"Weirdest solstice ever"

I'm back in central Wisconsin, having driven here with my sister and brother-in-law via Southern Ontario, listening to "classic rock" radio across Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.

Winter solstice this year was actually Thursday evening, but horrible rainy weather meant that I didn't even get out for a walk. Stef (of local 'slopgrass' merchants Sloppy Joe) had told me about a belated solsticial gathering out at her farmhouse near Iola on Friday, so I decided that gathering with like-minded locals and perhaps playing some music would be my solstice.

Ingredients:

• hours of frantic Slovakian confectionary production all afternoon (Stef at the controls)
  
• spaced out conversation about the Mayan calendar and the distribution of prime numbers around the kitchen table with Chris from Washington state
  
• John Denver and The Muppets' A Christmas Together album
  
• a CD of carols sung in Czech
  
• a totally unexpected snowstorm that covered the area in half a foot of wet, thick slushy snow (which meant only a fraction of the people expected made it)
  
• 3/4 of the High Water Band (Art Stevenson, his wife Steph, Dale the banjo player plus another banjo player) playing blazin' bluegrass in the kitchen for most of the night, powered by a jug of moonshine from Kentucky
  
• a brand new, fully functioning (and strangely mesmerising) stainless steel "chocolate fountain"
  
• a powercut which lasted for a good part of the night, which resulted in the lighting of many candles and the congealing of the chocolate fountain - presumably caused by the weight of snow bringing tree branches down on powerlines

Quite late, after the bluegrass had subsided, my saz came out, Stef got her banjo, and we jammed on some traditional American "old time" tunes, with Art playing upright bass - this was very enjoyable, but I was fighting to stay awake, and kept nodding off in mid-riff.

After a few hours sleep and a couple of pints of green tea, I got into quietly playing Celtic ballads in the kitchen until people started to emerge. Stef put together a hearty breakfast in the style of her Slovakian grandmother, while everyone debated the state of the country, the war, organic farming, social fragmentation, etc. until mid-morning.

"I think that was the weirdest solstice ever!" said Stef, as I said my goodbyes and headed back to town.

[Nothing got recorded this time, but here's some stuff we recorded out at Stef's place on New Year's Day this year (i.e., just under a year ago). Also, she's keen to do some studio recording of saz-and-banjo stuff while I'm here, so hopefully we'll make that happen.]

two nights, two ends of the Buffalo, NY music spectrum

I've been in Buffalo, New York for a little while, visiting my sister Kate. She plays second oboe in the Buffalo Philharmonic, and last night I went along to witness their "Holiday Pops" concert. I was happy enough to check out their concert hall (an "acoustic wonder of the world", I'm told) and to see her on stage doing her thing, but to be honest, I was expecting to cringe my way through the evening. I was stuck at Philadelphia Airport for a few hours on my way here, and heard endless, excruciating versions of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer", etc....I really couldn't face any more of that.

The concert turned out to be quite OK (as far as these things go): superb musicianship, a rather lovely arrangement of "Greensleeves" (featuring the principal oboist, Pierre), a bit of Mahler, a medley of Yiddish-sounding Hannukah tunes and the Empire Brass quintet playing a version of "The Kid on the Mountain" (which Inge and I used to play) among other things. What really saved it was guest conductor Marvin Hamlisch's irreverent attitude and ultra-sharp New York Jewish humour - he and I seem to be on the same wavelength as regards Christmas. At one point he asked the audience to shout out possible titles for "a new Christmas song", chose "Global Warming Christmas", sat down at the piano, and improvised a perfectly respectable, and rather amusing song, in front of 3000 people. Not bad. Apparently he's scored numerous films, Broadway shows, etc. - Kate reckons he's a musical genius. Even without any musical ability he'd be a comic genius. AND Jerry Falwell has refused to rule out the possibility that he might be the Antichrist. Quite a qualification.

I couldn't hear Kate at all, despite the wond'rous acoustics. Apparently the "pops" concerts are always dominated by the brass section. Oh well.

   
Marvin Hamlisch vs. GreggreG
At the other end of the musical spectrum, the previous night I followed up an interesting looking poster I saw in the window of "Rustbelt Books" and went along to Hallwalls (an arts centre in an old church, which Ani Difranco set up) to witness "Buffalo Undersound". This consisted of Jack Topht with The Vegetables and GreggreG, and it was pretty wild. I arrived to a young hipster crowd in a church basement attentively watching Jack Topht, in indescribable orange headgear, lurching around streaming consciousness, deconstructing modern American culture, over drumbeats and keyboard noises produced by "one-woman punk band" The Vegetables (a.k.a Lindsey Lemberski). Projected on the screen behind them was some kind of disturbing cheerleading instructional video. Go team, go! I tried to buy a $3 CD of Jack, but he didn't have any change for my $20 bill, so he ended up giving me two free copies. All very Dada. I overheard someone make a comparsion with "early Ween, but with less drugs", which brought back an amusing memory of seeing Ween touring their first album at Democrazy in Gent in 1991, huge smiles on the faces on the usually sullen Democrazy crowd.


Jack Topht with the Vegetables
The cheerleading gave way to Parisian ballet footage, and GreggreG took to the stage in blue spandex tights, a cowboy hat, wraparound shades and a dreadlocked beard. He and his friends produced a stream of twisted beats and guitar noise which went on for hours. I kept meaning to leave after a while, but it became strangely compelling and I ended up staying. A woman in a ridiculous dress with an LED-lit mini-megaphone and kitchen knife graced the stage, a bass clarinet/baritone sax player roamed around squawking furiously, someone tortured a guitar in one corner, a cheerful looking young woman played intricate guitar lines through a battery of effects, sitting crosslegged beside a serious looking young man (both in suits) manipulating a bank of electronics. In the other corner, GreggreG gleefully worked his unique magic on a tangled mass of electronic devices, Grooveboxes, a theremin, occasionally stepping to the mic to proclaim something so distorted as to be indecipherable. A full-on sonic assault (although fortunately not overamplified), which left me feeling strangely peaceful after about two hours.

I don't think I've ever before witnessed such wildly divergent music on two consecutive nights (or ever will).

Ail Fionn review

A Google Alert recently alerted me to this Ail Fionn review which a Finnish listener posted via his Last FM account. I could only find a cached version here:

"Ail Fionn - Sint-Niklaas 2001: Now this is what I would call a real find: guitars [sic], mandolins and drumming, the music at times sounds celtic and at times arabic, with other ethnic influences as well. And apparently there's also some Turkish instrument called saz. It's catchy and makes me want to do belly dance for my cat, and it's largely improvisatory with some crazy mandolin work. And the mood can change pretty quickly from Ail Fionn – Swedish Waltz to Ail Fionn – Teletubbies Tarantella. There are two albums here, I just chose this one because it's more recent. This band has only 3 listeners on last.fm :("

Very nice. I'm looking forward to spending some time down at Inge's farmhouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees this coming spring so we can create some more of this stuff. I do miss her "crazy mandolin work", and rather hope one day I can get her over to Exeter to work with Orbis Tertius?.

Droning with the absence of Lou Gare (and Melski)

Keith - electric guitar, electric mandolin, percussion
James S - saz, khamak, voice, percussion, piano, singing bowls
Henry - percussion
Philip - saxophone, percussion, bowed singing bowls (and other objects), bits of the church
James T - piano, percussion, water, poetry, manualism
Mick - acoustic guitar (part of first set only)
me - saz, balalaika, percussion, reading of text, tearing of paper, bursting of balloons


James S, Henry, Keith, Mick, James T
An exceptionally interesting, varied, exploratory Drone session last night, and my last one for 2006. It was a total contrast to last week's sweet, melodic, groove-based session at the Rainbow in Crediton. We were half-expecting 'legendary' free-jazz saxophonist Lou Gare to turn up (he emailed to say he was coming, after having chatted with Keith at the last Orbis Tertius? gig and checked out the COTD website). He didn't, but, somehow, it's as if he was there in spirit. The sound was more jagged, atonal, arhythmic and generally 'avant-garde' sounding than anything we've done in a long while. Just the sort of session I'd have expected had he turned up. Just two long pieces (40 and 70 minutes) separated by the customary tea break. Philip was well in his element with this kind of sonic environment, and James S's contributions were as perfectly judged as ever (cryptic sung/mumbled vocals miked up through effects, bits of khamak and saz). James T's piano playing was really well suited to what was going on, and I got a bit of feedback/distortion-laden saz weirdness happening more than once.

Another person who was supposed to be coming but didn't was Melski - it was also very much her kind of improvisation. Characteristically, she had to cancel because of an important job interview the next day for a music therapist position in an asylum!

We had a small audience for part of the second set. Local artist Veronica Gosling brought a couple of friends along to listen as she sometimes does. A couple of fluorescent yellow policeman also stuck their heads in during the tea break to state the obvious, telling us that the door of the church was open. I suggested to the others that we were lucky they didn't come while we were making a howling, atonal racket; James T suggested that they may have found the sound "arresting" (groan).

Also, there was no bass, for the first time in quite a while. That may have contributed to the lack of groove-based playing. And my balalaika was back in action after quite a while of being in a severe state of disrepair.

Listen Here
I thought I'd taken a photograph of every single interesting feature of the inside of the church, but just as the last of us were shuffling out of the side entrance, Henry pointed out this extraordinary plaque to former Rector of the church John White Hedgeland:


"On Sunday morning May 11, 1890 he most impressively delivered his Master's Message here: at eventide he was not. The Lord had taken him to his service Above."

"He...feared God above many," it says, quoting the prophet Nehemiah. "He had good reason to," observed Keith.

Ivor Culter - The Anti-empiricist

No actual musical content, but I just have to include this - possibly my favourite thing ever to appear on the Web! If you haven't got any audio, don't expect to get a lot out of it, though.


It occurs to me that I never posted anything here when Ivor Cutler died in March. I'm glad I got a chance to see him perform (once, in Brussels, with Ben and Marie-Eve in the early 90's). Fraggle once gave me one of several odd little stickers that he gave her when she served him in a North London healthfood shop she was working in. Like the lump of grape chewing gum given to me by Captain Sensible, I have no recollection of what became of it. O well.

More Ivor Cutler video clips can be found here.

Snailfriends

I'm particularly happy with these.

For ages, I've been meaning to compile a 2 CD set as gifts for Inge plus our various musical friends, made up of all the oddities and leftovers from the Ail Fionn archive (basically, anything that's not already in any of our other archive.org collections). I finally got 'round to the bulk of the work during my first week in Motueka (being jetlagged, sitting up at 4a.m. with my laptop, cutting, pasting, splicing, EQ'ing, fading...). Now they're done.

The collections span 1995-2003, with a variety of collaborators - almost all saz and mandolin, although Inge plays bits of xylophone, melodica, djembe and pennywhistle, and there's the first existing recording of us playing saz and fiddle - on Breney Common, near Lostwithiel in Cornwall, 1999.


Inge's first trip to Glastonbury - outside 23 Northload Street, autumn 1994
Of particular interest:

• a multitracked version of Inge's "Cowsong" recorded by Dave Goodman (who produced the Sex Pistols!) in his studio in Crystal Palace one summer afternoon in 1996, waiting for The Spacegoats to turn up for a session
  
• a jam with Greet based around Bob Marley's "Natural Mystic" (I called it "Nature-Identical Mystic")
  
• a reasonably good version of "King o' the Faeries", which is probably the tune we've played more than any other, but which, for some reason, hardly ever got recorded
  
• some excerpts from a gig we did in a field in North Wales, summer 1997, including a rather good version of "Ambulance"
  
• a couple of things from a set we played on the Rinky-Dink stage at the Big Green Gathering later that summer (with both Alan and Andy Man on percussion)
  
• "For Isun", which we recorded shortly after Isun died in Herefordshire - this was done at the "Tribal Voices" camp near Tiverton, autumn equinox '97
  
• some pieces recorded with Andy Ra at his home in "the wigglywoods", Maughanasilly, West Cork in autumn 2003, just before Alan moved to Aotearoa/New Zealand
  
• a brief Sonic Youth-inspired saz and mandolin noise jam, with effects and processing added by Funkey, something we did as part of the Samhain 1995 session at his studio in Sint-Niklaas
  

Listen: Snailfriends 1          Listen: Snailfriends 2

The name of the collections originates with Stella from the Spacegoats - she used to call us her "snailfriends" because of our tendency to always turn up together wearing huge rucksacks, on the way from somewhere to somewhere else...