Category: Music

It’s a little humbling to realize you’re in the presence of someone great. Even one degree of separation from greatness can sometimes be intimidating. I just found out that one of my co-worker musicians from the pick-up band that played our holiday party is a recognized harmonica authority who once met Howlin’ Wolf. So not only do I know a world authority on the harp, I’m now only one degree removed from Howlin’ Wolf. Kind of a comforting thought.

Nirvana

In Utero

Geffen, 1993

Pennyroyal Tea
(Kurt Cobain)

I’m on my time with everyone
I have very bad posture

Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that’s inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea
I’m anemic royalty

Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally

I’m so tired I can’t sleep
I’m a liar and a thief
Sit and drink pennyroyal Tea
I’m anemic royalty

I’m on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids

Confession: I’m one of those tiresome people that make mix tapes. Worse, I’m one of those people that go on making mix tapes after high school and college. Worse yet, I make them for myself and generally not for other audiences.

I think Nick Hornby missed out on this one. Mix tapes are worse than top ten lists. At least those are mostly spoken. Mix tapes live forever. And they come back to haunt you. Even if you trade, sell, or throw out the CDs from which the scary songs came.

I’m finding this in a big way at the moment. Now that my CD collection and I are reunited, I’m in the process of recreating all my old mix tapes as MP3 playlists. (There can be no deeper geekery.) In the process, I have to ask myself the painful questions. For instance: Why on earth did I precede that achingly lovely Górecki folk song setting with Dave Matthews’ “Jimi Thing”? (Granted it was before his cringe-inducing Alanis Morrisette duet, but still.) What was I thinking putting a twelve minute mind-numbing funk-jazz fusion number from Herbie Hancock featuring extensive electric piano pitch-bend solo on any mix tape? And why, why on God’s green earth did I put not one, but two album tracks from Jesus Jones on a mix tape—and why also two tracks from Ziggy Marley?

I guess it’s true. Reconnecting with one’s past means facing painful truths. I was a tasteless trend monkey. At least the tracks from the Pixies, Gastr Del Sol, Elvis Costello and others that also stud the tapes argue that there was an element of enduring taste as well.

I was going to claim that there is an art to sequencing a playlist, for tape or computer, having to do with maintaining mood, keeping appropriate tonal and rhythmic continuity (or contrast, as appropriate), and both pleasing and surprising the listener. But then I found there’s a web site that makes the argument for me: Art of the Mix. I suspect I’ll have to put up the mixes I’ve created so you can see how bad it really is. Another time. Here’s the list of mixes (in progress).

SF Chronicle: CD settlement money going begging so far. According to the article, if you bought a CD, cassette tape, or vinyl record between 1995 and 2000 at a retail store, you are eligible for a piece of the settlement that BMG, EMI, Warner, Sony, and Universal paid for price fixing. Also according to the article, only about 30,000 people have filed for their share of the settlement so far. You can file a claim online at www.musiccdsettlement.com.

Sadly, the maximum amount of the settlement is $20 (per person, not per CD purchased), or I’d be a rich man.

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I was graced with the Presence of Org last weekend—that’s George Cervantes, Cheese Lord to those who don’t know him. He brought a copy of the Suspicious Cheese Lords’ first professional CD, Maestro di Capella: Music of Elzear Genet (Carpentras). It was recorded in the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC and is fascinating listening. In fact, it’s hard to believe these are the same guys I used to drink lots of wine and sing with every Wednesday night. (In case you hadn’t gathered, since I left the group to go to business school I’ve felt like a kind of Cheeselords Pete Best.)

As soon as the album becomes available through Amazon, I think I’ll do a proper review for BlogCritics. Until then I’ll rest secure in the knowledge that the group is outstandingly good.

(Incidentally, I was wrong about the cover. While similar at a distance to a photo I took of the interior of the duomo in Siena, a photo that graced a concept cover for our first self-produced CD Incipit, the cover of the album is actually a stock photo of the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Sorry for the confusion.)

I’m more excited about being at work this morning than I thought I’d be—primarily because I expect no one to be in again today, meaning I can crank up the music. (Aside: having decent speakers in the office is pretty much a waste unless you can actually use them.) And today the music is KEXP. Specifically, the top 90.3 albums of the year countdown. Now this is a New Years’ Rockin’ Eve I can really get behind.

(FYI, the title reference is in memory of Joe Strummer, who kicks off the Clash’s great “Know Your Rights” with “This is a public service announcement—with guitar!”)

Boing Boing: RIP, Joe Strummer. There are a few punk moments that will live forever, and the Clash was foremost in a lot of them. It’s too bad I’ll be ferrying family around in my car today. I desperately want to crank up “Know Your Rights.” Or at least “Wrong Em Boyo.”

Long time readers of this blog will recognize the Suspicious Cheese Lords from my sojourn in DC last January. For the uninitiated, this is the pick-up men’s Renaissance vocal ensemble that I sang with in Washington for some very cool gigs, including a Smithsonian Associates program on the music and times of Chaucer, my C-SPAN debut (at the signing of Carl Anthony’s book on Florence Harding), and many programs at the Franciscan Monastery in DC, among others.

For a while, their domain was dark, but now cheeselords.org is alive and well, and bearing news about an upcoming recording to be distributed through Amazon (and, to my, by a certain Sergeant-With-Arms). I’m tickled prouder than pink. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the master before it was mixed, and I have to say that the guys have attained a musical standard previously reached only by certain British choirs. That they attained it after my departure should be taken purely as coincidence.

I should note that I took the photo on the cover during Lisa’s and my trip to Italy; it’s the interior dome of the cathedral in Siena.

Update 12/31: No it isn’t! Details…

The Cascadian performance yesterday was too long to do a detailed movement by movement analysis, but here are some highlights. We began the program in the balcony of the church, which we shared with a bunch of evergreens. The first piece, Tavener’s “O Do Not Move,” is brief but timeless. The tenors repeat the title three times, in three different modalities (minor, major, major with a diminished second), moving from conventional harmony to a more Byzantine sound. The whole choir then joins in, holding a minor chord while the sopranos sing the word “listen” in a descending Dorian scale; the piece then closes as it began. The text, O do not move/Listen/to the gentle beginning, calls the listener to move into a more contemplative and meditative frame of mind.

The second piece, Pärt’s “Magnificat,” also went well. Like most of Pärt’s vocal works, “Magnificat,” is constructed of alternating chant and triadic singing in relatively free meters and different voicings. The biggest challenges for the singer are paying attention and telling a unified story from beginning to end. Here I felt we could have better told the story; the Magnificat, after all, is Mary’s song of praise upon finding out she has been chosen to bear Christ. But the performance was generally good.

The third and fourth pieces, Tavener’s “Today the Virgin” and Górecki’s “Totus Tuus,” were both outstandingly performed. I had done the Tavener in the Cathedral Choral Society several years ago, and here the text was cleaner, crisper, and more expressive while losing none of the punch. (This is probably because the Cascadian Chorale has only 1/4 the members of CCS.) The Górecki was flawless and soaring, better than quite a few performances I’ve heard on CD, and raised goosebumps.

The Pärt Te Deum now ranks as the most challenging choral work I’ve ever sung. Like the “Magnificat,” Te Deum contains contrasting chant and triadic parts; it ups the ante with three antiphonal choirs, an orchestra that responds to each of the triadic sections, and a really long text (the piece clocks in at around 35 minutes). There were a few difficulties owing to the antiphonal arrangement, mostly sloppy entrances to chants, but overall I thought the piece went magnificently well.

The second half was the Christmas portion of the Messiah, which we performed at ludicrous speed. The music didn’t suffer at that tempo—the speed seemed to bring out the dancelike qualities of the early movements.

All in all it was a really satisfying concert to sing, and bodes well for the rest of the season.

Craig reminds me that I didn’t actually say anything about how the debut went, just that it happened.

Both arrangements were done by me and George Bullock, a jazz guitarist who works at my company and plays with the Charisa Martin Cairn Quartet. We started out trying “Accidents Will Happen” at Elvis’s tempo, but thankfully Charisa suggested that we take it slower after one run through where I mangled half the words. On the next run through, George played spare chords underneath while I straightened out some of the vocal melismas I had borrowed from Elvis. The resulting sound was a lot more subtle than the recording on Armed Forces and allowed me to bring out some of the anger and confusion in the lyrics while still staying melodic. I knew we had done well when we finished the last chorus before the “I know, I know” fadeout and the audience started applauding—even the ones who didn’t work with me. 🙂

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was really more of a showcase for George, since it’s a little low in my range, but I did my part by keeping the lyrics coming, playing a little with the phrasing and timing, and making the most of the few high notes in the song.

It was a great session. We’re already talking about trying to find ways to keep doing the music together.

So I just got back from a gig at the Liquid Lounge at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, where I made my solo stage debut.

Okay, okay, so it was my group’s holiday party. But it was the Liquid Lounge, and I did sing some Elvis Costello (“Accidents Will Happen,” as promised) and some Bing Crosby (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”).

It was a fun time. Tomorrow is serious: the Cascadian Chorale’s Illuminatio concert. But it was fun to get up and sing music that was a little more relaxed.

I’ve referred to the Pärt Te Deum a few times but haven’t written much detail about it yet. It’s a difficult piece to write about. Almost a half hour long, much of it consists, as Steve Schwartz writes, of variations on D modality—major to minor and back. Many of the individual vocal parts do little more than oscillate around the notes of a ringing triad, from the third to the octave to the fifth and so on. But the music as a whole is a magnificent statement of faith. How does Pärt arrive from such simple materials at such a high spiritual peak?

The answer is partly structural, partly tonal, partly something else. The entire piece hovers around D, and Pärt makes it explicit with a D drone that begins in a low organ (or wind harp!) note, moves up to the basses and cellos, disappears in the middle, then returns in the violins and moves back down the octaves. Pärt’s deep faith is well documented, and my reading of the D drone is that it functions as a reminder of eternity, that regardless of the iterations of voicings and time, there are eternal truths.

The voicing tells the story of faith against this background. The entire piece is a colloquoy among plainchant, orchestra, and triadic singing. I read the melodic plainchant, which is ever changing, as humanity, and the triadic voicings (the third, antiphonal choir), which weave a more static melody from D major and D minor triads, as a choir of angels. One conductor I’ve sung under reads the orchestra as a kind of Greek chorus that comments on the interaction between the two.

With this framework, the piece can be read as a long striving of humanity to reach the perfection of the angels. So the first Sanctus, uttered in a unison D minor plainchant by the tenors and basses, is echoed in a D minor triadic Sanctus by the antiphonal choir. The entire piece is built on groupings of three: three choirs, three contributions of three part phrases from the orchestra, building blocks of chant + triadic song + orchestra, and so on, that Pärt varies for dramatic effect. Accordingly, there are three dramatic moments of unison between the plainchant choirs and the antiphonal choir. The first two are followed immediately by plainchant advancing the argument of humanity, while the third is followed by a chanted Amen and an echo of the Sanctus by the antiphonal choir that fades into infinity.

I may find more to write about in the Te Deum as we continue to work on it. I continue to learn more about the piece each time I sing it or listen to it.

I feel inexplicably good this morning. Rain came last night and scrubbed the fog out of the corners of the fields and valleys. And we had a great rehearsal.

To my Seattle area readers: you owe it to yourself to check out the Cascadian Chorale concert this Sunday. We rehearsed the Pärt Te Deum last night with the string orchestra for the first time and it’s sounding really really really good. I can’t wait to hear how the Górecki sounds on Wednesday.

My euphoria probably started around the second runthrough of the piece and was capped when, after rehearsal, one of the sopranos started playing “Autumn Leaves” on piano. I was moved to contribute a vocal walking bass line, someone else joined in on vocal percussion, and we improvised our way through the whole thing. I haven’t done anything that musically spontaneous in a long time. There’s something about just playing or singing from the top of the head that reaffirms my faith in the power of music.

Not much blog yesterday because I was pooped. After Friday night’s housewarming party (good crowd, good food—Lisa made an amazing ragu Bolognese for gnocchi with melted mozzarella, and I made a pan of meatballs which we served with a plain tomato sauce and more mozzarella, plus wine), I dragged myself out to the Sammamish plateau for the dress rehearsal for the Cascadian Chorale’s guest appearance with the Sammamish Symphony. The music? Messiah.

I had never sung the Messiah all the way through before, though I had sightread parts of it many years ago in my Glee Club days and had done individual choruses. I soon found that my experience was as close to singing the whole piece as catching a connecting flight in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport is to seeing Italy. If there are no other signs of the presence of a higher power, consider this: not only did Händel take the time to write this hulking monstrosity of a piece (in twenty-four days), but it’s performed every year—and people still come to hear it, though sitting through the entire performance must be exhausting even as an audience member.

I can attest that, as a performer, it’s a bit like what I imagine running a marathon must be. Pacing is key, for instance, so as not to blow out one’s voice totally before the final Amen. There are long stretches where one, exhausted, wishes for the kisses of nubile young Wellesley students—or anyone, for that matter, so that blood flow will leave the vocal chords and be restored to the feet and to the left arm, which has lost all feeling about an hour ago from holding up the score. And after the final fugue on “Amen,” a curious euphoria descends, at least if one has hit the notes correctly. It feels like entering heaven. Or just extreme relief that one has escaped the piece with vocal cords intact.

So that was Saturday. On Sunday after church I drove back out to do it again.

And we have another concert next Sunday, with music of Tavener, Górecki, and Pärt as well as some more Messiah. Can hardly wait…

Driving into work this morning, KEXP was playing some Beastie Boys (“Shake Your Rump”) followed by some Digable Planets (“Where I’m From”). I was enjoying the hell out of it. Then I realized I was thirty, in a silver Passat, driving to work, and grooving to funk.

I now know what was wrong with me for the last few months. I lost my funk. In retrospect, it has been missing for longer than that. After seeing the P-Funk All Stars at the 9:30 Club with Craig (he may remember what year, maybe 1998 or 1999), I gradually stopped listening to funk. It may be hard to believe, but there was a time that Parliament and James Brown, together with a smattering of hip-hop, were in steady rotation on my CD player.

It’s high time for me to go back and dig out those tracks. After all, as George Clinton says in Funkentelechy (the song from which my new tagline–“[Macro error: Can’t evaluate the expression because the name “tagline” hasn’t been defined.]
”–is taken), “You may as well pay attention ’cause you can’t afford free speech.” I ask you, has there ever been a finer collection of one-liners tied together by funk:

• When you’re taking every kind of pill/nothing seems to ever cure your ill
• Oh, but we’ll be pecking lightly, like a woodpecker with a headache. ’Cause it’s cheaper to funk than it is to pay attention. You dig?
• Would you trade your funk for what’s behind the third door?
• Step up and dance until I tell you to come down!

I won’t be trading my funk again.