Author: Syd Fablo

Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble – The Malcolm X Memorial

The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music)

Philip Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble – The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music) Zulu (1970)

A truly remarkable album.  While not so recognizably distinctive as the Artistic Heritage Ensemble’s debut album On the Beach, The Malcolm X Memorial is just as fine an achievement.  This is a deep and effective meditation on the life of one of the most significant public figures of the 20th Century.  Phil Cohran‘s songwriting reaches a high water mark in setting out the four distinct phases of Malcolm X’s life, each of which is featured with its own song named after the appellation Malcolm used in that phase.  Rather than push Malcolm X’s agenda, or try to comment on his significance — socially, politically, or otherwise — Cohran simply creates a rich backdrop that portrays the context for Malcolm’s life.  Listeners can draw their own conclusions about what the man’s life meant, but in hearing this work they unmistakably witness a transformation from familiar and humble beginnings as portrayed by the spooky blues solo from guitarist Pete Cosey that opens the set, to the confrontational tone set by the increasingly busier and driving group arrangements in the middle of the album, to the expansive possibilities suggested by the decidedly non-Western flavor of the finale.  Recorded live, The Malcolm X Memorial features many wonderful performances that could hardly have been improved in a studio.  For instance, just listen to Aaron Dodd‘s lovely tuba solo on “Malcolm Little”, and the funky electric bass on “Detroit Red.”  This is a piece of music well worth attention, and one that rewards careful and repeated listening.  The Artistic Heritage Ensemble belonged to the upper echelon of performers of their time, and, albeit posthumously, they deserve wider recognition.

Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers

Ten Freedom Summers

Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers Cuneiform RUNE 350/351/352/353 (2012)

Supposedly decades in the making, this massive four-disc collection of music by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith chronicles the freedom movement (a/k/a civil rights movement) in the United States for the years 1954-64.  It features quartet and quintet jazz combos as well as a chamber orchestra.  On the plus side, this work is nothing if not eclectic.  When it opens with “Dred Scott, 1857,” it has the unmistakably measured, conversational style of Bill Dixon.  A little further in, “Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education: A Dream of Equal Education, 1954” is punchier, more blues-inflected.  By the time the fourth disc rolls around, it settles into a very “typical” spare, rattling-drum modern jazz style.  Unfortunately, there is something rather lacking in this work.  It’s that this takes itself so serious that there isn’t any energy left to let it breathe.  Nothing here innovates, really, and the music isn’t particularly evocative either.  Compared to, say, Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble‘s The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music), this feels a little pedantic and dull.  It’s not bad.  No, it’s actually performed as well as it could be.  But it’s ambitions are unfocused and too shallow.  I think, much like Matana Roberts (though Smith is a substantially more talented performer), this album practices a kind of intellectual bullying.  It takes on a subject for which there is a “correct” view, and adopting that view, there is an effort to silence dissent about the execution and specific content of the compositions and performances purely on the basis of the thematic focus.  So, even if you agree with the notion of equality (which I do), it is still possible to find this music, heard as a discourse about it, unpersuasive and uninteresting.

The Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

The Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me Fiction FIXH13 (1987)

Like most double albums, this one is too long.  There also is a bizarre eclecticism at play that just doesn’t quite work.  “Just Like Heaven” is classic Cure, with a little bit of punk bite but still very catchy (even if Dinosaur Jr.‘s cover version is better).  As for the rest, well, it’s just all over the map.  At times there is the percussion-laden sound of Public Image Ltd.‘s The Flowers of Romance, plenty of middle-eastern influences, a little lukewarm funk-rock, and even some inklings of the jazz odyssey of Wish — though it’s hard not to think that we are witnesses of the new birth of Spın̈al Tap, mark II.  The Cure try many things here but do few of them well.  This could be worse, and there are some decent songs.  It’s still a disappointment though.

Slavoj Žižek – A Note on Syriza: Indebted Yes, but Not Guilty!

Link to an article by Slavoj Žižek:

“A Note on Syriza: Indebted Yes, but Not Guilty!”

Bonus links: “The Greek Debt Interim Agreement: Necessary Step or Sell-Out?,” “Greece: Austerity for the Bankers,” “The Democratic Right to Cry ‘Enough’” and “Reading the Greek Deal Correctly” and “Greece: a Chronology From January 25, 2015 to 2019”

PiL – Metal Box

Metal Box

PiL – Metal Box Virgin METAL 1 (1979)

So much of the most innovative music of the 70s came together on Metal Box (originally three metal discs packaged in a film container, the later U.S. version titled Second Edition had a less expensive package). Public Image Ltd. (PiL) kept the immediacy, power, and attitude of punk while creating a special new blend of “pop” music.

The Sex Pistols had booted John Lydon (a/k/a Johnny Rotten) forcing him to find something new. What he found was guitarist Keith Levene and the perfect forum to rant.

Metal Box, the group’s second album, uses only extremes. Pounding bass and icy guitar hiss over the top grind like machinery. Lydon’s paranoid shouting plows through, questioning everything. He rips out the sounds in his head for the world to hear. PiL released singles from the album, but even those great songs seem out of place by themselves. The flow and endless vamps need to slowly overtake you as you listen.

Keith Levene is the sound of PiL. He plays phenomenally inventive solos, as on “Chant” where his scathing guitar laces over muffled repetitions of “love/war/kill/hate.” He comes close to sounding like James “Blood” Ulmer most of the time, improvising in a way that values random effects and eliminates the possibility of mistake. Jah Wobble on bass is also an absolute necessity for this music to work, adding the only melodies. The spontaneous energy keeps the experiments within arm’s reach. The drummer du jour adds little but manages not to spoil the album either.

Dance music, the likes of dub and disco, was the common denominator for PiL. While it seems each performer is doing something completely different, the record pulls it all together with the open space and sweeping textures of CAN’s krautrock. There really are no low points on the entire album. PiL’s debut had connections to the past, but this album (their second) was a step through a gateway. Superficially, Metal Box was absorbed into pop music, though few of the influenced masses think to tracing their roots through PiL.

Great music is tied so much to the social fabric of its time, so that great music tends to come in waves. Metal Box is one of the most brilliant works from an incredible period that birthed the 80s. Even among stiff competition, it stands out as inspired, cohesive, and enduring.

John Cale once said that rock and roll is about screaming and getting paid for it. PiL pulls off that tenuous circus balancing act in profound fashion. My mom once commented while I was listening to Metal Box that it sounded like someone screaming and trying to get paid for it. I don’t think she realized how right she was! This is an album for people who love rock and roll down to their souls, and no one else.