha in our 1996
interview that it was shame Dolphy never played with Monk
(he agreed); well, he got the next best thing with Mengelberg. Han
Bennink plays it pretty straight on drums (no sign of the insane cymbal-frisbeeing
monster he turned into a few years down the road), and bassist Jacques
Schols keeps the thing well anchored. Most of Dolphy's recordings
in Europe were flawed in that he was often teamed up with rhythm sections
that, although perfectly competent, were about ten years out of date
in terms of language. Last Date blows them away, and it's such
a joyful life-affirming experience that you even forget to wonder
what Eric might have done had he lived a little longer.
11
Keshavan Maslak
HUMANPLEXITY
Leo LP LR101
This was the first Leo album I ever heard, I think, on the late
Charles Fox's "Jazz Today", a Radio 3 programme that used to air on
Tuesday afternoons when I got home from school. He played "Overear
Woman". What a sensational ballad, and just listen how Misha Mengelberg
and Han Bennink totally fuck it up. Leo Feigin told me that "Quick
Majestic Death in Manhattan" refers to Maslak's arrival in NYC, where
Ornette Coleman had encouraged him to settle. Within weeks Keshavan
was washing dishes in a greasy spoon to pay the bills.. Apparently,
Feigin and Maslak (now known as Kenny Millions and running a restaurant
somewhere in Florida) had a falling out, and Leo won't be reissuing
this on his Golden Years imprint, despite strenuous protests (from
me). Maybe Maslak has reissued it himself. In fact, I think he has.
Go get it then, it's an absolute killer.
12
Michael Tippett
CONCERTO FOR DOUBLE STRING ORCHESTRA
PTM publisher Guy Livingston is for some reason always horrified
when I tell him I like Tippett (actually, I don't like everything
he did). Well, I'm not the world's biggest Antheil fan either, so
vive la différence. Guy would argue though - and he'd be right
- that there's no better way to get into a piece than actually play
it yourself, and that's what I did in my late teens, when I escaped
to rural Hertfordshire for an extended weekend of string orchestra
rehearsals. As well as this piece, we also rehearsed Strauss' Metamorphosen
(see below) and Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
(that one cost me a fortune in broken strings). Evening rehearsals
in Piggott's, a farmhouse formerly lived in by engraver Eric Gill,
were invariably concluded about 10pm to give us all enough time to
take a short cut through a muddy ploughed field and consume as many
pints of tepid local bitter as humanly possible. I've since sobered
up (well, nearly), but I still love this piece to death. Ironic, isn't
it, that the slow movement is always described as "typically English",
when in fact the melody is a Negro spiritual. That's the British Empire
for you.
13
Richard Strauss
METAMORPHOSEN
This is another one of those pieces I played about fifty times sitting
on the third desk of the violins. You've got to admire old Strauss
for sitting out World War II as if nothing was going on and writing
this, a non-stop outflow of unashamedly Romantic music (are there
more than a couple of dozen of pizzicato notes in the entire piece?)
while not too far away in space and time a bunch of new young cats
was getting ready to (so they thought) revolutionise art music at
the Darmstadt summer school. Strauss is one of those figures (Fauré,
Delius and Sibelius are others) who carried on writing into the early
and mid twentieth century as if blissfully unaware that anything else
was happening. At least Richard had a look over the abyss with Elektra,
even if he did step safely back with Rosenkavalier.
14
Miles Davis
KIND OF BLUE
OK, I'm sure everyone has a copy of this album by now, but I'm not
about to choose a more obscure Miles outing just for the sake of snobbishness,
though Dark Magus and Get Up With It certainly came
in a close second and third. I know that they've now released the
complete Kind of Blue sessions, with every cough sneeze wheeze
burp fart and false start, but I haven't heard it and hopefully never
will. There's something so utterly perfect about every note on this
album - I wouldn't want to shatter the magic by finding out how it
was done. It's almost impossible to single out any event for special
mention, but Cannonball's solo on "Flamenco Sketches" is just about
as close to pure love as you're ever likely to get. That might be
the daftest thing I've ever written, by the way. I've actually worn
out two vinyl copies of this, and even the CD is looking a bit battered.
Happy to announce that Fred
Frith also chose this one for his desert island in his
interview
with me back in 1998.
15
Luc Ferrari
PRESQUE RIEN
Musidisc 245172
Nice CD compilation that features not only the original "Presque
Rien No.1, le lever du jour au bord de la mer" (still sounds as fresh
today as the morning he recorded it from his bedroom window in a hotel
in a tiny fishing village on the Dalmatian coast.. for details see
the Luc
Ferrari interview), but the wacky insanity of "Music Promenade"
and the second and third "Presque Riens", which aren't as good, though
there's a cracking thunderstorm halfway through No.2. The hilariously
out of tune brass band near the end of "Music Promenade" is one of
only two works of art I've ever experienced that actually made me
fall off my chair laughing. The other is the description of the motel
love scene in Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49.
16
Robert Fripp
EXPOSURE
You'll have realised by now that I had a strange, fucked up adolescence,
getting off on Mantra instead of Spiral Scratch like
most normal spotty teens. But I made it my business to catch up, and
I'll bet that most of my fellow college students who were thrilling
to The Associates and early Material are now comfortably tucked away
in balding middle age listening to Bach cantatas, whereas I'm still
getting plenty of teenage kicks from the Buzzcocks. But wait, this
is supposed to be about Robert Fripp's grandiose - if a little self-indulgent
- 1979 solo album. Solo album's a bit misleading a term for a piece
of work that relies to such an extent on the appearances of various
Fripp alumni guest stars - Peter Hammill, the Roches, Peter Gabriel..-
but there's something compelling about Fripp's master plan here, with
the Gurdjieff-inspired prophecies of his guru J.G.Bennett rapping
on about the impending flood. This was the first real rock album I
ever got to know inside out, a door that opened on to numerous vistas
that I've been exploring ever since, and I make no apologies for remaining
deeply attached to it.
17
George Adams / Don Pullen Quartet
LIFELINE
One miserable autumn night in 1981, I took a train down from Cambridge
to London to catch the Carla Bley Band at the Roundhouse. Wandering
around Soho before the gig, hesitating over whether or not I should
blow more of my student grant on US imported vinyl at Harold Moore's,
I passed by Ronnie Scott's and saw that the Adams / Pullen group were
playing. Last night of a week's residence. Already familiar with their
work from Mingus' Changes (shit, I should have chosen that
too) and Earth Beams (Timeless), it was an opportunity too
good to pass up. The Bley gig was grand, but sitting within spitting
distance of George on the front row of Ronnie's two hours later was
unforgettable. Lifeline hadn't yet been released (on Timeless),
but the material on the album figured heavily in both sets that night.
I especially remember Adams' vocals on "Nature's Children", and exchanging
a few words with Don Pullen at the bar (when he told me his favourite
musician was Eric Dolphy - yep, I was already asking musicians dumb
questions like that - I think I nearly kissed him). When it was all
over I walked all the way to Liverpool Street and took the fabled
mail train back to Cambridge, arriving just in time to crawl home,
have a shower and go off to morning lectures. Don, George and Dannie
have all passed on now (bassist Cameron Brown is still on fine form,
I hear) but "Lifeline" is still very much alive.
18
Joy Division
UNKNOWN PLEASURES
I know it's kinda hip nowadays to take a dump on Joy Division. OK,
so the songs were rather bleak and miserable, and Ian Curtis didn't
look all that happy on the one occasion I ran into him in a pub outside
Manchester, but life was pretty bleak and miserable in the grimy suburbs
of Manchester when Thatcher swept to power. So much has been written
on this group, and on Martin Hannett's production, it's hardly worth
my adding anything else, but JD are always good material for one of
those "what if..?" conjectures. If Ian hadn't hanged himself, would
we have had New Order (and by extension, much of 80s dance music)?
What would he be doing today? Guesting on Barry Adamson albums? Yikes,
he's better off dead.
19
NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, IT'S A POST PUNK COMPILATION TAPE
Homemade cassette compilation
One of my pals at Cambridge was a mathematician called John Fotheringham
who hailed from somewhere near Hemel Hempstead and had the biggest
collection of original punk 45s I'd ever seen. As I'd more or less
missed out on punk when it was happening, apart from a very brief
stint as "manager" of a punk band at school called The Nonskills,
I asked John to make me a cassette compilation of his favourites.
The old battered Sony BHF 90's sitting in front of me right now, and
I can do no worse than list the songs he put on it, as they're all
without exception fucking killers. Following up on the lines of enquiry
prompted by this tape cost me an absolute fortune. If you're out there,
John, I hope you've still got your collection and haven't flogged
it off for £100 at a car boot sale. And if you've got a CD burner
and can do a CD copy of the tape, here's what's on it: "No Sly Moon"
(The Box); "In Shred" (The Chameleons); "So Run Down" (Psychedelic
Furs); Things That Need Fucking" (Action Pact); "Sense of Loss" (Inca
Babies); "Rockaway Beach" (Ramones); "Holiday in Cambodia" (Dead Kennedys);
"Dead Pop Stars" (Altered Images); "Tension" (Killing Joke); "Sick
On You" (Hollywood Brats); "Jonny" (Holger Hiller); "Orient" (X Mal
Deutschland); "Green Grass of Home" (John Otway); "Have You Got 10p?"
(The Ejected); "Hey Ho My Cholesterol Level is Low" and "Don't Make
Another Bass Guitar Mr Rickenbacker" (Danny and the Dressmakers);
"Bommerlunder" (Die Töten Hösen), "New Rose" (Damned); "AWOL" (The
Three Johns); "There Is No International Rescue" (The Cravats); "Kitchen
Person" (The Associates); "Humor Me" (Pere Ubu); "Two People In A
Room" (Wire); "Babylon's Burning" (The Ruts); "I Fought the Law" (The
Clash); "Smile" (The Fall); "Primary" (The Cure); "Thirteen Feelings"
(The Associates" and "Can't Stand Rock and Roll" (Anti Nowhere League).
20
Philip Glass
EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH
The original Tomato recording, please, not the more glitzy recent
one on CBS. I suppose I could have just as well gone for Music
With Changing Parts or Music In Twelve Parts, but a certain
sense of nostalgia forced my hand. In a fit of sheer bravura (lunacy,
rather) habitually associated with besotted undergraduates, I actually
transcribed this entire opera by ear in keyboard reduction as part
of my Cambridge BA dissertation. Believe me, apart from playing it
yourself, there's no better way of getting to know a piece of music.
Finally getting my paws on an authorised copy of the score a few years
later was almost anticlimactic. In a sense, "Einstein" was the beginning
of the end for Glass - it marked the beginning of his obsession with
chord progessions and the subsequent abandoning of the linear additive
process approach that made his early music so richly ambiguous. He
was still rolling up to and including Koyaanisqatsi (just about),
but dropping the needle onto anything he's written since is a depressing
reminder of the fact that I'm growing old. He is too. Enough of that,
though - I finally got a chance to see Einstein live in Paris
in the early nineties, complete with Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson
(who the French annoyingly refer to as "Bob", as if they all knew
him as a close friend). I found out later that my then future wife
Marie had tickets for the show the same night but actually forgot
about it and went home to her family in Angers. Ah, the folly of the
youth.. still, I suspect it'll be revived yet again before too long.
And if the ending of "Spaceship" doesn't get your juices flowing,
there's frankly no hope for you.
21
Tom Waits
BLUE VALENTINE
The first time I heard this I was smashed out of my tree on cheap
whisky at 3am in someone's student room at Cambridge. And that's probably
the best way to appreciate Waits' slurring magnificence in his cover
of Lenny Bernstein's "Somewhere", which also contains one of the worst
edits in the history of recorded music, right before the end. I like
most of Waits' post-Swordfishtrombones stuff, but the boozed-out
sleaze of the Asylum stuff still works every time. Oddly enough, austere
post-minimalist British composer John "I have been touched by the
hand of God" Tavener is a big Tom Waits fan. Bet you didn't know that.
22
Michael Torke
VANADA
Argo 430209-2
When I arrived in Rochester NY (in a snowstorm) in January 86 the
first thing I did was look up David Drucker, a pal of mine who'd done
the MPhil in Cambridge and was nearing the end of a DMA at Eastman.
Almost immediately he said I had to hear John Adams Harmonielehre
and Michael Torke's Vanada. The Adams piece didn't do much
for me (it's another fine example of the overriding influence of Stravinsky's
Symphony in Three Movements), but Torke's piece blew me away.
Here was what I'd been looking for: a formally tight piece whose procedures
and structures were immediately evident - the heritage of minimalism
- but whose language owed as much to funk and rock as they did to
Reich and Glass. Michael had by then checked out of Eastman, though
we did meet up about a year later, by which time he'd moved to NYC
and signed some sort of lifetime contract with Booseys. Vanada
was eventually released on Argo in a recording with the London
Sinfonietta and Michael himself on piano, but I still have a cassette
copy of the recording of the work he made at Eastman (and paid for
himself), and it rocks. And, unless I've missed out on something really
big, he still hasn't done anything to top this piece.
23
Donald Fagen
THE NIGHTFLY
Insert cassette in Walkman as you leave 492 S. Goodman, Rochester
NY, press play, proceed north on Pearl on foot and by the time "Ruby
Baby" comes riding in, the skyscrapers of Downtown Rochester are coming
majestically into view. This was my walking to school music for about
six months until the fabled upstate NY winter kicked in in early October
1986. It was fellow composer Todd Levin who turned me on to Steely
Dan (whatever happened to Todd Levin?), and I'm making no apologies
for including it. To paraphrase John Zorn, improv snob eat shit. OK,
it's the brash sheen of corporate America, with the impossibly optimistic
lyrics, perfect production, crème de la crème horn section,
but check out Greg Phillinganes' kickass solo on "Ruby" and Michael
Brecker's magnificent tenor break on "Maxine". It was hard to choose
between this and side one of Steely Dan's Gaucho - especially
"Glamour Profession" - I managed to wear out copies of both in under
a year. Graduate studies in music theory and composition at Eastman
School of Music can do funny things to you.
24
The Smiths
THE QUEEN IS DEAD
In the same way that I all but missed out on punk when it was actually
happening, The Smiths only came into my life with a vengeance in California
in the summer of 1987 (by which time it was more or less all over
for the Morrissey / Marr songwriting team), when I took the cassette
of it with me on the road in my then girlfriend's beatbox. It was
one of those machines that can rewind and repeat a track ad nauseam,
and I have distinct memories of listening to "There Is A Light That
Never Goes Out" twenty times in a row while driving through the Point
Reyes national seashore, which is about as far as you can get from
Morrissey's Manchester. A few years later at an all-night Derek Jarman
festival at a cinema in Paris I finally saw his video for "The Queen
Is Dead". Has anyone issued that on DVD?
25
Chaka Khan
WHAT CHA GONNA DO FOR ME
Nearly opted for Echoes of an Era, Chaka's only bona fide
jazz album - and what a great jazz singer she is when she wants to
be - but that Arif Mardin production and the Brecker Bros horn section
(again) swayed my decision. By now everyone knows how (and why) Mardin
grafted the original Charlie Parker break from "A Night In Tunisia"
onto "The Melody Still Lingers On", but the album's worth the price
of admission alone for Chaka's inspired duet with her brother, "We
Got Each Other." It's enough to make you seriously consider incest.
I have it on good authority from someone who worked at Warner that
Ms Khan was once apparently stopped going through French customs and
her luggage inspected. The local douaniers were not a little
surprised to come across some interesting "toys".. And why the hell
not! The woman has a gargantuan appetite, a stupendous voice and positively
oozes sexuality - and more importantly, femininity and humanity -
good on ya, Chaka. You're welcome here for Earl Grey and salmon and
cucumber sandwiches next time you're in town.
26
Eugene Chadbourne
THERE'LL BE NO TEARS TONIGHT
Parachute P 013 LP
While studying for the fabled PhD in Rochester NY I agreed, goodness
knows why, to give composition lessons to a guy called Brian Seman
(hope you're still out there Brian) who probably ended up teaching
me more than I did him, if only through the cassettes and albums he
lent me in lieu of payment. One of these was the legendary Eddie Chatterbox
session where the good Doctor Chadbourne recorded a set of hair-raisingly
insane cover versions of Thelonious Monk tunes (I'm happy to report
that I have since procured the session from Dr Chad himself, complete
with its warning that the sound quality is "atrocious"). The damage
was done, the seed was planted, and I now own enough Chadbourne recordings
to fill a suitcase, but I still harbour a special affection for the
pre-Shockabilly Chad, and this justifiably legendary release on his
Parachute label, complete with the inimitable birdcall garglings of
John Zorn and the wonderful cello playing of Tom Cora has always remained
a special favourite. The fabulous cut'n'paste liners recall how Chadbourne
was accosted outside some grotty club in the South by a local redneck
who was so incensed at Chadbourne's inspired mangling of Johnny Paycheck
that he wanted the guitarist's testicles as a trophy. Happily, Eugene
managed to extricate himself from this potentially life-threatening
situation, and has gone on to reveal his considerable balls on numerous
occasions. In a gratuitous plea for extra hits to the site, go
read the interview he gave me a few years ago.
27
John Zorn
NAKED CITY
I came across Zorn's work in Rochester NY, and curiously I remember
buying a copy of The Big Gundown in the Bop Shop on the same
day I saw Pee Wee Herman for the first time. For some reason, I've
associated the two ever since. Then, lo and behold, I found out JZ
was playing a duo gig with Jim Staley (this must have been Spring
86) in town in a church hall RIGHT OPPOSITE the Eastman dorms.
I ran round all the TV lounges and tried to persuade my so-called
musician pals to cross the street and be blown to smithereens, but
they were all too busy with MTV. So, fuckit, I went with my pal David,
and together we represented 33% of the audience. Zorn used to say
way back when all he had to eat was potatoes that any more than five
people at a gig was disastrous. I doubt he'd say that again now. If
he ever reformed Naked City I reckon he could fill the Albert Hall.
I took my dad to see Naked City's first French appearance in 1989,
expecting him to be absolutely horrified, especially when Zorn told
the audience to fuckoff for sniggering at his remark that Brian Wilson
was one of the great geniuses of the century. My dad loved it. He
never heard Leng Tch'e though.
28
THE 7A3
COOLIN' IN CALI
Geffen GHS 24209
I remember playing this mother really loud in my flat in Montmartre
when I got it, and a young kid called Karim who lived across the passage
leaned out of his window and threw me a cassette to make him a copy
on. I duly did so, and asked him out of curiosity if he could actually
understand the lyrics of the rap stuff he spent so much time listening
to, to which he replied: "Oh oui, it's easy: sucky sucky fucky fucky.."
Well, that probably goes some way to explaining the French "understanding"
of hiphop. Check out Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo's fabulous production
and the Dr John sample on "That's How We're Livin'". Fabulous, or
as they used to say, def. Whatever happened to these guys?
29
Steve Coleman & Five Elements
ON THE EDGE OF TOMORROW
JMT 862 005
I went to see Coleman at every available opportunity between 1989
and about 1995, when he added the rappers. One gig I remember at New
Morning here in Paris started off with Coleman shuffling to the stage
in some ludicrously oversized Nikes and asking for the house lights
to be turned down. They duly were, and that's when he put the sunglasses
on. Bam, straight into "Ice Moves". That track's on 1990's Rhythm
People by the way, which came a close second. Had to choose On
the Edge of Tomorrow though for Cassandra Wilson's vocal on Bunky
Green's "Little One I'll Miss You". For a while, Coleman was really
onto something: truly complex metrics that still rocked - I still
haven't figured out all the changes in "Ice Moves" and I've been listening
to the damn thing for thirteen years - but when he added the live
rap and lost David Gilmore on guitar (that's GILMORE not GILMOUR,
you dolts) it all settled back into 4/4. As for Cassandra, well she's
still absolutely gorgeous but I wish she'd sing "Love Phases Dimensions"
again instead of Beatles and U2 covers. Well, that's stardom for you.
30
Sir Joe Quarterman and Free Soul
Charly CPCD 8079
I first heard this sampled by Kings of Pressure on "Give Me The
Mike", a 1987 Hank Shocklee production I heard on John Peel's show,
and then spent five years trying to hunt down every thing Sir Joe
ever recorded, mainly 45s I paid an arm and a leg for at Manchester's
long defunct Expansions record shop, until Charly reissued the album
in 1995. Actually, the Japanese, God love 'em, beat them to it with
an album of rare takes called How High (PCD 2806) in 1994.
Did JQ ever record anything else? Is he still alive? What's he doing?
I remember John Peel playing a track by Stanley Winston once ("No
More Ghettos In America" on Stan's Soul Shop, a Charly compilation
from 1982) and wondering the same thing. "He's probably a janitor
somewhere," Peel deadpanned. Well, wherever you are Joe, and whatever
you're doing, you changed my life for the better. May the force be
with you.
31
Don Blackman and the Family Tradition
DON BLACKMAN
Arista 212582 LP (PCD 1306 CD, Japanese import)
This was another one I spent ages tracking down. Can't quite remember
when I first heard "Heart's Desire" (maybe Radio Nova here in Paris?
they used to play some cool stuff in the early 90s), but Don's piano
solo rocketed right up there to joint first in my All Time Favourite
Piano Solos list, sharing the bill with Roland Hanna's on Mingus'
"Mood Indigo". I thought this 1982 album on Arista (Dave Grusin produced..
sorry, but I'm a sucker for his string arrangements) was the only
thing Don had ever done under his own name - he does pop up on a few
fusion outings by Lenny White - until a new Blackman album came out
several months back. Thank God the FNAC in Paris lets you listen to
albums before you buy the damn things: it's awful. Back in 82 though,
the Family Tradition were cooking. Never was a big fan of Eddie Martinez'
lead guitar solos though.
32
Curtis Mayfield
SUPERFLY
If I could bend the rules and compile my own favourite soul / funk
album, I would. But I can't, though I can at least list a few that
haven't made the cut: "Hard Times" (Baby Huey and the Babysitters,
produced by Mayfield as it happens), "Skin I'm In" (Chairmen of the
Board), "You're So Sexy" (Barkays), "Creepin'" (Stevie Wonder), "You're
All I Need To Get By" (Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell), "Ridin' High"
(Faze-O), "8 Counts for Rita" (Jimmy Smith). Forced as I am to take
complete albums then, it's Superfly. The film itself is quite
dreadful, as is often the case with those Blaxploitation pics, though
the real footage of the mean streets accompanying the title sequence
is pretty mindblowing. As for the album, well, as they say, every
track's a cracker.
33
Shuggie Otis
INSPIRATION INFORMATION
Great that this was recently reissued on Luaka Bop, complete with
several bonus tracks from Shuggie's even harder-to-find 1971 album
Freedom Flight (including the magnificent "Strawberry
Letter 23", which brought fame and fortune to the Brothers Johnson
in a Quincy Jones-produced version). Inspiration Information
was released in 1974, when Shuggie was just 21, and promptly disappeared
off the radar, though apparently guitarist and multi-instrumentalist
Otis turned down an invitation to join the Rolling Stones (a decision
he may or not have lived to regret..). No wonder: it was years ahead
of its time - "XL-30" sounds like late 80s techno - and
slipped neatly down the crack between white pop and black soul. Despite
that afro, Shuggie sounds more like Neil Young than Sly Stone, and
the horn arrangements would make Becker and Fagen swoon. And like
Stevie Wonder and li'l Roger Nelson a few years later, Shuggie did
almost all of it himself. Though while the Purple One ended up a multi-millionaire,
Shuggie has reached half century in near obscurity. I'll take Inspiration
Information over any or all of the Prince albums though.
34
Various Artists
DO IT FLUID
(reissued as BGP "14 RARE GROOVES" CDBGPD 035)
This compilation album features six tracks, "Fantasy" (Johnny Hammond),
"Joyous" (Pleasure), "The Hump" (Patrice Rushen), "Always There" (Side
Effect), "Do It Fluid" (The Blackbyrds) and "Concrete Jungle" (The
Three Pieces). I spent the summer of 1993 lounging around friends'
swimming pools and listening to as much rare groove as I could get
my hands on. A cassette of this album (never found the original, and
it's probably deleted now) kick-started an orgy of record buying trying
to get hold of the entire back catalogues of Pleasure, Blackbyrds,
Ozone, Breakwater, Faze-O, and even a few early Slaves. I still haven't
found original vinyl copies of "The Hump" and "Concrete Jungle", and
time's rapidly running out for this battered old TDK C90. Can anyone
out there help, or do I have to spring for the CD?
35
Dr John
AFTERGLOW
Blue Thumb GRB 70002
I was delighted to read somewhere recently that David Toop (who's
one of the people whose record collections I've always wanted to raid,
along with John Peel, John Zorn, Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore)
listed Gris Gris as all-time favourite. Good man. It's tough,
in fact, choosing just one Mac Rebennack for the proverbial desert
island (Desitively Bonnaroo nearly made the cut), but I've
gone for this one a) because I'm a total sucker for Tommy LiPuma production
and b) I went with Marie to see the good Doctor perform most of the
material on this album live in the Meridien jazz club in Paris just
before the album was released. If the hairs don't stand up when you
hear "So Long", then as Albert King used to say, "you gotta hole in
yo soul".
36
The Ex
AURAL GUERRILLA
Ex 036CD
My local pub in Rochdale, Lancashire was The Baths Hotel, which
was a good half hour's walk from home. I used to amuse myself by taking
different routes there every time, and many of them went down a dingy
side street parallel to Drake Street, and passed right in front of
Suite Sixteen studios (formerly Cargo studios, where Joy Division
cut their first records). It was to this dreadful hole that Dutch
punk rockers The Ex came in 1998 with the Mekons' Jon Langford to
produce one of the toughest and rockingest (does that word exist?)
albums of the decade. I think they chose Suite Sixteen because The
Fall had recorded there (I know guitarist Terrie Ex certainly doesn't
like Joy Division), but for whatever reason it was, they came up with
an absolute cracker. Odd to think that at the time just down the road
the kids of Madchester were getting E'd up and grooving to a whole
new sound. Play Aural Guerrilla back to back with the Happy
Mondays Wrote for Luck today and you tell me which one gets
you moving.
37
Robert Wyatt
ROCK BOTTOM
For some inexplicable reason I didn't get into this album until
five years ago, though I certainly must have heard it dozens of times
as a student. I got into it for real while touring France with the
rock group Tanger in 1997 (Tanger's lead singer Philippe Pigeard wanted
to do a cover version of "Sea Song", and thank Christ he never did).
Wyatt always said that in a sense his life really began when he fell
out of that window, though if you're bent on a career in rock music
I wouldn't want you to think that defenestration is an obligatory
move. Whatever, it's fucking awesome.
38
Taku Sugimoto
OPPOSITE
HatNOIR 802
One of the saddest things about being deluged with loads of new
CDs is, of course, that you never get enough time to listen to them.
I started out as a heroic idealist telling folk that I would never
even contemplate writing a review of an album until I'd heard it properly
(i.e. without distraction in an appropriate environment) at least
five times. Well, that's down to three, if I'm lucky. And I'll hazard
a guess that it's the same for many of my colleagues at The Wire and
Signal To Noise. OR you can do like my friend Patrick Boeuf at Peace
Warriors fanzine and listen to album to death before you review and
watch your shelves fill up with stuff you never get round to hearing
at all. Either way up, it's a frustrating business. (But, hey, I don't
want to sound like I'm complaining..) One album I've gone back to
time and again though in the past five years is Taku's HatNOIR album
Opposite. With only two exceptions, the tracks are all under
four minutes long, perfect, tiny jewels of crystalline sound, exquisite
pitches, exquisitely poised in time and exquisitely played. Taku is
still great at putting the right sound in the right place, but these
days there are fewer and fewer of them. That's what happens if you
spend too much time chatting to Radu
Malfatti..
39
Various Artists
JAZZACTUEL
Charly CD NEW 173 (3 CD)
Instead of trying to find all fifty BYG Actuel vinyls, many of which
have been reissued by Get Back (and what fucking horrible pressings
- shit, there was a hole on my copy of Braxton's "This Time" big enough
to stub a cigarette out in, and the replacement I got was just the
same - if you've got the originals, for Chrissakes hang
on to them), go for Byron Coley and Thurston Moore's handpicked
three ceedee compilation. All the great moments of the label are here,
from Sunny Murray's "Red Cross" (great way to kick off the set!) to
Jeanne Lee's incomparable vocals on Shepp's "Blasé", to Jacques Coursil's
wonderful "Black Suite" (hope the good folks out there who've been
turning a handsome profit at the original artists' expense might care
to remember that saxophonist Arthur Jones died in abject poverty on
the street), to the apocalyptic "Echo" by Dave Burrell, still unmatched
34 years later (though I had a go myself on the new Return of the
New Thing album), finally ending up with part six of Alan Silva's
The Seasons. Amazing stuff. Look out for a forthcoming interview
with Mr Silva here on the PTM website, and if you haven't already,
check out Sunny
Murray's priceless recollections of the period.
40
Stockholm Monsters
ALMA MATER PLUS
LTM CD 2330
Nothing much to add to what I wrote about this in the September
2002 issue, actually. So I suggest you go back and read
that again.
Voilà, as my wife would say. Feel free to respond, especially
if you'd like to try and find some of the above and think, for some
reason, that I might be able to help you. Thanks for taking the time
to peruse the above, and for visiting the site in general. Here's
to the next forty years. — DW
Copyright 2003 by Paris Transatlantic
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