James "Blood" Ulmer's Odyssey--Harmelodics Takes A Southern Turn--

Just the other day, I was watching the classic Warner Brothers cartoon with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, with the whole "Wabbit season, Duck season routine". It makes me laugh today just like it did when I was 8. But I did notice something peculiar this time around. At one point Bugs Bunny pulls out of his rabbit hole a cookbook entitled "1000 Ways to Cook Duck", to entice Elmer Fudd to shoot Daffy instead of him. Daffy retaliates by reaching into Bugs' rabbit hole and pulling out "1000 ways to Cook Rabbit". Why would Bugs Bunny have a collection of Rabbit recipes in his crib? Call it comedic license, if you wish. Though maybe in truth Bugs was harboring a dark secret. At least Elmer was a vegetarian--he just did it for the visceral thrill of killing things.

Then of course during the toon, the duck and rabbit tear off alternating signs of Rabbit Season and Duck Season, until the sign comes up for "Elmer Season". And I suddenly thought how funny it would have been if that sign were replaced with a sign picturing James "Blood" Ulmer, Ulmer season. Except on my stereo every season is Ulmer season. Which tangentially led me to tonight's post. An idle mind is a dangerous thing I guess.

Preacher, Teacher

James "Blood" Ulmer's Odyssey has long been a favorite record of mine. I saw a review of this album probably in Newsweek of all places and I knew that I had to hear it, but not really knowing what it was about. And in my opinion I lucked out. I think Odyssey is one of those singular American albums, combining downtown free jazz, with country, blues, traditional folk songs and blending into something completely unique. Traditional and avant-garde collide head on here. At times serious, sometimes nostalgic, in places even playful, the music seems incredibly personal, a heartfelt vision. Mostly instrumental, but with some distinctively gruff vocal tracks by Ulmer, the album is a real journey running the gamut of emotions. It has the feel of a concept album.



The band is an interesting three piece, with Charles Burnham on Violin and Warren Benbow on drums. Of course, Ulmer's stellar Harmelodic guitar riffing is a dominant force here, though Charles Burnham more than holds his own. In fact, Burnham's violin work is a big part of why this album is so special. For whatever reason, this setup works wonderfully. I was fortunate to actually see this lineup on stage probably 10 years ago at the Knitting Factory. Ulmer was definitely larger than life that night, a charismatic performer who as a remember was fairly cowboyed up, boots, leather clothes I think with tassels even. A real badass, heavy gravitas. They seemed to be having a great time playing this music. The thing I remember the most was that I noticed something odd about Burnham on stage, something I initially could not place. The hat, pointy goatee, the vest. Suddenly about 2/3rds of the way through the set, I looked down and noticed he was wearing those pointy Arabian Nights shoes with the toes curled up. He was dressed up like one of Santa's maniacal elves. Who knows why? The music was so terrific I didn't really care that night. You just feel fortunate that you could be part of it.



Because Odyssey almost has the feel of a 35 minute piece broken into eight parts, I have trouble finding a highlight here. I just listen from the beginning to end. I like his voice a lot, so Little Red House and Are You Glad To Be In America? are two of my favorites. The closing instrumental number Swings and Things, does exactly that; it's basically a Harmelodic hoedown, with great bow work by Charles Burnham. Election is another excellent number, with a lot of playful, humorous riffs.

Though this is my favorite album of Ulmer's, he has done a lot of great things over this career, working with saxophonist David Murray in the Music Revelation Ensemble, studying Harmelodics under the tutelage of the master himself, Ornette Coleman. More recently, he has released some traditional blues albums that are quite good, notably the covers album Memphis Blood, and Bad Blood in the City, his reflections on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Always an interesting unique guitarist, Ulmer never fails to please whatever project he undertakes.

Space, Country & Western? Barre Phillips' Three Day Moon & What is Jazz anyway?

Moon is in the Gutter

I'm very happy that I scored Barre Phillips' Three Day Moon on Cd, a startlingly strange esoteric psychedelic jazz album which came out on the ECM label in 1979. I used to have the album on vinyl and it was one of those unique records to me. It's pretty difficult to find on Cd--I'm not certain why ECM has not reissued this one. Three Day Moon is a fairly amazing melding of different styles. You have the Mingusy Barre Phillips, the psychedelic textures of Terje Rypdal, the tabla rhythms of Trilok Gurtu and eerie syntesizer of Dieter Feichtner. There is some unique quality to this music that actually seems to put me in a hypnotic trance. It wasn't something I was trying to have happen, but I no on a few occasions that I was startled into consciousness by the sound of a needle scraping at the end of one side of the album. But my eyes were open! Listening to this album never feels to give my brain a good cleaning, but not in a soporific way. I feel relaxed, but more energized and focused.

I first discovered ECM records in a strange place, my local Caldor department store, now defunct, but a place where I used to find interesting cut-outs, like Teardrop Explodes or Killing Joke Cd's. I started seeing these albums with unusual artwork on the cover being sold there. Because I recognized some of the names on the albums like Keith Jarrett, I knew that it was jazz. There was a certain consistency in style on the records unlike other labels that I was familiar with. They were so cheap too. I could kick myself now. At one point the store had a huge bin of ECM vinyl that they were selling for 99 cents each!! In retrospect, I should have bought a pile of them.

Three Day Moon came into my possession years later because of a visit to a record store, upon the recommendation of  the proprietor. That's one of the nice things about going into a real record store--those wonderful surprises you can encounter, courtesy of people who are genuinely informed about music.  He played the record for me and I was won over pretty quickly.



Though the songs are definitely not all the same, there is a mesmerizing quality that runs throughout the album. Though credit must be given to the innovative and virtuoistic guitar playing of Rypdal, the star and gang leader here is Phillips. Sometimes his bass lines lead the charge, other the times they buzz in the background forming a type of private conversation. Sometimes the bass is a crazy rangeing heartbeat. Overall the soundscapes are startling. Ostensibly, this is considered a jazz album. I don't think this is such an important distinction to be made--I just like this album a lot. But I think back to the reaction of the Jazz World when Ornette Coleman burst onto the scene. (Phillips actually performed with Coleman on the beautiful Naked Lunch soundtrack).

The reaction was not positive. The strangeness of the new style was jarring. Today when people are attempting to institutionalize jazz as an America's home grown of Classical music, it creates a difficult dichotomy. I guess it is like loose and strict constructivists of the American Constitution. Like, the Constitution does not mention cell phones, so how can government regulate them? I guess in terms of jazz, I am a loose constructivist. Give credit where credit is due, to all the great jazz legends and tradition, but let the genre breathe. Don't be such a tight ass as to what Jazz is and isn't.

Back at the old Knitting Factory in NYC they used to have a What is Jazz? festival, which they held at the same time as the old institution, The New York Jazz Festival. And no doubt not accidentally. Well, What is Jazz? quickly grew and grew, as it was a melting pot of diversity, and a cross pollination of musical genres. Eventually it threatened to usurp the other festival in stature. First and foremost, jazz is improvisatory music, and is a cross pollination of musical styles, and in some ways is musically political satire. People who create great jazz imbue it with part of themselves, sometimes in way that can't quite be replicated. And if you try to pin it down, you kill the life out of it, like a beautiful butterfly collection.

It's a Heartbeat, It's a Love Beat

I'm listening to Three Day Moon as I tap the keyboard and I'm enjoying it as much as I did when I first heard this unique disc. S.C. & W is without doubt the best country space raga I've ever heard. All 9 1/2 minutes of it. There is a zen quality here where even disparate noise that might be accidental seems like it is there for a reason. There is a strange ambience at work, perhaps because of the 1000 mile journey that Phillips, Gurtu and Feichtner took from Salzburg to Oslo to make this album. In a converted ice cream wagon!! For some reason these disparate artists came together and created a coherent masterpiece, even though at times it seems they are all playing different things in a schizophrenic way.



Three Day Moon is a very amazing one of a kind record, the kind of record that has inspired me to seek out interesting music outside my comfort zone.
I can't say that this philosophy has given me much regret.

Ornette Coleman--Naked Lunch Soundscape

I just heard that my cousin from the Albany area is taking up the saxophone, so I thought I would put together a post about one of my favorite jazz musicians, the American National Treasure and free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. One of the free jazz holy trinity of sax, with John Coletrane and Albert Ayler he has carved out his own amazing niche in the canons of modern music. So this one is a tribute to her--I hope she sticks with it, or finds an instrument that suits her the best. I still wish I could play 10 instruments.

While at school at University of Illinois I had the great luck to see Ornette Coleman accidentally. He was performing at a small theatre on campus with guitarist Pat Metheny, who at the time was probably a lot better known as a crossover performer to at least college students. Ornette and Pat were taking a short tour to promote their new collaborative album Song X. My roommate was trying to get me to go--he was a journalism major and he was always playing Windham Hill stuff like George Winston. So he wanted to see some nice live jazz. I preferred mostly noisy stuff, Stiff Little Fingers, Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Husker Du.

I had heard of Ornette Coleman and for some reason thought he played guitar, possibly getting him confused with James "Blood" Ulmer who was a collaborator and disciple of Coleman's "Harmelodics". Harmelodics I guess is sort of a free form riffing I guess, where you aren't worrying so much about song structure or keys, but you play off of the other musicians and they play off of you--with the music bending, speeding up, slowing down--sometimes it just sounds like playing tag. When he first came out with his first lp, being on the cover with the cheap plastic yellow sax, he was almost universally panned. Critics knew what jazz was, and to them, this clearly was not jazz. Just like the punk movement, when he played clubs he would sometimes get physically attacked because people didn't care for what he was doing--it was outre, beyond their comfort zone.

I had no great desire to see that show--I didn't know his music and I really had no use for jazz at the time. But he pretty much bugged me and begged me and I finally gave in (In his defense later on I did get him to go see The Feelies, or maybe it was Salem 66.) I remember sitting in my seat, waiting for the show to start, listening to these dudes in front me--"oh, I hope this Coleman gets off the stage quick so we can hear Pat play!!" Much to their disappointment, they were on stage together. And it didn't take me too long to realize that I really loved what these guys were doing. And as jazz goes, it was pretty damned loud. Electric guitar, Ornette's son Denardo pounding away on the skins.

Even crazier, it didn't take long to come to the conclusion who the star was here. It became quite obvious to me that Ornette was blowing the younger upstart out of the building. Such an amazing combination of passion, chops, and poise. I just remember watching him improvise his way through a quiet ballad, Kathelin Gray I think, and I was just trying to remember to breathe. I was thinking even then that I was watching a musical icon, like a Mick Jagger, but of jazz. I was an immediate convert to free jazz after this. After leaving the show, my ears abuzz, I asked my roommate how he liked the concert. He said "well, it was a little loud". I thought it was a truly inspired performance and I sought out to find more music like this.

The Naked Lunch soundtrack is just amazing to me--an ominous and beautiful collaboration between varied sources. First of all you have the producer Howard Shore, who has scored numerous films including many others by the director of Naked Lunch, David Cronenburg. He also scored the Return of the King from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was the original musical director of Saturday Night Live back in the 70's and had actually booked Ornette Coleman to perform on the show. How I wish they would be half as adventurous today, rather than pander to the mass media. Additionally Shore enlists the skills of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Bachir Attar and the Master Musician of Jajouka, a musical group from Morocco. This group had performed with Ornette Coleman many years earlier, but most of that music has vanished or been destroyed. Midnight Sunrise (outtake) from Dancing in My Head is the only existing recorded evidence of this collaboration that I have heard of. Also performing are ECM jazz bassist Barre Phillips, and Denardo Coleman on drums. But as you might expect Ornette rules the roost here.

Whether he is improvising against the backdrop of a 70+ piece orchestra or in counterpoint with Barre Phillips' bass lines (ECM please rerelease his Three Day Moon), or weaving through the glorious cacophony and ululation of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, it is all memorable evocative free form expression. At some points the saxophone playing is just so amazingly poignant. Just listen to Intersong, or the title track, or Simpatico/Mysterioso to see what I mean. There are also speedy percussive free workouts like the concluding Writeman. The mesmerizing Interzone Suite with the Moroccan musicians is just unbelievable. Their music by itself should be a part of any "world" music collection and well worth tracking down as their music is really in a category of its own.

All in all this is good place to investigate Ornette Coleman and even more to the point, a very delightful and creative collaboration of gifted musicians.

 And I again wish my cousin a lot of luck on her new instrument and hope she has within herself the patience to persevere. The benefits are beyond exaggeration.