Spring is on the Way

Spring, apparently, is on the way. I can tell this not because of the goldfinchs once again decimating the early blossom on the plum tree (and actually, doing far more damage than the original practice of decimation  in a legion; that was only a clubbing to death of every tenth legionnaire), but the fact that I am staring sullenly at the pair of Dell'orto PHF 36's sitting on my chaotic workbench, after having stripped and reassembled them (twice) to prove that there is nothing amiss with the various weeny bits, which I live in dread of losing in the gravel each time. So why won't the Guzzi tick over nicely whereas I am so idle?

Cycling, likewise,seems to have fallen off a cliff, despite the feeling in my waters that this was going to be my year; up at dawn, 100k before breakfast, that sort of thing. Some serious miles. Unfortunately , crap weather, mild bronchitis and the allegedly urgent need to be elsewhere every (damn) time the weather breaks has put that plan on hold. soon, however. Dunwich Dynamo, WSW Sunday runs, and some serious audaxes beckon.

Not unlike the carbs,  we're now just messing about with the mixing of the new Cd; it's kind of interesting trying to figure how to chop it up, a la  Miles and Teo. the idea of having purposeful and obvious cuts, like Stravinsky's block form, is becoming more attractive. the idea of using abrupt transitions, brick wall stops, and cinematic cuts could work, especially if they are overt. Not like the endless  overdubbing of a pop session with vertically constructed episodes and auto tune, but the use of juxtaposition; pulling together and ordering of disparate blocks of sound, themselves untouched and autonomous,  to create something that didn't exist before.  That's the plan, anyway; a way to use the takes with good solos and crap heads, or vice-versa. I'm always struck, when sitting in a studio mixing, how many interesting fragments there are, but that don't quite survive as stand-alone takes.

The usual jazz aesthetic, as far as recording goes, is, as much as possible, try to re-create the live experience. the idea behind this is that the music is a process, something that occurs only once in real time, with a privileged listener as part of the event, blemishes and all. This is partially because of the emphasis on the moment, the process of improvisation, and its ir-reproducibility in the next occurrence; each of which, although broadly similar, is unique. (the question as to how this uniqueness carries over into still having an authorial continuity, as in we always instantly know it's Miles, is another topic altogether)  This is why the apparent outcome is so different to that of pop, with its need to be an infinitely reproducible commodity. Even though a jazz recording is the also just another manufactured item once recorded, and subject to the same market forces, there seems to be a need to maintain the illusion that this hasn't happened and the listener is present.; a hairy-chested we do it in real-time aesthetic. Which is more honest?

Of course, having organized everything, found the funding,  booked everyone, written the music and practiced (I thought) the shit out of my parts, I found I was anything but centered.  In the session, I wanted to try some of the stuff I had been working on, in terms of moving my improvisational language forward...as usual, some stuff worked, and some wasn't quite ready; we probably needed three days instead of two, with another stab at things a month later once the dust had settled. Funnily, after 6 weeks of practicing the ideas after the fact, I now know what it is I want to do.... a little too late.  As it is, it's the normal complaint of lacking the time to get things to a satisfactory state, and knowing that you'll have to work with what you have at the moment.

So, a nice 80k roll on John's old Peugeot fixie through the Suffolk borders this weekend, watching the road spin out before me, puffing a bit harder than I should be at this point of the season. It brought to mind Hockney's talk about his new large canvases and their relationship to classical Chinese scroll paintings, which don't represent a moment, but a journey, as they spin out across an entire 50 foot wall.

I'm out of here

So it's that time of year again, I'm heading off for a few weeks of R & R and Eastern European soul food back home in New Hampshire - I've got my red checked jacket and Herman's Survivors packed and ready. The picture is a bit disingenuous; the slowly deepening purples of a mountain sunset... I'd like to think it's always like that, sitting at the diner in Center Eaton next to the lake.



But my view should be more of something like that of Hampton Beach - full of empty white clapboard summer houses, over-accessorized SUV's, chubby people walking their dogs and slightly crap restaurants. But I will spend some time up in the hills.

Locally, however, the bad news is that my local dump of a bar, Lupo's (picture a nautical motif of plastic lobsters and Christmas lights suspended in the fishnets over the bar here) has just been raided by the DEA. This should surprise no one, as you would expect of a beachfront bar that usually puts plywood over the sea-facing windows in order to keep the sun off the TV running non-stop Bruins and Celtics games over the bar. And, of course, it's not the first time that Lupo (yeah, that's his name - but let's be honest: didn't you always want to have your very own bar named after you?) has had a petite contretemps with the local 'protect and serve' guys.

Anyway, a fitting end to the year was my pedal crank breaking on my way home from a ride near Lidgate; the crank sheared clean off as I was out of the saddle honking up a long gentle incline on the way home from a 50. The next thing I knew I was all over the road having winded myself on the handlebar stem as I almost launched over the top. That's the trouble with running 'classic' 25 year old campag stuff on your winter fixie road iron; it's just a war of attrition on the way to a hiding to nothing. I also discovered it's really hard to ride a fixie with one pedal uphill as there's nowhere to put your other foot. The only solution was a gentle roll a mile back down into the village.

So while sitting outside the Star pub nursing a half pint (I only had 2 quid on me after the hot chocolate in Newmarket; I know - wild) in the alternating weak sunshine/hail (the Spanish staff kept trying to beckon me inside, concluding I was obviously well mad) waiting for 'she who toys with my heart' to come and rescue me, I felt strangely at peace.

the snow beckons.

my original face

Coming out of Cambridge the other night on the Guzzi, a bit late after an interminable student ensembles session, I was suddenly confronted by a sea of weaving blinky lights ahead on the way to Stow-cum-Quay. As I approached, with not a little apprehension, rolling off the throttle and digging my knees into the cylinder heads as the engine braking spun the speedo backwards, I was suddenly engulfed by a local flowering of hipsters, my first real sighting en mass. And even better, most of them were on over-accessorized fixies, many brakeless. It was a suburban attempt at an 'Alley Cat'. Damn - I now know how birdwatchers feel spotting that elusive corncrake.




I suddenly felt old, watching them all huffing along in the dark (somewhat slowly) with all the wrong gear - I wanted to flip up my lid (...not, like, 'flip my lid, daddio', but the one on my helmet) and say something like " ...hey guys, I've got one of those things and I've been riding them for 30 years, thanks to my dear departed (and hard as nails) Father-in-Law...", but that would just be sad. I will post up a few bits about my Father-in-Law John's riding at a later date.

And, once again continuing with the "stuff brings happiness" tangent, I have to admit that I seem to have reached a slight impasse. ("oh no?", you say? "Who could have foreseen that?") What I haven't mentioned thus far was that the bass clarinet I had been hoping for (in a fashion not unlike those fervent TV evangelicals in the US) arrived about 6 weeks ago, and I have been messing about with it daily since (thus proving the existence of higher powers, albeit in a lower register). When, the previous summer, I played a concert of semi-free improv at Kettles Yard with two laptop guys I know, I had snagged a bass clarinet a couple of weeks before, practiced it a bit (I used to have one 25 years ago, along with a clarinet) and was perfectly happy to just let my fingers and instincts do the walking. And, to my surprise, it turned out pretty well. I fell in love with it.

But, now after 6 weeks of diligent scales and arpeggios with a metronome, I now feel completely inhibited by the thing, (especially when I put it down and pick up the sax), and the contrast is scary. I'm much, much more fluid on the damn thing then I was the last time, but now I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to do very simple versions of the sorts of relatively complex patterns that I use on sax and just freezing, totally falling on my face. After the years of practice in improvising, you just need to do it; taking a line for a walk with an almost blank mind, no preconceptions. That seems to stem either from having no inhibitions on an unfamilar medium, or being supremely comfortable and totally detached from whatever is found in your hands: one thought and you are lost, utterly and completely. Quickly: what is your original face?



However, I'm back into tenor big time, and I'm going to drop using alto on the Riprap gigs. A decision.

And other things, the violist seems to be getting on with the piece, she said she was going to play it for her chamber group - hopefully the news will be good. Here's the usual cheesy synth fragment in lieu of the real thing; just click on Viola piece.

however,as far as important things go, there is now the rebirth of the old Sturmey-Archer 3-speed fixed hub of legend to consider for us sad-assed fixie riders.

cult of stuff.

It is strangely wearying, this restless search for a better life through the acquisition of objects; although we now know happiness can be bought. As outlined in the last post, I had it in writing from a local spiritual leader that a fixie titanium audax frame would cease the endless slow but exceedingly fine grinding of the wheel of karma, and help me lose my pod, all for just £899. And now it has happened again, with the discovery that after callously abandoning my first love, tenor sax, for the last three years to play alto, mainly because I "... just wasn't, like, hearing it any longer, man..." (what was I thinking? like someone who throws over his whole life; job, relationship and family, and ends up waking up in a fly-blown motel with an excruciating headache to find that a fickle piece of tall Estonian brass has left him sans wallet or car keys when his money finally ran out....)

please, please: Newk, Trane, Prez....forgive me.

So after my tenor sat, sullen and accusing in the corner of my room for a couple of years, I guiltily gave in and started practicing the damn thing again after purchasing a new (and pricey) mouthpiece a couple of months ago. This is not unlike couples who hope an expensive holiday will help them find the magic they lost somewhere. And because these kind of hopes always prove foolish and desperate, I've always fought shy of getting involved in the 'new mouthpiece' arms race that all players can succumb to; all too often they end up with bags of expensive mouthpieces that they thought were going to change their life at some point. My stand was always this: buy something decent and learn to use it. Like bicycles, it's the man not the machine.

However, my tenor sound had been getting woolier and woolier, and I seemed to have trouble projecting when compared to anyone standing next to me. Ultimately embarassing for someone whose one-time point of pride was scaring guitarists with a 1960's duckbill Brilhart Level-air. (sorry, very obscure, I know, but once the last fucking word in 1960's rock and roll space-age sax technology; complete shite to play)




This is all caught up in sad guy stuff; such as almost keeping senile Italian motorbikes running, and, with a tight smile and a little self-depreciating chuckle, gamely taking on modern 200 mph carbon-festooned Japanese rockets at the lights (and always losing, plus having to go back and collect the trail of small bits that vibed off when I revved too hard)
Or stomping my aging converted fixie up a hill without getting out of the saddle trying to drop tri-guys riding with the latest pricey kit, jabbering about their iphones and playing with their 'on-bicycle sat-nav'. Sad, sad, very sad aging guy stuff, I kept telling myself. Not very good at all; girls are so not impressed - time to let that stuff go and grow the hell up, for Christ's sake.

But surprisingly, the new mouthpiece was good, and did change my whole sound - my old set-up must have been quietly becoming crap over a number of years. Now to address the underlying problems: the fact that my rhythmic accuracy has also slowly degenerated over the last few years when I made a conscious decision to let my playing slide a bit to finish my post-grad studies. This is not entirely a bad thing - I have now come back both in a wildly different mindset, and realizing that the idea of purely virtuoso playing is not quite enough. But we are talking hours of metronome stuff; wildly boring. The real excitement is in the composing and realizing of new textures, trying to break from being the "...the fastest tenor player..." (which I never was) and think about compositional issues, which is far, far more interesting and engaging. (Or so I tell myself?)

Ted Gioia points out in his excellent book The Imperfect Art, (after which he sadly never followed up some of the points he raised, concentrating since then on history rather than aesthetics) namely that jazz has long been, aesthetically, a somewhat immature art form because of its over-reliance on virtuosity at the expense of structure; the cult of the virtuoso soloist over the that of the composer. When younger, I could never see what the problem was, but after years of gladiatorial pick-up gigs and head-to-head tenor battles, you start to realize that the attraction of what is primarily spectacle begins to pale; this insistence of technique over content has long been banished from the aesthetic of other art forms.

but hey, none the less, I can now play really loud on tenor again, and that feels good - for all the wrong reasons. Now to get a new set of wheels for the fixie. And now that I've more or less finished the cello piece and my weird singing piece for solo viola + voice, I can start messing with The Holy Goof again, and prepping up for the Ruth Padel gig on the 30th.

another get-off....recovery drinks needed

Sunday... a freezing cold morning here at the Lazy K; got up, made coffee, looked out at the amazing lightly hoar-frosted landscape showing gold as the sun rose. Too much excitement for attempts at satori - so the wonderdog and I went out and slid around on the ice for 15 minutes up the path by the stream amongst all the fresh deer tracks, while the lazy sun came up and showed through our steamy breaths. Stood like a tree while the dog emptied, then back inside, tea brought up to she-who-toys-with-my-heart, nuke oatmeal, then light up the wood stove. We're leaving for the States at the end of the week, so I had to spend some time getting in firewood for the folks who will be house & dog-sitting while we're gone. Skating (literally) across the still-unsalted road with the dog, I was torn between wanting to get out on the fixee all day in the blinding winter sunshine with the chain gang, and knowing that we'd all be sorry as soon as we hit the first corner that the sun hadn't reached. I've been there before... A & E... stitches...picking gravel out of my head for the next few months...

Sooo.... fire up the chainsaw without guilt, knowing I'd have a ride to somewhere exotic like a 50 mile jaunt to Bures after the ice melted. Cut up the poplar I collected in the spring and split it. The day stretched before me - chainsaw stuff, cycle to Bures through damp, ancient sunken lanes and have a coffee, work on the Guzzi, do some composing. Soak in a bath, aided by grape nerve medicine - Perfect.
Come 10:30, togged up in roadie mode, complete with sunglasses, (sad) soaked the fixie down with WD40 and hit the road. Hmmm.... ice everywhere on the verges. Blew through Clare feeling good, cold sunshine on my face and climbed (gently, only about a 100 meters up) into Essex. Legs limbering up and cadence rising - what's that white in the shade of the hedge on the other side of the road? Into a corner for the junction at Belchamp which I notice is also shaded; I also notice the looming solid white road, slow down to have a look; but the rear wheel kicks out down the camber, I'm facing at 90 degrees to my direction of travel and still (momentarily) upright. This isn't supposed to happen on a fixed. One more time.

Limp 5 miles home.

So to the Guzzi, best to end the day on a high - all I needed to do was fill the crankcase with oil, screw in a pair of plugs,drag it out of the barn and hit the start button. Various pops and bangs scare the dog back into the house, and a sheet of flame blows out the open, silencer-free pipes; phooarh...I've got a spark, anyway. I'll see about getting it to actually run when I get back. It just so looks better now, and, as we all know, that's half the battle. Back to that wiring diagram.

The afternoon was spent trying to capture a sound in my head, an initial gesture to start an aria for the Neal Cassady thing. I kinda managed to find a start, and it's going to be low... cellos, basses, bass clarinets, that sort of thing. And woodblocks....lots of them. Neal is going to have to be a tenor, I think. I can hear the voice counterbalanced against the orchestra's low register unison lines. Who's the baritone, should it be Kerouac? I seem to hear him even higher, for no good reason. Countertenor? That would just be just plain silly. But he really doesn't come across as a baritone for me.

The strange thing is that lately, more and more, I am struggling against how my head keeps getting invaded by the musak tracks I can remember being piped into all the environs of my childhood. 2-feel perky electric bass played with a felt pick, banjos, unison male choirs a la Mitch Miller and the Gang, shimmering strings - that kind of thing. Spooky. Since the mice ate my mp3 player's earphones about a month ago (another story sometime soon) I have been struggling with this rising tide of banal dross running in my head. It's a bit like zombies taking over the malls.

So, today was good, apart from a red and blue rash along my right side. Time for a recovery drink, mmmm...probably a Slipstream Cream Ale would hit the spot and aid tissue repair.

So, with the sound of Mitch and the Gang echoing in our ears, sweet dreams.

k