Author: Syd Fablo

Miles Davis – Big Fun

Big Fun

Miles Davis – Big Fun Columbia PG 32866  (1974)

It is somewhat amazing to think that despite the intense creative peak Miles Davis achieved in the early 1970s, On the Corner from 1972 was the last proper studio album he consciously assembled for roughly ten years, until The Man With the Horn in 1981.  Everything in between was either archival in nature, a live recording, or, like Big Fun and Get Up With It, an amalgamation of leftovers spanning a period of many years.  When it comes to Big Fun, rather than taking the rather disparate material — from the moody, atmospheric “Great Expectations/Orange Lady” and “Lonely Fire” from the late-1960s Bitches Brew era to the grinding rock of “Go Ahead John” from the Jack Johnson period to the murky, paranoid, Eastern-flavored “Ife” that was recorded following the On the Corner sessions — and either accepting the incongruity or else massaging the material in the editing process to homogenize it, Davis and producer Teo Macero take a third path.  What happens is that they take raw material as if in a highly elemental form, and Macero uses studio effects and cut-and-paste techniques to transform a lot of it into something different than any of its origins.  This is perhaps most apparent in the harshly chopped and distorted editing of guitarist John McLaughlin‘s solo(s) and Jack DeJohnette‘s drums on “Go Ahead John.”  This was remarkable stuff.  The editing process was a conscious and audible part of the final work.  There were precedents.  Modern composers had made similar experiments.  For instance, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (whom Davis greatly admired) stitched together national anthems for his Hymnen, and Steve Reich chopped up a spoken word sample to create Come Out previously.  But Davis and Macero were taking those techniques and trying to apply them to popular music.  This was meant for the masses!

Often relegated to at best a second-class status, Big Fun is a better record than that spotted critical history suggests.  Yet it also isn’t the most immediately impressive entry into the long line of great 70s fusion albums from Miles.  Most listeners will perhaps want to put this further down the list of Davis albums of the period to check out.  But bear in mind that if anything from the period hooks you, you will almost inevitably seek out the rest, and Big Fun definitely earns its place in that search.  This has a more agitated and fiery flavor than the earliest of Davis fusion efforts in the late 1960s, but also a more ambient quality than much of the dense and funky early/mid 1970s recordings.  If there was a way to convey the tumult of the times, this would have to be it though.  It’s a record that isn’t always satisfying, at least not for more than moments.  If that sort of approach isn’t for you, then the album won’t necessarily be for you.

Wynton Marsalis – Black Codes (From the Underground)

Black Codes (From the Underground)

Wynton Marsalis – Black Codes (From the Underground) Columbia FC 40009 (1985)

Wynton Marsalis has become the poster child of the conservative movement in post-1970s jazz, which tends to view the genre as something entirely mapped out with well defined boundaries that has survived certain “failed” formulations that are only worthy of being derided or ignored.  He is relied upon as the “definitive” musician-commentator on jazz.  And so he has been regularly featured in films, etc. pontificating about the meaning of the music as a whole.  Naturally he does so from within the narrow confines of his own definitions of what jazz is and should be.  And, naturally, I hate his fucking guts for that.  But Black Codes (From the Underground) is still a success.  In spite of its scarcely-concealed agenda of skipping over all jazz history since Miles Davis’ second great quintet from the mid-1960s, there is conviction behind it.  This doesn’t exactly wow or thrill me, or even surprise me.  I still have to admit that this is a good album.

Johnny Cash – America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song

America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song

Johnny Cash – America: A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song Columbia KC 31645 (1972)

The early 1970s were a turbulent time in America, with the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam war, the biggest economic crisis the Western world had faced in many decades, continued fights to implement integration, women’s liberation, and much more.  Oh, and there was a lot of stuff happening to celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the nation’s independence from England in 1776.  Along comes Johnny Cash, with this album, depicting him on the cover in a military-style jacket on a decrepit farmhouse porch behind a flag, and subtitled “A 200-Year Salute in Story and Song”.  The theme is American history.  It looks pretty heavy-handed on paper.  The thing is, he does a pretty good job with this concept.  He re-records a few tunes he had done before, and performs an assortment of other songs, mostly new ones written himself.  There is a lot of between-song spoken dialog, and even a recitation of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  Some of these tracks were recorded exclusively for the astronauts on the Apollo 14 space mission (the one where Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the Moon), but ended up here instead.  Like much of Cash’s early 70s output, the songs have a minimalist, folky feel, and there are only a couple of cuts with his trademark boom-chicka-boom rhythm (“Paul Revere,” “These Are My People”).  And while this looks a lot like a very rudimentary recitation of the standard “story of America” taught to little kids in grade school, it ends up being slightly more nuanced than that.  “Big Foot,” about the Wounded Knee Massacre, wasn’t something frequently taught in school history classes — would Cash have dug Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States when it came out years later?  This release predated the Pine Ridge Incident, erupting in response to the anniversary of Wounded Knee, by only a matter of months.  Yet Cash elsewhere celebrates genocidal madmen like Christopher Columbus, so there are still contradictions.  Listeners who want Johnny in good voice, recorded well with a crisp and talented backing band will probably find lots to like here.  Those who focus on lyrics more than the instrumental contributions probably will care a lot less for this one.  In any event, this was one of Cash’s last concepts albums.

Johnny Cash – Ragged Old Flag

Ragged Old Flag

Johnny Cash – Ragged Old Flag Columbia KC 32917 (1974)

Johnny Cash’s recordings of the 1970s aren’t usually regarded well.  He seemed to struggle with issues that tend to face every big star eventually:  what happens when you’ve been around the business for long enough that popular tastes have changed and new trends and fads have come along?  Stay true to what you always did (even if that is less popular) or adapt to the times (can you pull it off)?  Interestingly, Cash tries a little of both with Ragged Old Flag.

The title track finds Cash displaying his most chauvinistic, nationalist populism, which is presented as mere patriotism during the midst of the Watergate scandal.  It’s always hard to pin down Cash on politics, but it is common for people who lived through the Watergate era and fully understood Nixon’s crimes to insist that the president shouldn’t have gone to prison or been removed from office, just out of some vague sense of “patriotism”.  Cash seems to take a similar view, at least by implication.  It’s maybe also worth noting that Cash had met Nixon personally by this time, and had performed for him at the White House.

The album often recalls the “old” sound of Cash’s 50s recordings.  But Charlie Bragg is the co-producer, and he seems responsible for providing a more contemporary country flair to some of the material here, most notably “Southern Comfort.”  Cash has good support from Earl Scruggs on banjo and The Oak Ridge Boys on backing vocals throughout.  Some of the folkier moments build on what was achieved on Hello, I’m Johnny Cash and Man in Black too, with a little more slick and polished sound.

Cash wrote (or co-wrote) everything here.  Some of those efforts are worthy of note.  “Don’t Go Near the Water” is an environmentalist paean.  It’s something unusual for a country star.  Then there is “King of the Hill,” a song that prefigures a lot of what Bruce Springsteen would become known for a few years down the line.  It’s a song about “manly” men who want to succeed in life and go to the coal mines rather than the cotton mill to do it.  But by the end, the song conveys that eventually all the coal will be gone, and if you’re not dead already you can call yourself king of the hill.  But it’s a kind of sad prize, and Cash very subtly makes it an ironic one, implying (without clearly stating it, except through a little chuckle) that maybe it was all a waste.

This album is among the better of Cash’s efforts of the decade.  Much of side two runs a little thinner after the good “Lonesome to the Bone,” but side one in particular delivers some good performances and songwriting with energy and conviction.  This isn’t the place to start with Cash.  Still, admirers may want to take a listen at some point as it would be a full twenty years before he made another album this good.

Loïc Wacquant – Crafting the Neoliberal State

Link to an article on the substitution of prisons for social welfare programs in the USA by Loïc Wacquant, author of Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (2009), which came out around the same time as Michelle Alexander’s similar (but more well-known) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010).

“Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity”

The Golden Age of Movie Musicals: The MGM Years

The Golden Age of Movie Musicals: The MGM Years

Various Artists – The Golden Age of Movie Musicals: The MGM Years MGM P6S 5878 (1973)

While showtunes and soundtrack music might not be things that I personally enjoy all that much, you can’t go wrong with this set if you want an introduction to those genres.  I really respect what was done here.  From a historical perspective this collection of recordings is amazing.  It features some of the most well-known music of the 20th Century.  People who wouldn’t consider themselves music listeners in the slightest probably still know the melody to “Over the Rainbow” and “Singin’ in the Rain”, or could recognize “Theme from ‘A Summer Place'”.  The common denominator of this music is its simplicity.  In terms of rhythm, nothing here is beyond a remedial level.  The melodies are all straightforward and uncomplicated.  The vocals often lack much subtlety, but instead focus on brute force vibrato.  The instrumental film music on the final two “bonus” discs deals only in broad strokes, with lots of syrupy string arrangements and melodramatic surges.  Despite the enormous popular recognition of this music, it would seem that already most of it is nothing more than a historical oddity.  The theatrical and vaudevillian aspects of this stuff — cartoonish, larger-than-life emoting that doesn’t leave any room for a reaction other than the one intended — isn’t all that common outside of Bollywood just a few decades on.  It’s a wonder how tastes change so fast.  I guess that Bollywood comment might make for an interesting comparison: is this music something that is borne out of socioeconomic conditions to fill a gap between the general public’s cultural sophistication and its more rapidly rising disposable income?  At its worst, that is probably exactly what it does.  But here we get some of the best and brightest moments, where there’s something more at work.  “Over the Rainbow” and “Singin’ in the Rain” are so well known because they simply are great songs.  And there are plenty more great songs here.  There was also a book of the same name by Lawrence B. Thomas released just before this LP box set, which might be of interest.  There are no liner notes to speak of with this set, so perhaps the book has more information about the music (I haven’t read it).

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

Rain Dogs

Tom Waits – Rain Dogs Island ILPS 9803 (1985)

Easily Tom Waits’ greatest achievement.  It’s a ramshackle wreck of a thing, and no two songs are great for quite the same reasons.  This one will stay with you for a lifetime.

Waits met his wife Kathleen Brennan while working on the film One From the Heart (1982).  He relocated to New York City from Los Angeles.  This album succeeds in part by jettisoning the last vestiges of his LA sound and fully embracing the freaks, the losers, the rabble — what Barney Hoskyns called a focus on “the urban dispossessed,” inspired by Waits’ recent contribution of music to the documentary Streetwise (1984) about homeless kids in Seattle.

Brennan introduced Waits to the work of composer Harry Partch, known for inventing his own instruments and referencing the lifestyle and language of hobos.  Wait uses all kinds of junkyard percussion and sounds made without musical instruments as such, with a percussion-heavy emphasis on idiosyncratic rhythms.  Partch looms large, and is frequently mentioned as an influence.  This is apparent straight from the opener “Singapore” and then doubly so on the next track “Clap Hands.”

Another influence, or at least close comparison, is Lotte Lenya singt Kurt Weill (1955).  A gem of a post-WWII look back at the Weimar-era theater songs of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.  These were songs from a time of vibrancy, desperation, and possibility, of contradiction and grand change.  The songs reflect those circumstances.  And Leyna’s 1955 recordings capture the shambolic yet determined and cutting theatrical sensibility that made this music so iconic and emblematic of those times.  Here, on songs like “Tango Till They’re Sore” and “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” the piano and horns tap some of the same slightly seedy and bawdy cabaret energy.  Marc Ribot‘s flamboyant guitar continues that effect across much of the rest of the album.  Waits, who also developed an acting career, always had a flair for theatricality.  Rain Dogs turns those impulses toward something shorn of campiness, more gritty, knowing, and subversive.

But this was also the mid-1980s, the era of big pop tunes.  And this album has those too.  Kathleen Brennan features large here, co-writing “Hang Down You Head” (released as a single) and exerting influence in that direction.  There are quite a number of melodic pop tunes here, including the ballad “Time” and “Downtown Train,” the latter being covered extensively.  These more pure conventional pop expressions manage to sit comfortably among the more experimental offerings.

And there is more.  “Blind Love,” with guitar from both Keith Richards and Robert Quine, is an achingly sad/sweet country-twinged song replete with a fiddle.  And there are plenty of tunes like “Big Black Mariah” and “Union Square” that lean on bluesy rock with Waits’ voice barreling forward at its gruffest, not far from Captain Beefheart.  These elements of American weave throughout the album.

Not yet has been said yet about Waits’ own performances.  His voice is gravelly here.  Yet it still draws, subtly, from his early career trying to make a name for himself as a California soft rock singer trading on sentimental emoting, and his ability to cover a wide range of material and deftly push a song into new areas owes to his time singing barroom jazz, and his ability to deliver, with clever and precise phrasing, a memorable mood or sentiment, like on “Walking Spanish” or “9th & Hennepin,” is a more subdued and, at times, unique and personal form of the kind of beatnik monologues he traded in more crudely in the 70s.  So, yes, Waits’ vocals help make this album what it is.  But, to his credit, this album comes off as a collective effort built on more than just his own presence.  Of course, what that makes that possible is the songwriting.

One thing that still impresses about this album decades later is how consistently good the songs are.  There are some great songs here.  They are full of menace and beauty, characters drifting on the fringes of society, like from a Genet novel, and the eclectic bohemianism of hanging out with the legendary denizens of the storied Chelsea Hotel of the day.  And yet these songs are understated, without ever feeling forced or contorted.  Perhaps just as important as there being great songs, there is not a bum track to be found.

This remains an essential statement from the 80s, one of those classics that is woven through with signs of the times yet also pointing back to deeper history and standing firmly in its own category.

Drunk History

Drunk History Comedy Central (2013- )

There is a silly television show called “Drunk History” on a cable network in which comedians consume alcohol to the point of drunkenness and then re-tell the story of some historical incident or personality.  Well-known actors reenact the story and lip-sync to the narration of the drunken storyteller, with absolutely meticulous fidelity to the words of the storyteller, belches and all.  There is a hidden secret as to what makes the premise of the show intriguing.  The reenactments are not faithful to “historical fact”.  Instead, they are faithful to the inebriated ramblings of the storyteller.  The historical accounts are like myths.  The drunk storytellers clearly have some sort of script in hand, and have done some amount of research beforehand.  But they act (or maybe really are) too drunk to tell the story in an articulate and nuanced manner.  So the show dramatizes the myth in a way that makes the act of mythologization evident–that’s the funny part.  This is like the famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  It also makes the show a “pragmatic reflective history,” according the G.W.F. Hegel in Reason in History (1837), because it “nullifies the past and makes the event present.”

On “The Appearance of Impropriety”

Many organizations stress the supposed importance of reducing or eliminating entirely the “appearance of impropriety”.  These policies should be viewed for what they really are:  attempts to reduce transparency, encourage misinformation, and concentrate power.  Shouldn’t the real goal be to reduce or eliminate actual impropriety?  And should an organization that is engaged in actual impropriety not visibly reflect that actual impropriety to the public?  This latter question gets to the heart of the matter.  These “appearance of impropriety” policies are all about manipulating public confidences to maintain power within a small group, to the exclusion of others.  Organizational leaders attempt to control the flow of information.  They only reveal to the outside world selected facts.  Any that tend to portray the organization as corrupt, inept, malicious, etc. are suppressed, as best as possible.  The public is thereby cajoled and misled to form an opinion of the organization, and of individuals within it, that is not based on all available facts, but rather only those that portray the organization in a positive light.  This ideological “filtering” is a form of coercion, albeit one that does not rely directly on the use of physical force.  Robert Lee Hale noted this long ago.  For that matter, so did Leo Tolstoy in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894).  They argued against a very old concept though.  Plato’s endorsement in The Republic (380 BC) of a “noble lie” used by elites to maintain social harmony within a system of their design is one of the earliest recorded examples.  The question of the “appearance of impropriety” comes up extensively when dealing with the lawyers and the judiciary (see the Judge Kopf affair), but also with other governmental branches, businesses, churches, journalistic publications, or any other organization.  These sorts of policies, at worst, protect the social status of the relevant organization–especially the leaders of those organizations–while suppressing actual impropriety involving particular individuals.  Quite hypocritically, many calls for reducing of the appearance of impropriety simultaneously call for increased transparency, without noting that these are contradictory objectives in the end, when viewed from the standpoint of public welfare rather than from a self-interested viewpoint of the organization (and its leaders) involved.  With these ideas in mind, it is actually quite brazen that organizations publish any guidelines seeking to limit the “appearance of impropriety”.  Such rules speak in condescending, anti-democratic tones.  They imply that the public cannot properly assess facts. Nonsense.