Issue 51:
Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By
Medulla Vesuvius
Today, dear readers, I want to discuss with you a most interesting band called The Bad Plus and their recent album called Prog.
First, a word about the band. They are a trio consisting of piano player Ethan Iverson, drummer David King and bassist Reid Anderson. They are young-ish, regular-looking guys. However, the music they make together is far from regular. For, while for some people the word “Prog” brings to mind all manner of goofy imagery like Rick Wakeman in a cape playing a stack of analog synthesizers or Peter Gabriel in a giant bloated Slipperman costume struggling to get his microphone close enough to his mouth to lead Genesis through epic musical statements, there is the fact that in the music world, prog was always short for “progressive”: interested in new ideas, eschewing convention. And in the 70s this curiosity and exploration largely found expression in a preponderance of showy musical technique: odd time signatures, unexpected harmonies, difficult and sometimes extended solo instrumental passages, etc. and this album delivers plenty of that kind of skill.
But the genius of The Bad Plus has always been more complicated and nuanced than just “some guys who play their instruments well.” Nietzsche talked about philosophy being the process of taking a hammer to old statues to see which parts are hollow. The Bad Plus take a similar tack as nothing short of musical deconstructionists, all the while simultaneously rebuilding, (sometimes in the same song.) This is most readily apparent in what these guys do with cover tunes. Take for instance the lead-off track “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” originally performed by Tears for Fears. Is this a cocktail jazz tune? A minimal, quiet pop song? Noisy avant-garde free jazz improvisation? An Erik Satie-esque piano piece? The answer to all of these questions is “Yes.” After the fundamental musical motifs of the original have been stated, the band stretches them out to their most logical and illogical extremes like auditory elastic.
In the hands of The Bad Plus there is no musical territory that is fenced off. They effortlessly glide from one aesthetic into another, but not in broad or ironic genre exercises. This music is deep and dramatic. They choose to not hang their hats on stylistic clichés, (e.g. “This is our reggae song…”) Once you’ve heard the crazy extremes that they are capable of pursuing together, the start of each song brings with it a thrilling sense of expectation of the unknown. For they play so dynamically, what is a hush now is just as likely to remain a hush for a whole tune as it is to erupt into angry cluster chords and wild-man octopus drumming. This makes for interesting, engaging listening.
The other cool deconstructive element of The Bad Plus is their subversion of expectation. Their instrumentation, the piano trio, is one of the icons of jazz history. Think of Bill Evans’ infusion of a minimal, spare aesthetic into jazz improvisation in the sixties and millions of cocktail jazz trios playing the finer restaurants in the world today. Clearly these guys are at home in the jazz world, but they offer so much more. Book these guys at your local upscale Italian eatery with dimmed lighting and six minutes into their first tune the longing look of seduction on Valentine dates will quickly turn to looks of horrified alarm as Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” comes crashing down around them. In the movie I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Jeff Tweedy and Wilco discuss taking perfectly good songs and de-composing them by adding digital and electrical noise elements to them. This method of “uglying-up” creations is now de rigueur for any indie rock band worth its “artistic” credibility and has been around at least since The Beatles stopped playing live and concentrated on making musical art in the recording studio. (Think: the radio sections at the end of “I Am the Walrus” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” or the white noise which slowly builds up at the end of “I Want You/ She’s So Heavy.”) But what makes The Bad Plus so interesting and unique is that they obviously have a similar compulsion to deconstruct, yet they achieve their ends using the same conventional instruments that have been around for at least a century or so and the same twelve notes of the scale that were used by guys in powdered wigs.
This is the new postmodern amalgamation of angst and art, consonance and dissonance, beauty and ugliness. Welcome, brave travelers!
Issue 51:
Various and Sundry
By
Clancy Lass
A downward spiral can be entertaining, unless you are on the receiving end of it. Zachary Blasto, a man consumed by music, alcohol and the visions in his head, is a broken record skipping into oblivion as he tries to come to terms with loss; of love, of family and of his mind.
This is Rainbow Around the Sun, a voyeuristic thrill-ride at once beautiful, intriguing, sad, invigorating, hopeful, remorseful and stunning. The life of the medium alone has experienced a metamorphosis from concept album, staged concert and now, the movie, coming home for the Oklahoma premiere at the Dead Center Film Festival in June.
The love child of local talent Matthew Alvin Brown, Rainbow is a tour de force of the complications a mind can plague the owner with when abused by the creative forces of music, sex, and familial obligation. Blasto himself is somewhat a rainbow of personalities; different hues to different people. An asshole. A loving son. A shitty boyfriend. A mess. A musical prodigy.
Blasto is a musician hiding in his mind to avoid dealing with the problems in his disastrous life. Failing as a lover and grasping to his last moments with his father, he reflects on the stages of his life, all the while tied to his band, the musical umbilical cord sustaining what is left of his shattered heartbeat.
And no, I haven’t seen the movie. I have the album and was lucky enough to see the staged “reading” of the music last weekend on a rare night out.
Directed by Kevin Ely, (local writer and playwright of the fantastic “Feigning Grace”), and Beau Leland, with book by Ely, and all music by Brown and The Fellowship Students, the movie was chosen as an official selection of the South by Southwest Film Festival and the 2008 Florida Film Festival. Dead Center will premiere the movie opening night outdoors at 9:30 p.m. June 11th and again at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art at 5:30 p.m. June 13th.
Supporting local artists, whether in film, music or the visual or theatrical arts, is important to our community. Our state has so many creative individuals waiting to share their crafts with you. Matt Brown is one of those rare performers who truly shares a piece of his soul and inspiration while simultaneously entertaining you. He and Ely are sweet, talented, dandy men and I am thrilled to support their endeavors and call them friends. Bravo, guys.
www.rainbowaroundthesun.com
Issue 51:
Various and Sundry
By
Amdnarg Toh
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is William Thomas Fairport III, and I write this letter holding the utmost contempt for a recent review of Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, and Bach published within the pages of your modern electro-zine. After the egregious review of this book by the most esteemed M. Vesuvuis, I found myself taking serious umbrage to the most villainous caricature of this classic work by Mr. Hofstadter. How could the journal of our Fair City be so horribly wrong?
As support for my thesis, I present a small excerpt from another expert, the Beligerent A. Toh:
My favorite quote in this book? On page 559 we read ‘We can now construct one of the main theses of this book’… And it took me three months of reading to get that far. And this is my second time through this book!!!
And it really does take a lot of that 559 pages to really get to the point. The reader is led through a fairly interesting discussion of symbolic logic and basic number theory, illustrated not by graphs, charts, and tables, but by an overarching series of narrative vignettes starring the recurring characters of the Turtle, Achilles, and Mr. Crab.
And…
But… This book isn’t for the faint of heart. I wouldn’t recommend it to the uninitiated, unwashed, unenlightened masses of non-geekdom. Even those with a fairly refined love of math, art, or music (or even all three) are sometimes lost in the highly technical descriptions of the MIU and TNT systems, and are totally lost when the discussion of self-referential languages, mathematical systems, and even biology turns to the technical. I’m glad it wasn’t recommended to me until I was well entrenched in grad school, and had a fair grasp of Turing Machines and automata of various stripes.
What’s significant about this book, though, is that for those “in the know” (wink, wink), it is the best work that pulls the esthetic elements of art and music into the world of mathematical theory, artificial intelligence, and graduate level computer science topics. And what’s REALLY surprising is that this book was written over 30 years ago, yet the topics discussed and theses postulated are still being validated and discussed. In a sense, it has become the “classic” work that all computer scientists should read.
And further:
Several epiphanic moments came after reading about crab canons (You’ll have to read the book). While playing the guitar, a certain pattern seemed to arise from the chord progressions and the melodies I was playing. It made some sense to me finally, but not in an aesthetic sense, but in a structured, patterned way. And the chapter I was reading in GEB provided the handles for me to be able to understand why it had “clicked” for me… Math… Patterns of numbers… The music of the spheres!!!
So… I suggest you find some REAL book reviewers, and leave the serious books to the less namby-pamby staffers out there – or I shall have to contact my close compatriot Herman T. Zweibel, whom I believe is still editor-at-large for that most heavenly paper The Onion, and have him give you a thorough tongue-lashing.
Signed,
WTF
Issue 51:
Tournament of Villainy
By
Rascal Stallion
| Name: Terminator |
|
Name: Shredder |
| Occupation: terminating |
vs. |
Occupation: Ninjutsu master |
| Origin: The Terminator |
|
Origin: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles |
Shredder towered over his kneeling students as he paced before them. His master class had progressed quite well and these, his brightest students, were ready for their final exam. The commuter traffic in the city square was sparse for a Monday morning but Shredder was confident a suitable challenge would present itself.
He thought he had an ideal target when an armored car pulled up to the bank two blocks down. However, just as he was about to send his students out something much better caught his eye and he stayed his hand. He couldn’t believe his luck when a real Cyberdyne Systems T-800 passed by across the street.
After a command from Shredder, the five students destined to be the future of the Foot Clan charged towards the Terminator. They were stealthy enough to avoid early detection and the Terminator failed to observe them until they were ten meters away. Fortunately, there was still plenty of time for him to turn and grab the first two that approached. Their necks snapped before they even realized they were in his grasp.
The remaining three students stabbed him with their steely knives but their blades had little effect on the Terminator’s metallic chassis. They darted about quickly but one got too close and found his head in the grasp of the T-800. The Terminator used this ninja as a weapon and swung his body violently into the others. The trauma separated the ninja’s head from his body but not before knocking the other two down. Momentarily stunned, they were still lying down as the Terminator’s foot stomped through their chests, crushing several organs they were counting on for continued life.
This threat neutralized, the Terminator assessed the origin of his assailants and steadily approached the ninja master. The Shedder was a bit nervous but he relished the opportunity to test himself against such a formidable adversary. Besides, it was going to be a real pain in the ass to train new students and the Terminator might as well pay for this inconvenience.
Analyzing his approach, the Shredder formulated his attack plan, thinking several moves ahead. He was really going to enjoy this. With the Terminator bearing down, he pulled his sword from its sheath and cracked his neck.
The Terminator analyzed his opponent and easily determined the most efficient method of dispatching him. He pulled the M1014 Benelli shotgun from the strap on his back and as the Shredder drew back to swing his sword he unloaded a series of twelve-gauge shells into the ninjutsu master.
At this range, the Shredder’s armor was far from adequate and his torso was soon riddled with holes. He lay dead on the ground and the Terminator turned to leave, now free to resume his business.
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