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Paul's 2007 musical picks: Dirt Farmer Levon Helm We'll Never Turn Back Mavis Staples My Name Is Buddy Ry Cooder The Roots Of Chicha Voodoo Love Inna Champeta Land Columbiafrica Mystic Orch. At My Age Nick Lowe Authenticite Syliphone Guinean comp African Pearls: Congo, Guinea and Mali comps Pinata Mexican Institute of Sound Song of the year: Rome Wasn't Built In A Day Nick Lowe
Movies - Stephen Dixon (re-read)
The
Insatiable Spiderman - Pedro Juan Gutierrez
People
Gonna Talk - James Hunter Compilations and Reissues:
Midnight Robbers - Nalo Hopkinson Brown Girl in the Ring - Nalo Hopkinson Cuba and It's Music - Ned Sublette The Gettin' Place - Susan Straight The Man Under My Stairs - Walter Mosley The Quality of Life Report - Meghan Daum Get Home Free - John Clellon Holmes Outcast - Jose Latour The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow Him With Foot in His Mouth - Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift - Saul Bellow Innocent When You Dream - Tom Waits interviews Train - Pete Dexter The Whiteman In The Tree -Mark Kurlansky Ask The Dust - John Fante The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth Gilead - Marilyne Robinson On Beauty - Zadie Smith Dirty Havana Trilogy - Pedro Juan Gutierrez Tropical Animal - Pedro Juan Gutierrez Enduring Cuba - Zoe Bran The
Reader's Companion To Mexico ***Solo In Rio 1959 - Luis Bonfa *** Multiply - Jamie Lidell Our New Orleans - Nonesuch Hurricane Relief Album Tijuana Sessions Vol.3 - Nortec Collective Afro - Novalima London
Is The Place For Me 2 - Diasporal Compilation
on Honest Jon's
* * * * * In a glimpse at the possibly febrile, mid-eighties mind of our dear commander Cebar, here's a review that he wrote for a Minneapolis weekly upon the release of Tom Waits' RAINDOGS in 1985: TOM WAITS RAINDOGS (Island Records) reviewed by Milwaukee musician,Paul Cebar "It's raining songs. I can't find enough things to catch them in. Tom Waits The Face Nov. '85 "I'm trying to break out a little bit, let all the birds fly out of my head....to do music that belongs to me a little bit more. You chase it, catch it, skin it, cook it and eat it. It feels like yours." Tom Waits Record Magazine "85 Got to give a dog a bone. There has been no more ambitious work on the vinyl frontier this long year than RAINDOGS, the tenth album of a particularly frisky cur called Waits. Whether one wants to simply consider the breadth of influences drawn upon, the sheer variety of points of view, the efflorescence of language, or merely the value for the dollar (19 songs, 53 and a half minutes of lowbrow hijinx), this hound is decidedly the big boy on the block. Judging by the vigorous expansiveness of this record and it's big brother, 1983's SWORDFISHTROMBONES, self-production has been quite the charm for dear Tom. Having painted himself into something of a corner with 1980's HEARTATTACK and VINE, Waits immersed himself in film work for Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studio and after composing the score for ONE FROM THE HEART, emerged with a clear-eyed gumption and the radically revised sonic palette needed to blow the doors clear off their hinges and let the big birds out. Ritually eschewing certain sonorities (saxophones and strings on SWORDFISHTROMBONES to distance himself from a penchant for jazz cliche, piano on the new album,with the single exception of the twisted," Tango Til They're Sore," in order to "take the music outdoors"), Tom has opened up a whole new can of worms. Tailoring sound to sense more provocatively than ever, he has placed a decided emphasis upon instruments that run out of breath, crack like limbs, clang like all get out, or simply stumble menacingly about. In so doing, he has found a musical vocabulry that makes assets of his vocal limitations. As part of an effort to purge himself of what he has called " that jazz thing", he has warmed up to the possibilities of more rigid rhythms. ( Witness "Cemetary Polka", "Singapore", and last album's "Underground".) He confidently caroms wildly in and out of tune in a mongrel sprechstimme aided and abetted every step of the way by the assured embrace of untempered ( or shall I say, distempered ) percussion. All the perverse moves under the sun only serve to make the idiosyncratic work of this former one-trick gutter statesman more effectively expressive of starkly varied human perspectives. To make the music slither, stomp, and generally get on up and walk around, emphasis has been put on a generous assortment of astringent guitars. Waits seems in search of a holler out back of the Port Authority, a roadhouse on the streets and avenues of Empiretown and in that search he has called upon Lounge Lizard, Marc Ribot, G E. Smith, Robert Quine, Chris Spedding and even wholesome old Keith Richard to unpack their cases and play twice as better than he will. Let's just say they play clean as New York water. For my money, Smith's tingling work on the sublime,"Downtown Train" is the most resoundingly right guitar performance of the year. Ribot's bold strokes on both, "Jockey Full Of Bourbon", and the title cut run a very close second and Waits, himself, pulls the strings to very grand effect throughout the album. As if that weren't enough, kudos are in order for the excruciatingly apt accordianistics of one William Shimmel, the sterling horn work of Ralph Carney, The Uptown Horns and even John Lurie on the Ornette-ified, "Walking Spanish", and the peerless rhythm section jockeying of Stephen Taylor Arvizu Hodges, Michael Blair and rock-solid Larry Taylor. All of this inspired clanging and banging, wheezing and scraping would add up to less than squat had Waits not made commensurate strides lyrically as well. He has staved off prolixity, heightened his images , found still more telling details and generally scattered more clearly delineated narrative voices all about the place. In contrast to the taut clarity of SWORDFISHTROMBONES' tightly coiled vignettes, much of RAINDOGS exhibits a more opaque, imagistic approach perhaps reflective of a New Yorker's sense of disparate perspectives. Much is made of the improbabilities of conveying the pith of the juxtapositions one has made one's own bed in to another who has woven his own crazyquilt on the next street over. The spirit of New York hangs in the hat of many of the protagonists, a spirit of cultural, linguistic, and economic clangor, of fetid vitality shambling off into nextday. Employing a stunning variety of vocal approaches (hushed to bellowing and all stops in between), Waits conjures a gallery of monologists in full cry. Each employs a personal English (pickpocket argot, thirties slang a la William Kennedy's Albany cycle [a world of millionaires,dimes, trains and dames], or plain and simple private references) to emphatically expose a new back door on a sound and fury signifying too much of something. So what do you get? A smorgasbord. Start with a crypto sea chantey, move on to a whispered walk on slightly tarnished gilded splinters, a stomping polka-based family history, a latin guitar and whisper workout, a warped tango, a wakeful, heartfelt lullaby of a kiss-off, a gutter prognosis and an elegy for an elegiac appreciator of time. Then, turn the damned thing over and drive all over the map again. Dye your hair in the bathroom of a Texaco with John of "Gun Street Girl", climb through the window and down to the street, shining like a new dime and find her in your "Blind Love". Then, lay your head anywhere and make your home for the Nigerian and Louisiana saints are marching in. RAINDOGS is singular music served up by a mature artist and his accomplices in a manner only they could pull off. It brings to mind Jacob Riis, Howlin' Wolf, Richard Burton, Kurt Weill, Captain Beefheart, Chano Pozo, Mac Rebennac, a thousand downtown trains and Brooklyn girls just to name a few. One can take it or leave it. I take it like a big hook between the lobes. RAINDOGS invites attention and rewards one with resonant complexity and that's barking up the right tree for a dog like me.
* * * * * As I grapple with the memories of yet another Jazzfest (the 39th), I thought that it might be fun to revisit a piece that my callower self wrote for a long defunct Milwaukee publication called LOOSE, concerning my impressions of the 15th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
Dancing at the Mouth, Fun and a Half in the City of Hips In an effort to dodge the humorless self-absorption of the Mr. One-Glove, the superficial modernity of the Culture League Twins, the sad,sad normality of the Sheena-Kenny-Crystal axis, and the leathered-up Mad Suburbanites of Doom, to New Orleans went I. The 15th annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival provided the same opportunity that the fourteen before it had for coming to terms with a town in these asphalted states which remains itself. That is, a city with it’s own food, it’s own architecture, it’s own beat; the seat of Gumbo Culture. Throw it all together on the corner of Mystery and Terpsichore and it’ll go down good. It’s still going down in New Orleans. The brew’s on the boil. The 15th annual fest held this past April 28 through May 6th only confirmed that verdict. For all it’s mythic undercurrents, New Orleans is a straightforward town. It’s homegrown root beer, Barq’s sells itself with the simple slogan, “Drink Barq’s ,It’s Good” . Mac Rebennack, better known to some as Dr. John, who sings and plays on Barq’s radio spots, responds to applause in the middle of his stirring solo piano recital at Tipitina’s (Tipitina’s takes it’s name from a tune recorded by Professor Longhair, the late, lamented King of New Orleans piano and mentor to Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Ronnie Barron, and the recently deceased piano prince, James Booker.) with the rejoinder,”Yeah, You’re right!,” And we were. Freed up to tour the environs without a band in his own hometown and surrounded by a pack of willing traveling companions, Rebennack journeyed archeologically through the musical life of the city paying tribute to those who had gone before and singing the praises of his contemporaries. Through a set touching on Joe Liggins’ HONEYDRIPPER, Archibald’s STACKOLEE (“If you ever hear rumbling, rumbling under the ground, must be Stagger turning Billy upside down.”), Longhair’s BALDHEAD, the homeboy standard JUNKO PARTNER, Huey Smith’s ROCKIN’ PNEUMONIA, Fats Domino’s I’M IN LOVE AGAIN, Toussaint’s LIFE, Earl King’s THOSE LONELY< LONELY NIGHTS, Ann Cole’s and Muddy Waters’ MOJO WORKING, his own SUCH A NIGHT, and his appropriation of hoodoo retentions in the Crescent City, WALK ON GILDED SPLINTERS, Rebennack humbly danced the tradition ‘cross the keys, sweating through his alligator vest, ”tryin’ to ‘splain you all about….” At the fairgrounds on the weekend, the scene of a multi-staged Summerfest [a reference to Milwaukee’s ten day summer music festival] of roots music, San Antonio’s own, Bongo Joe whistled over the rhythms emanating from his day-glo painted, self-tuned 55 gallon oil drums, rattling mallets in hand, explaining in his drawling Muppets voice,” What I like about this earthlife…(pause for rhythmic punctuation)…No matter what different kinds of people there are, they will find a way…We’ll find a way to get along…As in Afro-Engineering…Why buy drums when I can raise a set of my own?… (Whistles)…I’m a pretty good rigger…That’s R-I-G-O-R… never know when someone’s gonna mishear you.” Peppering his talk and chant with astonishing rhythmic voluptuosness, whistling fragments of the pop tunes of 50 odd years of “this earthlife”, twisting his every statement with adjustments of the twinkle in his eye, conjuring a place,” 50 miles southeast of Johannesburg, 25 miles north of Cuba, 3 miles outside of Dallas 25 miles west of New Orleans…..I like the way I said that…One mile north of any urban street.. Call it Deep Elm”. [Note: Attuned to poetics but geographically inexperienced at the time, I failed to realize that he was referring to Dallas, TX notorious sporting section, Deep Ellum] Bongo Joe is Bongo Joe, and nobody else. 100 yards away, New Orleans’ blind guitar angel, Snooks Eaglin is joyously stomping out tune after tune, accompanied by his modest and willing accomplice, Allen Toussaint, on piano. (Toussaint is the man responsible for composing and arranging most of the grand Lee Dorsey singles from RIDE YOUR PONY,and WORKING IN A COALMINE, on through YES WE CAN CAN, TEARS, TEARS, AND MORE TEARS, FREEDOM FOR THE STALLION, and SNEAKING SALLY THROUGH THE ALLEY, Al Hirt’s JAVA, Irma Thomas’ most stirring work, Little Feat’s ON YOUR WAY DOWN, Bonnie Raitt’s WHAT DO YOU WANT THE BOY TO DO?, The Band’s horn charts for their Rock Of Ages album and 7 million other wonderful and supremely ageless tunes.) ”Irene,Irene In the middle of a dream,” sings Snooks through a gap-toothed mouth, spitting forth boyish enthusiasm and undeniable good spirits. “Every record I put out gonna be damn good, I wasn’t born in no summertime,” and with that he’s off into DROWN IN MY OWN TEARS with the entire crowd gently singing the Raelettes part. Lester Young T-shirts sit next to giant Little Richards. Somebody’s grandma is dancing with her husband and so’s somebody’s little brother. Then, Snooks is standing, dancing to Toussaint’s solo, weaving, about to fly…he solos, dazzlingly edgy rhythms butting up against one another, triple jointed fingers flapping against the strings with supreme nonchalance and dead aim. Moments later, he’s lost, looking for the chair he’s left so far behind him. For a moment, the groove took him and held him. We’re all looking for our seats.”God bless all y”all”. Eddie Bo, headrag in place, seated at the upright piano is the picture of Grandpa Priapus in his prime. (This year sporting full length white robes and a snow-white beard,more like rocking Moses come down with 10 more commandments to get loose.) Bantering every moment, talking to his band, yelling to his crowd, his surrogate neighborhood, Bo is as down as they come. The originator of SLIPPING AND SLIDING, known in Bo’s original version as, I’M WISE, Eddie is a stunningly vibrant embodiment of the glory that was New Orleans in the 50’s and 60’s. Where all too many of his contemporaries have attempted to shed all distinction in the rush for mainstream acceptance and bigger pieces of the Californianized pie, Eddie sings New Orleans and sings it proud in all it’s racial and cultural diversity. “Check your bucket,” he sings. ”If your kisses fail to move her and your rap fails to groove her…Your bucket’s got a hole in it.” And then, yelling to George Porter (one of the forefathers of funk bass as a charter member of The Meters), “George, are you ready for this? ‘Cause we gonna smoke this sucker,” he was off, ”Confucious say, Every dog got his day. But some dogs got two…My wife don’t walk no dog…I’ll believe ‘til the end, a dollar is man’s best friend…Hardtimes! Hardtimes got me now..” all over a bristling groove reminiscent of middle-period James Brown. Hollering “Get the line!” as the crowd began the second line, New Orleans’ snaking march dance named after the procession that forms behind the funeral bands on their march back from the cemetery, Bo launched into his late 50’s hit, CHECK MR. POPEYE, a tune that spurred the development of a dance in the New Orleans of that day and has since supplied the name of New Orleans own, franchised chicken carryout restaurants, Popeye’s. ”You’d better check your spinach, ’cause Olive’s in the danger zone,” he sang with all the ebullience in the world to which Porter responded with the warmest smile that side of the sun. Raising his voice, Bo, as Olive Oyl sang, “Popeye, Popeye, Bluto’s trying to make me give it up.” He stood up, demonstrated the Popeye for the crowd, and with the words, ”I’m crazy,Yes,” he was gone. The highlight of this year’s fest for this writer was a simple dream – a midnight concert at New Orleans impeccably restored Saenger Theater, featuring the Dave Bartholomew Big Band, Ray Charles, his band and The Raelettes and the right, right Reverend Al Green. From Bartholomew’s emergence on the blue-lit stage, all elegance in grey-pink silk to the final rave-up of Green’s Hi-rhythm gospel groove band the night was a testament to the power of dynamics in Afro-American music. Bartholomew’s unshakeable poise playfully offset by his down-in-the-alley with shoes shined sense of humor, the grand sound of his big band in a theater with only incidental sound reinforcement and the drama of simple lighting enervated this viewer beyond the realm of a good dream. This was so good it had to be true. Striding from side to side singing the tunes he wrote for so many greats, tunes like BLUEBERRY HILL, ONE NIGHT, BLUE MONDAY, and I HEAR YOU KNOCKING, Bartholomew’s charm, modesty and hawk-nosed beauty were utterly captivating. With his carnival song, CARNIVAL DAY, Dave brought his set to a close and with his traditional farewell,”I’m a see ‘ya, huh?”, he was gone. Any other night would’ve ended there but not this one. The spectacle of self-possession that is Ray Charles was unstoppable in the haze of the lights. Here the sense of a capped reservoir of feeling perpetually threatening to break free and yet somehow restraining itself drew the audience into direct interaction with the sunglassed one. In the midst of a lachrymose but spellbinding version of DO I EVER CROSS YOUR MIND?, a particularly aggressive watchdog and guardian against self-pity sarcastically observed, ”Aw, Poor Ray, he’s gonna cry!” The audience reveled in her ability to call things as they were and still soaked in the tear-filled if a shade less than sincere testimony of grand Ray. In between defining the essence of country music, reinvigorating the standards and whipping the blues into shape, Ray found time to turn the stage over to his five Raelettes who managed to make KNOCK ON WOOD a brand new thing full of anticipation, shivering control and sardonically contained fancy. Then, with the stage stripped bare and the clock striking three, Al Green, clad in his usual 3 sizes too small suit and backed by two exuberant fellows in dark blue suits, the radiant Linda Jones and a band sworn to the tenets of the great Willie Mitchell produced records of the 70’s, cut loose with all the joy in his heart. Scattering roses to the crowd, saving the last for his mike stand, Green graciously shared the stage with his other singers and players and patiently explained that “Yes, LOVE AND HAPPINESS. now that was a good song, but you can’t forget AMAZING GRACE, and there are only a certain number of songs one can sing on any one evening.” Effortlessly bettering the recorded versions of his gospel material, Green, leaping up and down in rapture, was joy itself. The pregnant restraint of the evening was delivered in affirmation of blood and breath in the body and testimony to mystery. Even the skeptical could but give it up. The room was vibrating, euphoric in it’s sleepiness and as the crowd rose to the sustained groove night was night and joy was joy and that’s alright by me.
Add to that the creole mastery and fun of Canray Fontenot and Bois Sec (Dry Wood) Ardoin, two sexegenarian little boys lost in the sound of the fiddle, accordian, and triangle, the drumming of twelve-year-old little gospel wonders,the great Smokey Johnson, Zigaboo Modeliste, and Ed Blackwell, the relaxed stagecraft of Clarence “Frogman” Henry and Jerry Butler, and the startling, body-popping of the wellspring Bo Diddley and one just couldn’t miss, ever. Coming home with the sounds of the week bouncing about the heart, one treasures the realisation that the music with legs, with hips and eyes ain’t dead or gone. It’s just hidden away, diverted from a mainstream that hardly merits that name. I want the real river to come on a my house and yours. Driving through Memphis with GREEN ONIONS on the AM one could drift off thinking the waves were licking the hubcaps. But, pulling past Allen Bradley [a Milwaukee labor landmark], I knew better and didn’t even turn the damn thing on. You know what I mean?
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