Manafonistas

Das MHQ musste eigentlich schneller handeln, aber es dauerte Monate, bis das Team aus dem Elfenbeinturm reagierte. Man wollte es kaum glauben, man sichtete und sondierte, und es wurde immer klarer: die ganz und gar grossartigen TV-Serien der letzten Jahre haben Standards gesetzt, denen die Gegenwart hinterherhinkt. Natürlich wird es auch weiterhin immer wieder mal erstklassige Serien geben, aber kaum in der power spot-Häufung vergangener Jahre – sie werden wie „Ausreisser“ daherkommen. Keine einzige 5-Sterne anno 2018. Die letzten überragenden Serienabenteuer waren Little Big Lies, dann dieser unfassbar gute, siebteilige Western, dem John Ford aus dem grossen Jenseits salutieren würde, gewiss auch die bittere Abrechnung mit US-amerikanischer Klassenjustiz, und einem Detective Fish, der die grosse Ahnenreihe der Marlowes und Spades bereicherte – sowie, kleiner Kalauer, das Beste kommt am Schluss. Auch Stranger Things 2 war noch richtig gut, aber weiterhin und dauerhaft über „Zweitbestes“ berichten zu wollen, ist nicht so prickelnd. Darum verschwindet die Rubrik „TV Series of the Month“ ab August von unserer Empfehlungsliste, und singuläre Begeisterungen werden entpannter Teil des „Blogtagebuches“ sein. Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Lost, The Leftovers, Justified, Halt And Catch Fire etc etc – those were the days. Es gibt eine Ironie in dieser Geschichte. Die Revolution begann (um dann eine Zeitlang kreativ zu verschnaufen), mit Twin Peaks und The X Files – und sie endete, im Grunde, mit David Lynchs tollkühner Zumutung und Hammerserie Twin Peaks – The Return.

Donnerstagabend, die abendliche Fahrt im Sammeltaxi nach der Arbeit nach Hause. Im Fahrzeug auf der Rückbank hinter mir ein älterer Herr. Das allgegenwärtige Thema „WM“. Die immer wieder vorgebrachte These, dass, wer die Nationalhymne nicht mitsingt in diesem Land, in dieser Mannschaft keinen Platz habe, keinen Platz haben darf. Die auf meine Gegenfrage, ob denn, wer in der Kirche am Lautesten mitsingen würde, dann auch der Gläubigste im Kirchenschiff sei, und ob nicht seine Generation sich mit der lautstark von allen mitgesungenen, unseren Nationalhymne auskennen würde, einsetzende Stille im Fahrzeug: unbezahlbar. #justsayin‘

When the double album At Fillmore East was released (Eat A Peach came later), I was about sixteen, and a radio man played a  piece from it called In Memory Of Elisabeth Reed. That was one of the most stunning instrumental pieces I had ever heard (not that I was too old already to have heard too much). I fell in love immediately, like I fell in love at first sight in girls that carried wonderful names like Margarete Scheibenhut, Jutte Korte (a  more simple name, but she compensated its lack of magic with undisputable beauty), or later, when there were teens in my age, Regina Detert or Marlies Durch-Den-Wald. Regina was a too sad affair, with one long kiss and a constant good-bye. (these names are all real, nothing made up.) I digress. I got the double album with the great cover photo and was hooked again when listening to all the four sides. Now I knew my rock heroes had their knack for old blues singers, but I was never so deep into blues, and I was surely not so deep into that thing blues rock. You could not say that In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed is a blues rock piece (I later read, guitar master Duane Allman had been listening a lot to modal Coltrane), but in their own peculiar ways, all the other tracks were definitely  coming from that world of Blues Rock Southern Style. And I loved them. The whole music was brimming with life, and though In Memory of Elizabeth Reed was my private stand-out, all the other tracks were stand-outs, too. The long jams seemed never to run out of focus, and I even liked the hoarse voice of brother Gregg Allman (being far away from voices I normally loved).  Whippin‘ Post was another killer, and I then started to find the love of my life (in fact I started it when being five (the beautiful neighbour woman) or  seven (the female owner of a Langeoog pension)), but my searching got quite more serious with fifteen, and till I discovered my greatest early love in an elevator in Würzburg in 1975, I was training the deepness of love, my abilities of getting lost, my desires for the everlasting by listening to the usual suspects from Neil to Joni, from Ray to John  – and Live At The Fillmore. Sometimes I had to dance while listening to In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed. With years going by, I got a nice digipak  CD version of the double album, and in music magazines I read that the album was a favourite object of desire to test your hi fi system. No doubt about that:  nothing sounded boxy,  everything was full there and fleshed-out. As the decades went on and on, I kept returning to the Fillmore East that had already been closing its doors deep in the last century, but stayed strong as a power spot in my record collection. So I finally got an Sacd documenting all three nights at The Fillmore, from which chosen pieces made it for the final version. I returned to that venue again and again and learned that my best friend from Nothern California (I have no friends in Southern California) was there on one  of those magic nights: since then I started to  search for the clapping of his hands in the crowd. Mission impossible, but I tried hard, with a smile. Knowing Brian Whistler was there, I came even closer to the audience with that Sacd. The soundstage was broader, the reverb seemed to pop back from behind, and the applauding hands: now on the real side of listening, around me. On the rear channels. Two years ago I got another Sacd with a 5:1-mix now spreading the instruments over all channels. A fantastic experience that transported me to being on stage with the musicians. Holy shit. By listening to the album since my teenager years, by changing the formats, the music was never on the verge of collecting its patina of nostalgia or „I wanna be  fuckin young again“, but got more real and real – and real. I live in a house where volume has no restrictions, and neither have the portals to another time. On a  rainy night (long story short) of a rainy day, not long ago, I crossed the screen, so to speak, and I was there. For real. Just when Whippin‘ Post started I came back to my place near the controls with a Budweiser. (In moments of deep entrancement, your attention can be caught by the funniest, nonsensical details – a guy next to me was holding a clear bag from a record store called Licorice Pizza, and inside I glimpsed the cover of Electric Ladyland.) I was seeing the band, and since the famous photo of the double album left such a huge impact on me, it seemed that I had always been there. No stranger to this place, I started (as I always did) looking for the most beautiful girl around And fell in love immediately. When the band finally played In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed, my smile turned cosmic. And I am  not a friend of big words.

„So endet die Welt also: Nicht mit einem Knall, sondern mit einem Wimmern. Es gibt Ereignisse, die so apokalyptisch sind, dass man meint, dass sie nicht einfach passieren werden. Man denkt, sie werden durch ein Donnergrollen angekündigt, durch Eulen, die Falken fangen, durch Pferde, die sich selbst essen. Zumindest sollte da ein bisschen Wut sein, ein vereitelter Versuch, während die Energie schwindet. Und doch ist Deutschland ohne den Hauch des Widerstands erstmals in 80 Jahren in der Vorrunde ausgeschieden. Es gab keinen Sturm, es gab keinen Drang.“

(The Guardian)

American Utopia is not the fantastic album I had hoped it would be (even though Eno had some influence on it, and even though I find it mostly entertaining and enjoyable), but as I was way too young to go to rock concerts when the Talking Heads existed as a band, I decided to see David Byrne’s current, and highly praised, world tour stopping in Berlin, less than ten minutes from where I live.

It is impressive to see how contemporary these songs, which were written and recorded 35 to 40 years ago (I Zimbra, The Great Curve, Born under Punches, Slippery People etc.), sound more contemporary today than songs by many bands of the last 20/25 years – even though they are being performed very true to their original Talking Heads versions – though with very different, and mostly much younger [younger than me], musicians, like guitarist Angie Snow and bassist Bobby Wooten and lots of percussionists.

The new songs sound better in their live versions than they do on the album, in particular Doing the Right Thing, which they turned into a heavy rock number with metal-like guitar sections, and also the weird opening song I Dance Like This with its funny noisy sections. Still, most of the more recent Byrne songs come across a lot more conventional than the old Talking Heads hits, which the audience greeted and danced to enthusiastically. They must have appeared experimental and out-of-this-world in 1979/1980, but they still sound more modern than rather nice pop tunes like Every Day is a Miracle, Bullet and Like Humans Do. Even Blind from Talking Heads‘ final album (1988) sounded more energized (and energizing).

Excellent show with a minimal stage design and 12 musicians moving across the whole stage for the duration of the performance. If one wasn’t able to experience the Talking Heads live (apart from the remastered Stop Making Sense re-release in movie theaters some years ago), these performances of Remain In Light and Fear of Music songs must be as close as one can get in the 21st century. Looking forward to the live recording.

Jeder, der sich für Jazz / Musik interessiert, kommt in diesen Wochen an dem Cover der neuen Platte von Kamasi Washington nicht vorbei. Wir werden uns hüten, es hier nochmals aufzutischen. Offensichtlich sind da beträchtliche Werbegelder im Spiel, und die Musikkritik zeigt sich überschwänglich. Wer so blöd ist, da gleich den neuen Coltrane wahrzunehmen, wie des öfteren passiert, anlässlich des kräftig gehypten Debuts, nimmt sich selbst aus dem Feld. Was ich über die Musik lese, ihren Mut zum Pathos, zum grossen Klangtheater, etc., lässt mich eher zaudern, sie anzuhören. Das Schlimmste ist das Cover von „Heaven and Earth“: als könnte der aufgebrezelte Kamasi über Wasser gehen. Ein Götterbote, mindestens. Pseudomystischer Overload. Wie sehr mag ich dagegen ein ähnliche Motiv ohne posierendes Ego: die vier Luftballons auf dem Cover von Keith Jarretts „Belonging“.  Und wie sehr schätze ich, im Kontrast zu Kamasis Kitsch, das Cover der neuen CD von Graham Nash (Gregor öffnete seinen Plattenschrank dazu, vor Tagen): ein Junge schaut mit seinem Fernrohr auf ein riesiges Naturpanorama. Beide Bilder inszenieren Natur, aber bei dem Cover der übrigens betörend schönen Arbeit („Over The Years“), Demo-Versionen bekannter und weniger bekannter Lieder des alten Barden, spielen Staunen und Nostalgie auf durchweg sympathische Art mit, und die Lieder zahlen diese Mixtur aus Einfachem und Profundem mit Mehrwert zurück, und vollkommen reduziert. Was für eine Zeitreise, ohne Prätention und Zirkusgehabe. (Und wie ich die Musik von K.W. wohl empfinde, nach dieser Vor-Urteilsbildung, sollte ich sie wirklich einmal hören!?). Und wenn diese zwei Cover auf so unterschiedliche Art mit dem Motiv „grandioser Natur“ umgehen, wie umschattet wirkt da die Bebilderung des Soloalbums von Stuart Staples – auch da taucht der Himmel auf, in einem Bild von Suzanne Osborne. Ursprünglich wollte Claire Denis Suzannes Serie von 365 Ölgemälden, mit dem Himmel als durchgehendem Raum, in einen Film verwandeln. Als Langzeitlauscher der Tindersticks wartet „Arrhythmia“ daheim auf mich, ich kenne keine einzige Komposition, ahne aber, dass die Musik bestens passen wird in die Klanghorizonte im August, vor oder nach zwei, drei Stücken der kommenden CD von Tord Gustavsen. Von der ich gleichfalls noch keinen Ton gehört habe.

Ten years ago today around midnight I arrived in the United States. Without return ticket.

Yay!

Thomas Strønen is an imaginative drummer, arranger and composer and it’s clear that his artistic intentions are very serious. Even the name of the band is serious: it comes from the first line of the poetic novel, Fugitive Pieces by Ann Michaels. Like the novel, the band too can sometimes be a difficult but rewarding “read.”

With so little European jazz coming to San Francisco (SF Jazz is not going to stage their ECM festival this year), I wasn’t going to miss out on Time is a Blind Guide’s surprising visit to the intimate Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco last night. I really liked their eponymous album a lot. I was hoping they would play some of that material, but alas, (for this listener anyway,) almost the entire show was culled from the new album Lucas. I had listened to Lucus a few times, some of which really spoke to me and some of which was perhaps a tad too loose for my tastes – at times I found myself growing impatient, waiting for something to happen during some of the free sections. But then, that might say more about me than the music.

Seeing these great players live however, was a different story. The band started out with a long, free piece that had character and gravitas-and was quite the opposite of treading musical waters: lots of droning strings, no-pulse drumming and virtuoso bass bowing by Mats Ellertson, who I had seen perform in Tord Gustavsen’s quartet (with Tore Brunborg), as well as admired on Mathias Eick’s last album Ravensburg.

Although I’m not as familiar with the new material, It appears the balance of improvised music in relation to composed music is more equal on this release, making the live performance very compelling, as the group is given a lot more freedom to explore.

The violinist, Håkon Aase, was also familiar to me from his performances on both Mathias Eick’s Midwest as well as Ravensburg (one of my picks for 2018’s best releases). He’s a very eclectic player who obviously has the classical training but sounds very folky at times, using drone strings whilst playing melodies above them. One can also detect a middle eastern interest. He was no slouch in the more avant garde pieces, whether playing ensemble parts or improvising freely. At times he played arpeggios on both violin and hardanger at once. He also doubled occasionally as a hand drummer.

The cellist is not the one on the album and I didn’t catch his name. He was more than up to the task, but didn’t stand out as much as Hakon did. Pianist Ayuma Tanaka played a somewhat austere role in the proceedings to the point of being somewhat underutilized, and was only given one solo spot in which she played exceedingly sparingly – nothing like the stretching out she did on the first album. Also, there were times when the Pleyel upright wasn’t up to the task and was  nearly  drowned out by the rest of the band.

One of the most enticing aspects of this group is that they are all obviously virtuosos, but rarely show off their prodigious chops. I suspect this is an aesthetic choice on the part of Strønen and it pays off  – there was a muted, suspended feeling most of the performance, the music rarely rising above a quiet whisper.

It’s no small thing to play drums with unmiked strings and piano and still allow everything to be heard. Strønen’s performance was a perfect balancing act that few drummers could pull off. Occasionally, he put down the brushes and picked up his sticks to let loose the raw power that he kept contained most of the evening. In those moments, the  band rose to a polite roar and the room filled with the clamor of wild, albeit somewhat restrained freedom.

It was a small room and the group played it well. The audience of around 30 people were very appreciative, and afterwards, many lingered to talk with the musicians who happily signed Lps and cds. An evening of quiet rapture.