Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Hey, you can't do that!
These kinds of musical experiences began during the Sixties & have never stopped. Breaking the 3 minute single with Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" & "Light My Fire" by The Doors; former through brilliant lyrics, latter with a long organ break. John Coltrane's nakedly spiritual "A Love Supreme," stripping the metaphor from "jazz." Charles Ives' wild 1st Piano Sonata (I heard before his much more famous 2nd), which sounded improvised. Neil Young not even faking the flash on his extended "Down By the River" solos; playing the way it came to him. "I of IV" by Pauline Oliveros, feeding tones into inter-looped taped decks, letting the music simultaneously compose & play itself, more beautifully than any electronic music I'd ever heard. Lightinin' Hopkins twisting the beats around on "Walkin' This Road By Myself." Hey, you can't do that! Whoa, yes you can! The liberation of form.
A bit later, "Charlie Haden & the Liberation Music Orchestra," turning left without apology. Burning Spear visionary minimalist reggae. The Clash & The Ramones, punk at heart a reactionary return to musical "roots," the anarchy mostly hype, the self-annihilation all too real. Backtracking to Louis Armstrong & the Hot Five - does it get more "modern" than that? Ornette Coleman as riff-driven Southwest R&B. Parliament/Funkadelic Mothership - took Mr. James B. another step by ignoring the white consumer/audience altogether, so the undeniable "blackness" became almost irrelevant, less self-consciously "black." Like the encoded lyrical hooks of Louis Jordan & the Tympany 5. I first heard "Five Guys Named Moe" in the Seventies on Amiri Baraka's radio program. Steve Reich was too easy, was it a trick? All this stuff shook me up, compelling me to understand, accept & make peace with it. I could not, would not reject any of it out-of-hand.
The Small Print: Iraq Casualties 2/18/04 - 2/24/04: 3 dead, 35 wounded
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