|
OUTTAKES 5 - MAY 2013
memories and the new
by Steve Dalachinsky
“The good side of my brain is good. the
bad side is bad.” - Stephanie Stone
“I’ve lost sight of the horizon. The money of dreams. the money of
happiness.” - from the film Pirogue
“Sound turns to texture turns to melody seen” - Ralph Gibson
A now retired N.Y. Times music critic once described me as a Free Jazz
Cultist and a famous downtown saxophonist/composer once called me a JAZZ
SNOB. Both are true to varying degrees & I wear these banners
proudly though anyone who knows me well knows that besides being a
chatty little Brooklynite, I love most forms of arts but have definite
tastes & consider myself an ignorant elitist.
My first musical love was doowop, which, as a teenager, I sang in front
of the pizza place on Avenue J on hot nights (they also had the hottest
juke box in town) with a group called the J-tones. I was the lead
singer. My nickname was little Dilly Dally. You should have heard me
belt out I Wonder Why by Dion & the Belmonts.
My interest in jazz began seeing Gene Krupa on t.v. at about age 10.
WOW, I thought, I wanna do that. And I tried. But due to a bad teacher
and not being able to afford a drum kit I gave up. Then I did a 6 month
stint on trumpet with that same teacher, my public school music teacher
Mr. Armstrong, with the same results. Jumping ahead 5 years a friend
handed me Horace Silvers’ Silver's Blue, Ornette’s Free Jazz,
Trane's My Favorite Things & Oscar Brown Jr’s. Sin
& Soul along with some good weed, transporting me from doo wop
to hard bop & beyond, with a big dose of the Blues thrown in. I got
hooked. I gave up singing doo wop & started singing Hoochie Coochie
Man & Rags & Old Iron on Minetta Lane with a joint in one hand
and a bottle of Ballantine ale in the other. Ironically where I had
grown up there actually was an old rag man who came around once a week
& an old blues guitarist who lived in my friend Jonny’s garage.
At night, if I didn't hang out in Greenwich Village, I sat up listening
to the Richter Scale on WRVR, a radio station out of Riverside Church
& the tail end of Symphony Sid before he went completely Latin
furthering my education. I started buying blues and jazz vinyl like
crazy, already having accrued a wide range of soul and doowop 45’s. A
couple of great early finds were Bessie Lynn & the
Georgia Sea Island Singers & Inside Hi-Fi by Lee Konitz, still
2 of my favorites. In fact I’m listening to Lee right now.
There were also afternoon t.v. shows on jazz at that time and an
episode that always stuck in my mind was one where Monk, when was asked
how he did what he did, simply answered "I don't know. I just do it."
That statement profoundly influenced and helped change me. So much so
in fact that I suppose you could say that that's how I’ve felt about my
work and my life ever since.
One day while walking down St. Marks Place stoned in the late afternoon
with a friend at about age 15 I heard wild music coming from the
doorway of which I later learned was the 5 Spot. I stuck my head
through a crack in the door and saw this amazing pianist tearing up the
keys (I was told afterwards that he was banned from many clubs for
having a rep for breaking pianos.) The music went right inside me and
my addiction to free jazz began full steam. It turned out the pianist
was Cecil Taylor.
A couple of years later, already deep into Trane, Mingus, Dolphy (who I
first heard on the Mingus Candid lp Mingus that I had swiped
from a drug store) and Cecil, a guy stopped me on Mcdougal Street and
said “Hey Steve I know you love Cecil Taylor. There’s this guy
you should listen to named Albert Ayler. He’s the Cecil Taylor of the
saxophone and his new record is called BELLS.” I immediately
went to Dayton’s record store on W.8th picked up my clear vinyl, hand
silk screened, one sided copy, took it home and played it over &
over again. Though Spiritual Unity has become my favorite Ayler
lp I still listen to Bells some 50 years later.
As soon as I could I started hanging out at Slugs, The Village
Vanguard, Rivbea and got to see such greats as Ayler, Monk, Mingus,
Kirk, Blakey, Max, J-Mac etc. But sadly I missed Dolphy, who had
already left the country, as did many "jazz" greats, for both economic
as well as racial reasons, conditions that still exist in America
today.
And I just missed Trane (who I've always claimed is one of the reasons
I'm still alive.) He died when I was on my way to see him at that now
famous Monterey Jazz Festival of 1967. The one that produced Charles
Lloyd's Forest Flower lp & more or less introduced "jazz" to the
hippies. So, stoned, broke & broken hearted I made an about face,
never made it to the festival but returned to Berkeley & wrote one
of my earliest so called “jazz” poems for Trane @ age 19.
Little has changed since Dolphy's time when it comes to jazz,
particularly FREE JAZZ . There's the political façade of Jazz at
Lincoln Center or George Wein's Fiasco-fest which primarily caters to
big business, big name brands & inside stuff, but at least we now
have Fire in the Kitchen and the Vision Festival (Arts for Art). And
there are many great improvisers and festivals around the world that
keep this music alive. And the Vision folks take the music from
where it was born to countries where Dolphy & others went, though
now not as exiles but as ambassadors of this neglected form that was
always shown more acceptance outside its birth place. And throughout
Brookyln and Manhattan just like in the 60’s loft jazz scene there are
more and more independent venues, many musician owned, that support
this music like Douglas Street Collective, Shapeshifter, Roulette,
Jack, Brecht Forum, Barbes, Goodbye Blue Monday, the Stone and
Spectrum.
I started listening to music as soon as I could hear & writing
poetry as soon as I could write so it was inevitable that the two at
some point would become meet. An extension of my passion for singing.
But instead of singing along with the music I write along for almost 30
years as is evident in my books The Final Nite (poems for
Charles Gayle), Long Play E.P. (poems for Evan Parker), Reaching
into the Unknown: various poems in collaboration with photographer
Jacques Bisceglia, The Mantis (for Cecil Taylor) and Logos
and Language, a collaboration with pianist Matthew Shipp.
Keep your ears peeled for Devin “Brahja” Waldman, the nephew of
esteemed poet, Anne Waldman, an alto player with a warm post-Paul
Desmond tone. He moves notes around in a smooth and beautifully artful
way and has inside and outside facilities for playing and hearing. His
efforts include Brahja Waldman’s Quartet on Jeunes Volontaires
and a soon-to-be-released cd with some of my favorite New York players
Daniel Levin, Satoshi Takeishi and the inimitable Daniel Carter.
Devin’s cousin Ambrose Bye (Anne’s son) has been playing and producing
music for Anne and other poets. A recent release he mixed, produced and
plays on is Harry’s House, a tribute to Harry Smith which includes
Edwin Torres, Anne, Lewis Warsh, Bob Holman, Eileen Myles and Thurston
Moore.
Forget 79 year old Wayne Shorter’s attempt at the classical crossover
thing which sounded more like a pastiche of heard-before ideas. His Pegasus,
Three Marias and Prometheus Unbound,
performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra earlier in the year at
Carnegie Hall on a program with Ives and Beethoven should have remained
bound and gagged. Shorter barely played during what were
ridiculously melodic overly self-conscious compositions. It was a weak
over and underplayed watered-down hack job as are most attempts to
cross over as far back as Stravinsky and Gershwin (sorry George, pretty
but no cigar) to many present-day folks which for the sake of time and
space shall remain unnamable. This was a case where playing well was
simply NOT enough. That night Beethoven ruled despite four standing
ovations for Wayne. Yes I know. It doesn’t hurt to try. Or does it?
Charles Gayle recently played an incredible 74th birthday concert as
part of the Arts for Arts RUCMA series. This was preceded by a
beautiful solo set by Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet and white plastic
alto with pink trim that included two improvised pieces and a
wonderfully distorted version of Stella by Starlight. Gayle, who, once
in awhile will play a standard in his own inimitable way, this night
made standards the rule. He began his set with Well You Needn’t then
did a bluesy free original with McPhee coming in on trumpet,
accompanied by Michael T. Thompson on drums and Larry Roland on bass.
He proceeded, sans McPhee, to launch into Giant Steps then Oleo and
from there into Ayler’s Ghosts joined again by McPhee, this time on
alto. He ended the set with the trio in out Rollinsesque fashion with I
Remember You morphing into Green Dolphin Street and Gayle playing Happy
Birthday to himself and his audience. When done he re-iterated what
McPhee said at the beginning of the night that without the listeners
the music would be nothing and that there would be little reason to go
on. He and McPhee were partly alluding to two dedicated JAZZ listeners
who had passed away that day and the day before.
I would like to dedicate this piece their memories and can only hope
that they meet up and get to experience the best FREE blowing session
in the annals of musical history. They are fellow avid fans and music
travelers Peter Cox and photographer, book seller, archivist,
co-founder of the French label BYG and dearest of friends and
collaborator, Jacques Bisceglia, both of whom were as much members of
the band as they were members of the audience and above all devoted,
true LISTENERS. May they be swinging in heaven right now.
From one of my earliest music pieces written for Cecil Taylor,
September, 1966:
“SING not song / but a well constructed chaos /
….the room floats above us…enfolds & possibly loves us / completion
to an unfinished psalm / let us remain locked to each other / as we
lock the door & bar admission to all but the piano furious / let us
remain together / in love lust & laughter / let us remain
together / let us remain / let us……”
There is much more to be said but since the "poem of my life" is MUSIC
let the music speak instead and I will dutifully listen. MUSIC + WORD =
LANGUAGE.
|
