Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
WHEN THE FOGHORN BLOWS
LOOK HERE: Andy's a positive guy who runs this new, raw record shop called The Caped Cod, along the upskirt of Chatham, Cape Cod. Give him a hand (http://www.thecapedcod.com/). His shack ain't exclusively full yet, but as he scrapes up Francoise Hardy records outta the old shadows, you can bet a tiger hunger burns far grizzlier than most Dagwoods yonder...Other things I'd like to say: Quit peeling the banana of The Velvet Underground. You'll rot the whole thing...Also, those of you grunged up with Helmet's Betty or Slayer, don't die without hearing Faure's Elegie or Rachmoninoff's third movement to Symphony no. 2. Yeah, and those of you bent over with too much of those, don't die without hearing Helmet's Betty or Slayer. Good? Be on the look out for Sir Arnold Bax, too. Until then...
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THESE MOTHERS ARE CRAZY!
Hear what Susie Creamcheese had to say to me about a crazy/fond experience she recalls while chillin' with Zappa and The Mothers.
"'The Mothers' is the summer day that they did a free concert at Venice Beach. They played on the pier and the GTO's {Girls Together Outrageously} were with them dancing. We were all below on the sand dancing and getting high. It was so mellow. It was like some of the first Love Ins. After they were done playing, we all jumped in the ocean. Some people took their clothes. It was a really hot day and the water felt so good. When we got out, we all collapsed and laid in the sand until dusk. This happening could never happen today. There are too many uptight people in this world. It was a really far out day."
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HARMONIES OF THE PAST: A LOST VOYAGE FOUND
No one sang the sweet dreams of childhood with such a tickling, surrendering purity as Kathy and Carol. A self-titled, Elektra, Baez-inspired wonder of '65, and still grazing within the chateau of their teens, both girls heavenly arose the reckoning myrtle of traditional mystic folk songs, their frolicking innocence and that vulnerable time, with the angel pollen of just two elevated voices and one rose of a softly sleeping guitar. This first and final album together would be a sailing, free white dove of no vanguard -harmlessly gorgeous- undoubtedly enchanting a world of nylon, closets, and nymphs, and to this remaining day, raised as two, virgin fawns of a quiet, monastery forest. Were they aware?
"It wasn't anything we thought about", Carol McComb said to me over the phone when asked about the perspiring myth of the album, "it was just a journey we were on", she later commented, unleashing the hymn behind the record's mysterious nocturne. As it was reportedly written that both Kathy and Carol were young wanderers of the west-coast woodlings, with a time of silhouette and hope, they managed a taped audition for their eventual director Paul Rothchild, and from there, let the ribbon afloat to the ram and thorn of the big-brass city where Judy Collins and other tenors heard a taste and rightly nodded so. No competition, ego or rivalry swaddled the two close friends, even after success bloomed its way forward to the new day, the new smile, and the baze of the new song. "Was there any other stuff you recorded that never made it on the record?"
"Yeah, there were actually eleven other ones", Carol remarked, fondly recalling how they were all spirited with the same traditional stellar grace as their debut, but have to this day sat in Elektra's immense storage haven, further owned by other large successors, bulls and rams. "I suppose if there was an outcry for them", she continued, as I reached for some logical conclusion to why they haven't yet been desired.
Through the botany of '67 and '68, their second album, if it had been so released, given Carol's description to me of such material, it can be imagined that a slightly different public response would have been drafted to Kathy and Carol's future epilogue or as it would seem, the Kathy and Carol legacy. For, under the influenza of a thousand other of his chrome projects, Rothchild- though at this time, had no disposal over their sequel, more of a mere friendly shadow- suggested the follow-up be grinded over as a "rock album", allowing them the freedom to compose their own songs at tremendous will. This demand is consequently hard to believe, especially considering Rothchild's passion for their first and later infamous comments about Kathy getting "porked" right before the make of the second record, thus intruding the original zeld and magic. Nevertheless, his acquaintance advice was thereby taken to heart by their new Capitol songster-producer Larry Murray, as a long week was baked in the studio rambling over a fancy bizarre ballet of rock instruments, Elizabethan chord-things, visits from the lads of Poco, and all along pressured by the sanity to endure the same oracle atmosphere as their debut without turning the entire cerebrum into a vicious manifesto of erotic jingo. So I've been told the results were somewhat of a Marianne Faithful horizon of country-western pop. And we can only wonder if it sincerely worked. For as Carol would frankly admit that it was quite common then for producers to relinquish out of sight, Murray dropped the whole plate of the project -left- finding bop as a writer for television taps (word has it, The Johnny Cash Show). Meanwhile, Rothchild, knee-deep in nine-hour shifts including post-Doors' Strange Days, was able to scrounge around enough time only to find himself busted up for possession, and thus, periodically ending all little help from Kathy and Carol's biz friends to cut an immediate, fresh record. And as I'm sure the given era itself was transforming into the tough-cookie of women's liberation- Learyed out and Slicked over- the image and heart-harmony of Kathy and Carol's young rhapsody of fate (despite whether their second album would have sunk or swam) was too much of a thought, and foremost, a sacrifice for most people to grasp, forcing the two girls of such serene, feminine gaze to retire their musical relationship- possibly forever. The floating rumor of their potential bond at The Grand Ole Opry had vanished indefinitely, the rituals and traditions they had attempted to restore streamed back to the lonely graves from of which they rose...the Kathy and Carol album, trailing right behind.
Kathy Larisch from there on in quit the pursuit of music, devoting herself entirely to her artwork where she has since resided and embarked as a teacher. Carol McComb on the other hand, has recorded many of her own solo albums, shared the stage with Joan Baez and friends, has written a well-tutored guitar book, and continues to rest in California. They both remain somewhat close, and every few years come together and talk about all those strange, innocent days of youth, past, and why.
The moral to the story? To hell with all yer fame.
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BUZZIN FLY, WILL YOU REMEMBER ME?
60's starsailor, and known to y'all as Tim Buckley's illuminating lead guitarist, Lee Underwood mailed me these wet words from of Buckley when asked about a memory working with someone then.
"Tim gave us everything he had. His songs were not artificially concocted decorations. They were gems mined from the essence of his life experience. He was a human being, yes, but he served music, and in so doing he transcended character flaws. He disappeared into music, and music became his glory. Ultimately, his life was so intense, so real and artistically true, that it soared far beyond mere personal considerations. In this sense, there was no Tim Buckley. For him, only the music existed, and only the music remains. He knew the music was more important than he was, and so he journeyed through idiosyncratic individuality into the universality of the human heart. That is what we celebrate to this day-not only Tim the individual, but the music flowing through him and the many ways in which he devoted his life in selfless service to it."
(Lee gave me this phrase, quoted from his book: Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered - Backbeat, 2002)
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TWO BLEEDING HEARTS AND ONE TAPE YOU'VE NEVER HEARD
Yours truly was blown into the wind by this one...Interwoven by the shivering spirit of Ian and Sylvia and particularly reminiscent to much of the rural Folkway material of the early 70's, Holly and David take on the luscious journey of raw, delicate traditional ballads, as well as some other favorite tunes- such a style that's appeared to have become much of a past-time in our contemporary hash. So many tears never cried swell open within their secluded lily of Irish-lost songs, Celt feathering, and other soft rippling of distant Isle-echoes. Holly's remarkable wavering voice alone is what we haven't heard in women singers for many many ages; stunning beauty; a thousand lines of poetry in moment and vogue. Where the world seems to have bumbled away from such gazing sparrows like Carolyn Hester or Mimi Farina, Holly's lovely notes of arc reach into the internal cloud therein like Fairported Sandy Denny, Judy Roderick, and to the shallow mirrors of Loreena McKennitt. Always assisted by David's gentle acoustic sweepings, the most vast of their emotional rhapsodies is kissed under the ghostly rendition of Stan Rogers' "The Maid On The Shore", as well as the old sea-saga, "Jackaroe". Both the grit and the flower exist within this lonesome Floridian duo. Pain and joy. David's flat muskrat voice could carry the slight potential to weigh down Holly's humming, maternal yims, but as a somewhat strange husky -all too many clefs to go before Gene Clark, though- he oddly charms the songs into a more unique coal. It would be the tragedy of my lifetime to see the two pursue further instrumentation or production beyond what already now flourishes as a spontaneous living-room orris, and I can only wish they'll find a healthy audience that's not clocked up in folkiet exorcism who will fully appreciate and understand their heritage and innocence afresh.
For Holly and David booking call: (941) 473-2341.
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DEVILS OF THE DIAL TONE
The Yellow Payges were monsters of the 60's psych-sprouting garage sound. Irresistible rock-plume. Sprawling guitar-cream. So why did they lay in a pile of telephone books on their cover of the chom-chop Volume 1? Hear why from Dan Hortter, the-then lead singer of the band.
"The idea was conjured up by Cunningham and Walsh, a Wall Street add agency for AT&T at the time. Our manager orchestrated a contract for us with AT&T back in 68. AT&T wanted to reach out to the youth of America in an attempt to convince them that they weren't such bad folks. During the late sixties Corporate America was considered evil, hence the term anti establishment. Anyway, to make a long story short, our manager convinced AT&T not to fabricate or manufacture some group of their own but to use us instead as their youth ambassador given we already had a very strong following locally as well as regionally throughout the country. It was a sizable contract and we did make a significant amount of money. However, things didn't turn out as planned and it pretty much sealed our faith (doom). The group broke up in 70 and we all went our separate ways."
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I DON'T WANT TO FIGHT YOUR WAR/ I WANT TO MAKE A SALAD
Silverware or chopsticks? We camel right on into David Budbill's exodus from Vermont pulp-cutting to his present Meccaied saladbar, where fellow jazzers William Parker and Hamid Drake free-juice up his poetry of tyranny young and old, wine, belief, peace and a few lines of Thomas Merton here and there in their 2003 release, Songs For A Suffering World. And further tracing on into all the wise Buddha-wuddha that airs in Budbill's afro-white, spoken-wordling poetry, "to call things by its right name" this album is...good. "We don't want your war", Budbill wags his finger at. Yet, as it sadly seems, most people are less pissed off now and becoming more and more blah, sold-out, and impotent to protest, my only sorrowful regrets for these fine three is that their rounds weren't fired off quick enough for the limited public ozone of post-9/11 tick and tock- an event and significance which much of this album's foreplay and fight is entirely themed. However, it's not a loaded clip here (see Dead Prez for that), but more of a belt- rubber bullets if you may- aimed in favor for the verbatim of a hip-wave intellectual hazed with Bodhisattva and familiar with MTV. An example.
In the track "We Want To Live" it whails: how can you tell the difference between a terrorist and a soldier?, but instead of following up with: how can you tell the difference between GEORGE BUSH and a terrorist?- which would have at that point, orgasmed us and exploded Parker's wild versatility- it peters out away from the great divide of a colossal Sleepers Awake! that this album was very much craving for. Budbill, like many spoken-worders, seems to talk-shout at us in similarity of the Wizard of Oz with all the mighty head and lyric, but on this record (I highly recommend his other sonata with Parker, Zen Mountains/Zen Streets), has the instability as a Todo to seek behind the ringed curtain and thus himself, as it would unabashedly occur for the inner-city in Baraka's various musical appearances, Kerouac/Mingus for the working-class. Enough. Buyer and reader hello, both Drake, and most profoundly, Parker's dazzling array of disciplined persian-improvisation never once loses control of its original sin as it pulls the shackles from Budbill's prayer for peace. Excellent. Right on, my man, right on. I just hope somebody's listening back home in Kansas.
Now click your heels and read this small interview between David Budbill and I:
CA: Listening to Songs For A Suffering Word, I felt the album would come very close to absolute political rebellion against the enemy or catalyst of a "suffering world", but it never really did. You seemed like you truly wanted to cross the borders as a revolutionary, but instead, stayed back as a poet. Do you agree?
DB: I can't make the distinction you are making between "absolute political rebellion"--what do you mean by that?--and being "a poet." It seems to me that my life as a poet and essayist --see my cyberzine THE JUDEVINE MOUNTAIN EMAILITE on my website at: http://www.davidbudbill.com -- has been one of absolute political rebellion against both the governmental and the poetical establishments. So I don't agree about not crossing the border since I think I crossed that border years and years ago.
CA: Do you have any regrets that the album wasn't released or written sooner within the streak between 9/11 and the "war"? I ask, because it sadly seems that the majority of people are venturing back into the same ol televised acceptance that is usually a factor in the building blocks for a war.
DB: It takes a long time to put together an album. William Parker and I started on this project in November 2001, and presented a series of concerts in response to 9/11. Then in June of 2002, first went into the studio to start putting SONGS FOR A SUFFERING WORLD together in New York with Hamid Drake in September 2002. This, of course, is long before the war in Iraq began. Then there was another recording session in New York with just William and myself in January of this year, 2003, and two more with just me here, Vermont this spring. Then there was, of course, all the lengthy remixing and so on and so forth.
We deliberately kept the theme of SONGS FOR A SUFFERING WORLD about suffering and war and not specifically about the war in Iraq because there have been lots of wars in the past and there will be lots more in the future. This is about human suffering, not about one specific war.
In the concerts we've done since the war, William, Hamid and I, make things specific to the particular time we are performing, so this April we did a number of Iraq-specific things to the material to make it apply particularly to Iraq. And we will continue to make those changes, within the basic structure, as we perform it on into the future.
CA: What's the concert experience like performing your words live with Parker and Drake?
DB: The answer to the previous question leads right into this one. What is on the cd is what we did when we did it. Since we are all improvising musicians, in one way or another, the performance of SONGS FOR A SUFFERING WORLD changes each time it is performed.
I can't tell you what a joy, what a kick, it is to work with William and Hamid. William and I have been performing together for years, doing all kinds of different things, including our first cd ZEN MOUNTAINS-ZEN STREETS, which came out in 1999. And William and Hamid have been performing together for years. But this is the first time for the three of us really hooking up for an intense and extended period.
The most amazing thing to me about both William and Hamid is that although they are known as "free jazz" musicians, they both have such a sense of pulse, drive, swing. They both play with such energy and intensity.
And they both can play ANYTHING, and I mean anything, straight-ahead, Reggae, funk, swing, outside stuff, Middle Eastern rhythms, Indian rhythms, anything. They have all these rhythms and styles available at a moment's notice. They can go anywhere they want to and do anything they want to on their instruments. For me to be working in a context like that is like dying and going to heaven.
And their great, great rhythmic sophistication enables me to lay out the lines of my words in infinitely varying patterns. I never know from one moment to the next what rhythm or what tempo they are going to lay on me next. This challenges me to stay loose and pliable with the way I lay out the line of words.
And also their great skill as musicians gives me the freedom and bravado to stick my neck out with my Shakuhachi and ringing bowls and other kinds of percussion. They free me up to take all kinds of risks both as a professional poet and an amateur musician that I would not take if I were up there on my own.
Although the structure of what we do is pretty much the same from night to night, what happens within that structure from night to night is so open, so much in flux, so changeable, rhythmically, harmonically, melodically. It's a truly mind-bending experience to be able to work with musicians who are playing on this level.
And, finally, we all really enjoy working together. We like each other personally and enjoy working together. We have similar feelings about peace and justice and the way white people abuse the non-white people of the earth. And all three of us have similar religious feelings, and all three of us also understand that what we are doing up there, the music we are making, is really, when it works, sacred music.
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A PETAL FROM THE PRUNES
"There is a lot of confusion about who the Electric Prunes were", commented Preston Ritter, original drummer for the very psych-clawing band, in a brief letter to me one rainy afternoon. Tanning in the tonic of "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)" and other of their wildadelia hits, Preston would eventually leave the group during the developing marigold of their second recording, all songs of which he performed a considerable amount of, yet, divided between him and fellow replacement Michael "Quint" Weakley. But most notable and reborn of Preston's prints is the curtained controversy between him and their shaky producer Dave Hassinger soon afterwards.
"When I left the band, he offered me a choice. I could get all the royalties for the second album and Quint would get his photo on the cover. Or I could have the photo and Quint would get the money. I chose the royalties. As it turned out, I didn't receive a penny for any of the recordings. None of us did! So I didn't get the money or the photo credit on the second album. After the original members split up and went their separate ways, Dave Hassinger organized another band under the name "Electric Prunes." The only Prunes to have any hits were the original members."
Commercially jipped through incorrect liner notes and other mistaken dues wasn't half the Prunes' narrative. Tracing on into the toked requiem behind the Mass In F Minor album, it would be loudly whispered that most of the leftover Prunes' hadn't actually recorded or enunciated the apparent stash of it; instead, either blessed or sinned by nouveau arranger David Axelrod and his electric-sermon of faceless studio musicians. "The Electric Prunes don't actually consider Mass in F Minor to be a legitimate Prunes recording", says Preston Ritter.
While Preston continues to play music, the band has reunited somewhere else with three of its original members. He and guitarist "Weasel" Spangola are not one of them.
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LOOK HERE: Oh, Neil Young, how you never once tour down any local, small venues. How you instead proceed to pop yourself over at the Mohegan Sun and other large arenas and expensive lottos; charging a hundred buck-a-piece to all citizens who heard you once stand and exclaim, "everybody knows this is nowhere"...Yes, indeed, we now know. How 'twas told long ago from my parents that Muddy Waters, Joan Baez, The Who, and many more, could all be seen on a lawn in one day during one fine night for two dollars. Your time, your heroes, right? Nevertheless, you still insist to elite the old harmony and hide behind the great, charging American bus- occasional stops at Farm Aid, buy hey, why not the Hard Rock Cafe?- roaring in the search of that one special "cinnamon girl". Good luck, and hey, "know your song well before your start singing it". And on behalf of your last two retardo albums, a reason why...
Jazz that lives for you? Hank Mobley's No Room For Squares, Roswell Rudd, Art Farmer....Dead-American-Allah-Kennedy-Metal? System Of A Down....Classical? I already mentioned Bax, but I'll also mention Roger Sessions....What should Pat Burtis do? Stop singing of soap...Where's Sandy Nassan?...Lucinda Williams' World Without Tears? Patti Smith gurgled, stale-hot, and some more references of Coltrane for ya...Mojo magazine? Who cares about Robert Plant?...Thanks and things? My father for turning me on to that Kathy and Carol album.
--Carson Arnold - June 15, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews, articles, and investigations written by Carson Arnold. As a freelance writer for various magazines and liner notes, living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
Thanks and enjoy!
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