Steven, Addled

After a brief correspondence with RustedRobot in the Comments section of his blog, I just have to pass along this bit of unintentional comedy from the Web site of original Guns 'N' Roses drummer Steven Adler.

[UPDATE: I should also pass along Chuck Klosterman's fabulous review of GnR's long-awaited Chinese Democracy album. Pay particular attention to the last three words and the dateline, though.]


FMFM: The Modern Jazz Quartet's The Comedy, which does deserve more than the two stars the AMG affords but is not their finest hour either.

They never got you

As much as I've enjoyed the recorded works and live shows of Spoon, the band from Austin, Tex., I admit I was a little wary going into Britt Daniel's solo show tonight at the Swedish American Hall above Café du Nord. I've always thought that the best thing about Spoon isn't the core songwriting, it's the piecemeal style of arrangement, in which the little atomic blocks of music get stacked up in sonic space and time, sometimes tricking your ear into hearing what isn't actually there. That doesn't really translate to a solo guy-with-guitar night; hence my apprehension.

Daniel redeemed himself, however, on most of the material tonight, though I can't quite say everything added up to a truly exciting show. Some songs sounded strong with just voice and guitar -- "The Beast and Dragon Adored," "Advance Cassette," "1020 AM," "The Way We Get By." Others, such as "Metal Detektor" and "Stay Don't Go," benefited from the prerecorded tapes Daniel brought along. Fine enough. (I still saw people yawning, but most responded pretty enthusiastically.) Daniel is a creative guitarist, although it's time for him to stop using so many of those half-step interval progressions; he can do enough different things with his naturally unique voice that he can pull off an hour of solo material.

But there were times, as on "Anything You Want" and "Sister Jack," that some popular favorites in the Spoon catalog were revealed as the thin songs that they really are, reliant on piano hooks or layered guitars or whatever, with very little to recommend them in stripped-down form. I mean, I love the alternating snare tones on the Girls Can Tell version of "Anything You Want." I dig the rhythmic hitch in the coda of "Sister Jack" when Jim Eno plays it. As whole, complete songs, though? There's really not much there at all, come to think of it. Two new pieces added little to the party, besides more familiar tantalizing two-note melodies that mysteriously turn into dastardly hooks. Wonder how they'll sound when the band plays them, and when they record them.

(Actually the whole night sounded like a bunch of demo tapes to me. Pleasant. Illuminating. Not the whole story. What was that about spending $15 or so...?)

Daniel essayed an ambitious cover tune in John Lennon's "Isolation." It takes courage to try that one. (I think Matthew Sweet did it in the early 90s.) As much as I enjoyed seeing Daniel do it with such intensity, I have to say that the performance merely threw into relief the spottiness of the rest of his set list, at least when his songs were treated as voice-and-guitar pieces. Many of Spoon's most enjoyable pieces are really vehicles for group interaction and minimalist composition, as opposed to intrinsically great songs that could work in a variety of arrangements. (It's hard to imagine anyone else succeeding with "Sister Jack," you know what I mean?)

I like Daniel's style, and he sure sounded good with the guitar and voice thing, especially in the peak-ceilinged Swedish Hall. (He deployed a hollow-body Gibson, by the way. Looked old. Not sure what kind. Plugged into a Vox amp.) It's just that he writes for a full rock band, and without the others he's a little lost. This was a fine way to kick off the NoisePop weekend. Hope to make time to write about Vetiver after Sunday's show too.

[UPDATE: Here are some recent live mp3s from Britt Daniel's SXSW show. There's some Bob Pollard stuff elsewhere on that blog too, if you're interested... and I think at least one of you is interested.]


FMFM: Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans, an Irma Thomas collection. Now there's someone who could find meaning in a turn of phrase, no matter where it came from. A Randy Newman song? Sure. The unstoppable "Break-A-Way," from the pen of the great Jackie DeShannon? The original "Time Is On My Side"? "Ruler of My Heart," which Otis Redding would soon try to steal for his own? One after another. Hot stuff.

"Are you talking about the horses?"

As Lou Dobbs sinks (deeper) into self-parody with the countdown ticking toward his first broadcast from the Yucatán, here's someone showing real cojones: ex-FEMA chair Michael Brown, who braved the Colbert Report for a hilarious, surreal interview.


FMFM: Kenny Burrell's God Bless The Child. I can't quite explain the disconnect between the AMG's rating (two and a half stars) and their review ("[A]n underheard masterpiece... Magnificent"), but I'm siding with the latter. An unusually subdued Billy Cobham glides along with Ron Carter in the rhythm section, contrasting the over-the-top, explosive kick-and-snare stuff Cobham is known for. (Which, I must acknowledge, is some sick shit, although I sure can't listen to it all the time.) And is that a chopper descending over a burned-out Vietnamese forest on the cover? It's not hard to see where Kenny's mind was when he made this one.

"In a plural situation"

As the Gourds sing, "I married my cousin up in Arkansas/Married two more when I got to Utah."


FMFM: Aja, where Wayne Shorter and Steve Gadd fight it out on the title track. Gadd wins: he takes it to the house as the Chinese music and, um, angular banjos sound good to you.

Remote security

Another excellent use of Homeland Security funds.

I have heard many reasonable people arguing that it's absurd that Wyoming's share of DHS funds is much larger per capita than New York City's. While I do share those concerns, I wonder how many of those people have considered what would happen to the Western U.S. if someone took down Flaming Gorge Dam in Wyoming. So long, Glen Canyon Dam. So long, Hoover Dam. Dominos for the mighty Colorado. So long, water for the West. Wyoming may not have all that many people in it, but it does have critical resources.

Miss Daisy, however, is a stretch.


FMFM: Stan Getz's Focus, an unusual marriage of tightly wound string arrangements and improv. Getz said it was his favorite one. I don't think it's my favorite, but it has enough to keep me interested.

Hope you'll come and see me in the movies

Well it looks like I'm never going to get to see Buck Owens at his Crystal Palace in Bakersfield.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing.


FMFM: The Books, an oddball duo from NYC and elsewhere. It's usually acoustic music (guitar, cello, banjo, violin, other) at the core, with a little singing and a lot of samples on top. Sometimes it's the other way around: loops and samples, with splashes of non-electronic color.

There are some good ideas here, but rarely are there enough per minute to sustain my hungry mind. From what I've heard so far, the Books are best when they allow the samples to reach a head of steam, or when they juxtapose ideas to create meaning. There are some good harmonic ideas there too, but the band tends to rely on repeating them while the samples do the work, and that's not quite enough to keep me from zoning out. They're more collage artists than songwriters anyway, and their collages aren't terribly dense. If you're going to be this cerebral, don't be so slow, OK?

The Books' upcoming Great American Music Hall show is currently the third-most popular event on people's SonicLiving calendars in the Bay Area. I'm trying to imagine why I would enjoy watching them do their thing in person. I can't. I bet everyone is really quiet during their set, though.

Butcher Axis

Insights on the Axis of Evil from someone who has actually met with Kim Jong-il.


FMFM: Les Paul & Mary Ford's The Hit Makers!, showcasing some of the earliest multi-track recordings and Paul's extraordinarily clean technique. (Who knew that they almost amputated his right arm, then set it at a right angle so he could keep playing guitar when he healed?)

Hey, check it out: the Allmusic guide has finally recognized one of America's great musical talents. (It really should have done that about three years ago if not significantly earlier, but never mind.)

Geek update

The so-called Web 2.0 technology known as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) probably isn't news to anyone who reads this page, but it wasn't until today that I finally deployed it. And now that I have, I believe I've changed my Web browsing habits forever.

If you're like me, you typically hit the same dozen or so Web sites multiple times in a day. For me, most of those are blogs, news and sports sites, as well as my Web-based e-mail accounts. But many of my visits merely reveal that the sites haven't been updated since my last visit -- a waste of a click, and of a moment of my oh-so-precious time.

Now, though, I've aggregated feeds from all those sites onto a NetVibes page, which automatically lets me know when I have new e-mail, when someone has updated his blog, or when any of my several favorite news sites updates its list of top stories. For the first time in years -- or maybe ever -- I'm no longer using a commercial search engine or portal as my homepage. It's all about me now. Wow!


FMFM: The Trio, a racing, hectic mid-career live date from Oscar Peterson, along with Joe Pass and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.

Name me a song that everybody knows

In this case, it belongs to Solomon Linda (1909-1962), of Soweto.


FMFM: The Mahotella Queens' version

"Yeah, I play guitar for Leon Czolgosz"

Those who know history are doomed to repeat it.

As sure as eggs is eggs

"Both the pro-chicken and the anti-chicken forces make some good points."

...According to local lore, the chickens may first have come to town with the monks who built its centerpiece mission in 1797. But whether or not the fryers were the friars', they have become San Juan Bautista's dominant symbol.


FMFM: Oliver Nelson's The Blues And The Abstract Truth: not quite a big-band record but a well-orchestrated four-horn date, full of memorable compositions and mindblowing harmonic work from Eric Dolphy. A killer.

Those were the days

You may be shocked and awed by these liberal-media moments of the past. Via JSK.


FMFM: The Ahmad Jamal Trio. I don't quite know what to make of Ray Crawford's weird rhythm guitar pops, but I do appreciate Jamal's technique and tone.

Everyone deserves music (and inexpensive Irish whiskey)

Catching up after a busy string of evenings out...

∙I saw Ron Carter's late show Friday night. You may know that he is one of the most frequently recorded (and best) upright and electric bass players in history. Carter made his name in the 1960s, most prominently playing alongside Miles Davis in his quintet that also featured Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and Wayne Shorter, all still young and strong. (Emphasis on young, in the case of Williams!) Later on, while continuing to record jazz records with incredible prolificacy, he lent his talents to such diverse records as the first Paul Simon album, most of Roberta Flack's biggest hits, and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory. That's quite a life in music.

This weekend, he brought his quartet to Yoshi's, featuring a pianist, a drummer and a percussionist. Now, sometimes when you listen to jazz records, it's not totally obvious who the leader is; he may hand off most of the solos to other people, or he may be the arranger and conceptual leader without really showing you who's carrying the ball. Not so, on this particular night. Carter led the band by building music from the bass on up -- not an easy feat, unless you're Charles Mingus -- and clearly drove the bus all evening, even when it was someone else's turn to solo. The drummer's touch was light and yet assured, the percussionist supplied flash and variety, and the piano player's tangents into Afro-Cuban-influenced chord structures and atonal free-improv stuff were intoxicating. Carter himself drew diverse sounds from an instrument not exactly known for having a wide palette, making his extended solos some of the most interesting parts of the night. The level of musical conversation was, as you might imagine, very advanced. I do wish Carter had played arco for a little while, but you can't have everything.

An hour and a half of this magnificent music cost me exactly $18, plus one-drink minimum. When I think of some of the things I've paid $18 for in the past, I can't imagine why I wouldn't spend more time doing this and, well, less time doing whatever it was I was doing all along.

∙I made it back to Yoshi's on Monday night for a strange evening of music, on someone else's recommendation. Some local musicians attempted a fusion of Moroccan folk music and contemporary jazz. This usually meant that an oud and a bunch of talking drums were thrown into a mix of vaguely avant-garde and vaguely quiet-storm-ish music. Some of the experiments worked better than others; I could've done without the Luther Vandross-by-way-of-Marrakesh moments. I thought they sounded best during the intros and outros of the songs, when the oud wasn't overwhelmed by the other instruments doing more familiar things. On the whole this was worthwhile, though I don't think I'll be back for more.

∙Clarifying an earlier point about Trader Joe's: I'm not sure that their groceries really qualify as The Best, as my hermano seemed to imply they would have to be for the store to succeed. In fact, compared to some of the gourmet goods you can probably get less than two blocks away, TJ's is likely to fall short. Their store is really about bang for the buck -- $19 liters of Bushmills, $7 cylinders of above-average coffee, cheap and delicious cheeses, organic pasta for 89 cents a pound, the notorious Two Buck Chuck (probably $4 in NYC!). I suspect the store will become more popular among younger Avenue A transplants seeking a slightly healthier, cheap, stylish grocery store than among Upper West Side lifers, who will regard Trader Joe's with some suspicion. (They're also going to have to stay open later than 9pm.)


FMFM: Tamba 4's We and the Sea, a largely forgotten take on bossa nova and jazz from 1968. Purchased on a lark for $2, this turned out to be an unusual treat, as did Luiz Henrique's Barra Limpa. The latter does have some corny material, I admit, though it has its moments too. We and the Sea is fully realized music that, for some reason, seemed to have no logical successor and wound up mostly of interest to weird record collectors like me.

Funny how that happens sometimes. I've felt for the last ten years or so that the current crop of rock bands -- call them indie, modern, progressive, whatever -- seems a little too concerned with where they fit into the Great Rock Story, and not concerned enough with making memorable music that touches people. I wonder if it's because of the geometric/exponential rise in the number of rock critics and journalists, in conjunction with the boom in self-publishing and increase in Web outlets. It's been going on for some time: Bands like the Archers of Loaf were, essentially, translating rock criticism into rock'n'roll ("Greatest of All Time," "Might," etc.). The world of retro-rock is down to a coldly calculated science, something our parents' generation never would have even considered. Must everything fit into a recognizable story? Can't people just do good work?

Wayward in Hayward

The USGS has released a Google Earth tour of the Hayward Fault. Awesome. SFGate story here. Yes, it runs right underneath the (full) football stadium.

Check out the photos of curbs, pavement, ditches, streams and buildings displaced by the fault. Some are a few inches out of line; some have moved several feet. Wow.


FMFM: iTunes playing some old favorites: Superchunk, the Loaf, the Feelies.

Bigger, better, faster, Moore

I spent this evening at the Rickshaw Stop, the City's fine little live music venue on the wrong end of a one-way street. As is often the case, I was mildly irritated by the way the advertised 8:00 pm start time clashed with the actual 9:30 start time. Even if you call them in advance, they still don't get it right. Anyway I got over it.

I've already written about first act Bart Davenport in this space, and although I had a yen to see him play the brief, compact, hear-it-once-and-remember-it-forever "Everyone's In Love With You" again, I was more interested in the Moore Brothers this time.

The Moore Brothers, who are actually brothers, are a duo from Oakland. Every time I've seen them, they have passed a single acoustic guitar back and forth (A-B-A-B style) throughout the set. Their harmonies are quite tight, their songs are very peculiar, and their off-kilter timing is exceptional. While most of their musical idiosyncracies seem intentional, there is a component of weirdness that may or may not be. Strange fellows. They're definitely onto something. Ultimately their harmonies grow fairly static over the course of the set, but their subject matter, word choice, delivery, timing and overall style are enough to keep the mood from spoiling. Nice band. Interesting people. I'm into it.

Etienne de Rocher was on next, but I went home. If the music had started at the appointed time, it would've been different. I've had a long week of social outings. It's bedtime.


FMFM: Stan Getz, Gary Burton and Kenny Burrell on Getz Au Go Go, a live date issued in 1964. Not quite a bossa nova record, although it has several Brazilian standards of the era. The eight-minute "Summertime" is the centerpiece, as it turns out. Very cool interactions on this one.

Boing-o

I'm not too much of a Simpsons-head, but I'll bounce this one to the rest of you. (Hat tip: Jordan.)


FMFM: Mozart's "Haffner" symphony #35, which my pop says is his favorite one.

Bay blending

Will Trader Joe's succeed in NYC? Of course it will.

Trader Joe's has supplied about half the food I've eaten over the past seven years. I wash my clothes in their detergent. I wash my dishes with their soap. I buy my Dr. Bronner's there. (All-One! Dilute! Dilute!) I patiently wait for the return of their enchilada sauce or meatballs when they're out. I'm happy to spend ten minutes waiting in line for a parking spot at the store on Masonic -- well, not that happy, but I don't complain when I have to.

I suppose the only question is whether the NYC store will be allowed to sell booze. I hear the stores in Massachusetts can't. TJ's just wouldn't be the same without a hundred different kinds of decent wine under $5. Those impatient New Yorkers will have to get used to the idea that a grocery store might stock an item for awhile, then suddenly not have it for weeks or even months, then have it again.

I've considered going rural a few times in the past couple of years. My job would allow me to telecommute from wherever I want to, and it's crossed my mind that if I lived somewhere woodsy in, say, Mendocino county, I could save several thousand dollars a year on rent. Do I really need SF nightlife that badly anymore? Well, not really. But I would have to live without:

∙The cultural variety, great cheap restaurants and intelligent discourse easily found in San Francisco
∙Playing ball in a decent league, from February to December
∙Nearby Trader Joe's
∙Amoeba Records

No way. I'm staying.

*

R.I.P. Ali Farka Touré, by the way. I've been enjoying the music of his countrymen Amadou et Mariam more and more lately.

Duly noted

For you baseball fans, especially those who follow the Oakland A's:

Santiago Casilla, the former Jairo Garcia, arrived in camp and he's scheduled to pitch today at Maryvale. Casilla, 25, was delayed by visa trouble after blowing the whistle on himself for using false documents; he explained that Jairo Garcia is a friend of his (who is nearly three years younger than the pitcher) and he feels bad that he used Garcia's identity the past few years. He told reporters that he doesn't mind if people still call him Jairo.

"...and PRINT IT!"

Hey everyone, I wrote a book!


FMFM: Mozart's six "Haydn" string quartets, over the past day or two.

The docs are in

Some days, you feel lucky. I feel lucky that I live within walking distance of the Balboa Theater, the kind of place that celebrates Oscar Week by showing all the short- and long-form documentaries nominated this year, then charges a $6 matinee price for all you can watch. For me, that meant an incredible four hours in the theater today, with four diverse subjects to hold my interest. I won't bore you with full-length reviews of each, but here are some impressions and notes:

∙The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, 40 minutes. They don't make 'em like that anymore. I wish I could find a link to the text of "On A Note of Triumph," his poetic radio address to the nation on the night the Nazis surrendered, but I can't. Here's one great quote from the film, though: "What did we learn from World War II? We learned that we didn't learn anything from World War I."

∙Murderball, 88 minutes. This fast-paced film about quadraplegic rugby players really won me over. (It didn't take long for me to learn that many quadraplegics can use their arms to do a lot of things. I always thought "quadraplegic" meant "paralyzed from the neck down," and that paraplegics were able to use their arms while quadraplegics could not.) The sport is a crashing, noisy, nasty battle that takes place on a basketball court. Contestants, who do not wear helmets or have much of any protection save for aluminum chairs specially built for the sport, are often knocked to the floor and can easily be bloodied. The film wanders away from the sport for its extended middle section, which shows you quite a few curious things about the lives of the disabled: sex, for one thing. Murderball is full of very memorable characters, and offers surprises at nearly every turn. There is no pity party here; the focus is on smack talk, dirty jokes and action. Plus, there's a real sports rivalry afoot. Recommended.

∙God Sleeps In Rwanda, 30 minutes. Picks up where Hotel Rwanda left off, in a way, and at times seems to prove that God is asleep at the switch. Here is Rwanda, roughly ten years after the genocide: Seventy percent of the population is female. Many of those women are widows, orphans and rape victims. Some are all three. Some of those spared by the genocide aren't spared by AIDS. They press on, raising the next generation as if there will be some sort of order in the world. They are the only ones who can supply that order, and have begun to take on tasks traditionally performed by men -- city planning, road building, etc. There is a glimmer of hope in a nearly hopeless situation. Which leads me to....

∙Darwin's Nightmare, 107 minutes. There are some things in this world that are beyond logic, beyond rational explanation. The scene on the shores of Lake Victoria -- where huge Nile Perch are harvested for the wealthy by starving Tanzanians, where the same planes that whisk the Lake's fish away to the tables of Europe deliver weapons to the wars in Angola and the Congo (maybe) -- is one of those places. Disease, starvation, environmental catastrophe, disorder, civil strife, random violence, racism, prostitution, addiction, greed: they're all here. This is the dark side of globalization in the 21st century, of Tom Friedman's flat world. Yes, I know how it got to be this way, and in that sense I suppose it is sort of rational. But no, sorry. It just isn't. Darwin's Nightmare could really have used a narrator, and I would've welcomed tighter editing, but what a story the camera tells by itself. Not for the faint, and thank goodness it's not in Odorama. Yikes.

Good luck to all of them on Sunday night.


FMFM: Barney Kessel leading Ray Brown and Shelly Manne through "Satin Doll," on The Poll Winners.