Captain Beefheart – Bluejeans & Moonbeams

Bluejeans & Moonbeams

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band – Bluejeans & Moonbeams Mercury SRM 1-1018 (1974)

Captain Beefheart released two album in 1974 on the Mercury label in the US and the Virgin label in the UK: Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams.  They both ventured into MOR (mainstream oriented rock) territory.  Most Beefheart fans are appalled by both of these albums.  The problem is that Beefheart had released some of the most inventive and abstract rock ever recorded.  His turn toward smoothed-over commercial pop-rock is not something music snobs ever accept.  On the one hand, Unconditionally Guaranteed is pretty dull, save for bits of a few tracks (“Peaches,” etc.) with horn sections that seem like less energetic versions of material off 15-60-75‘s Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town (1976).  A clear parallel to the album’s overall turn toward mediocre conventions is CAN’s Out of Reach (1978). Unconditionally Guaranteed was recorded by the same Magic Band lineup that had worked with Beefheart for many years.  They all quit after finishing the album.  So Bluejeans & Moonbeams was recorded with any entirely new backing band.  Some fans give the new band the derogatory nickname “The Tragic Band”.  But all this is a bit wrong.  Bluejeans & Moonbeams is a pretty decent album.  Sure, it bears no resemblance to Trout Mask Replica.  But so what?  If this had been released under a new band name rather than being credited to “Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band” it seems likely many who hate it would have an entirely different opinion.  In other words, the problem here is one of expectations.  While this is definitely not one of the Captain’s best, with an open mind this fits comfortably alongside bluesy MOR rock of the mid-70s.  This is definitely not a bad album — the same cannot really be said for Unconditionally Guaranteed.  If you expect new frontiers to be crossed you will be disappointed by this.  But ask yourself first whether such expectations are appropriate.

Victoria Law – Captive Audience

Link to an article by Victoria Law:

“Captive Audience: How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send an Email”

This article buries at the end the official rationale for banning conventional mail (smuggling in drugs).  But it also provides a simple explanation of new methods by which prisoners and their friends and families are exploited by the prison-industrial complex.

Bonus links: “9 Surprising Industries Profiting Handsomely from America’s Insane Prison System” and “This System Is a Moral Horror” and …And the Poor Get Prison

Slavoj Žižek – Quote about Democratic Socialists

“what do democratic socialists effectively want? The rightist reproach against them is that, beneath their innocent-sounding concrete proposals to raise taxes, make healthcare better, etc, there is a dark project to destroy capitalism and its freedoms. My fear is exactly the opposite one: that beneath their concrete welfare state proposals there is nothing, no great project, just a vague idea of more social justice. The idea is simply that, through electoral pressure, the centre of gravity will move back to the left.

But is, in the (not so) long term, this enough? Do the challenges that we face, from global warming to refugees, from digital control to biogenetic manipulations, not require nothing less than a global reorganisation of our societies?”

Slavoj Žižek – “The US Establishment Thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Too Radical – With an Impending Climate Disaster, the Worry Is She Isn’t Radical Enough”

Gary Olson – Are We Governed By Secondary Psychopaths?

In his article “Are We Governed By Secondary Psychopaths?” Gary Olson suggests that political leaders in the West are psychopaths/sociopaths.  While well-intentioned, Olson’s article can be rejected as based on dubious theory.  Namely, the concept of “psychopathy” or “sociopathy” is premised on a DSM-style psychological theory of deviation from normalcy.  This is a contested and highly politicized topic.  For instance, Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects the concept of “normalcy”, instead positing that there are only different ways interacting with the world but none of them can objectively be called normal or abnormal.  (For what it’s worth, Lacanians recognize psychosis and neurosis, and address ethics and duty in a very different framework — see Ethics of the Real).  Second, Olson’s attack on politicians for what amounts to hypocrisy (he calls them secondary psychopaths) can be seen as medicalizing political questions to bracket out and essentially de-politicize the central political questions that underlie his analysis through an appeal to expert medical authority (much akin to appeals to “expert” economists or teachers).  For example, Domenico Losurdo‘s Liberalism: A Counter-History provides a very convincing alternative theory, namely that political liberalism is a politics of exclusion that devotes its energies to drawing lines between the community of the free and those excluded from those same freedoms — this theory is very similar to what Jacques Rancière calls the “part of no part”.  Losurdo explains this as not simple hypocrisy in the sense of being an “error” in practical application but rather consistency with an outwardly-denied exclusionary tenet of political liberalism.  From that perspective, Olson’s claims suggest that anyone who subscribes to political liberalism is a sociopath, a notion that is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.  Olson is making an unfortunate ploy here to sidestep questions of politics and surreptitiously insert his ideological framework through a disingenuously “neutral” medical (psychological) framework — a form of “university discourse”.

Jason Hirthler – Russiagate and the Men with Glass Eyes

Link to an article by Jason Hirthler:

“Russiagate and the Men with Glass Eyes”

 

Bonus links: “Clinging to Collusion” and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies” and “Mueller Investigation Seeks to Implicate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in ‘Russian Interference'” and “Be Careful What You Ask For: Wasting Time with Manafort, Cohen, and Russiagate” and “Leaked NSA Report Is Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ Case” and “Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era” and “Remembering Alger Hiss in the Age of Russia-Gate” and “How the Department of Homeland Security Created a Deceptive Tale of Russia Hacking US Voter Sites” and “Hey Intercept, Something is Very Wrong with Reality Winner and the NSA Leak” (plus combative interview) and “Someone Finally Connected the Dots: Russiagate is Helping Trump” (“this massive belief that Russia is some sort of existential threat to western society, is entirely the result of failed western elites needing a scapegoat for their own failures.”) and “Money Still Rules US Politics” and “A Look Back at Clapper’s Jan. 2017 ‘Assessment’ on Russia-gate” and “Iraq’s WMDs Found…In Russia” (with delicious irony: “Surely no reputable newspaper would give front page coverage to unproven allegations made by political operatives working against the Party and personages currently in power, right? Doing so could be perceived as taking sides in an internecine political battle to undo the democratic will of at least a bit more than a quarter of eligible voters.”) and “Finally Time for DNC Email Evidence” and “Why Russiagate Will Never Go Away” and “Russiagate and the Dry Rot in American Journalism” and “RussiaGate as Organised Distraction” and “From Russia, with Panic” and “The Unanswered Questions in the Latest Russian ‘Meddling’ Allegations” and “Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers” and “On The Media Of ‘Russiagate’ And Related Fake Stories” and “The So Far Non-Existent Vulkan Leaks” and “The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate” and “Leaked Files Reveal the Steele Dossier Was Discredited in 2017 — But Sold to the Public Anyway”

I Want More: A Guide to the Music of CAN

This is a guide to the music of CAN.  Releases are divided into full albums, miscellany (mostly archival, soundtrack, and outtake collections), and non-album singles, with each section arranged chronologically by recording date.  Other resources — books, films, a soundtrack filmography, and web sites — are listed at the end.

A Brief Introduction:

CAN was formed in the late 1960s in Köln (Cologne), in what was then West Germany.  The band approached rock and pop music with sort of an outsider’s perspective, very much the way pianist/composer Cecil Taylor approached jazz in a unique way from the standpoint of formal training in modern classical music.  There was a tacit affinity in their worldview to the so-called “New Left” movement of the late 1960s.  The band is also cited as a pillar of the “krautrock” movement that sought to reconstruct a new German cultural identity following the defeat of the Nazis by the Soviet Union and allied powers — most of the band members grew up knowing former Nazis.  They did not want to sound like other pop music.  The band’s music draws influence and comparisons to electronic “new music” composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and the chance music of John Cage, rock bands like The Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sly & The Family Stone, the vamping funk rock of James Brown, and dub reggae from the likes of producer Lee “Scratch” Perry.  While band members had great familiarity with jazz, they either couldn’t or didn’t want to play jazz.  They did not work with outside producers or even record in commercial recording studios, instead forging their own path in a do-it-yourself way in which they maintained control over all aspects of their recordings.  Always something of a cult phenomenon, CAN remained critical darlings.  Curiously, or maybe not so much, the band’s audience has primarily been male.  Anyway, even nearly a half-century later the band’s music sounds stunningly fresh and impressive.

Original members Irmin Schmidt, Holger Czukay and David Johnson came from backgrounds in modern classical music, each having studied at Darmstadt with Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Drummer Jaki Liebezeit came from a background in jazz, departing a position in Manfred Schoof‘s band after deciding that the scrupulous avoidance of a rhythmic pulse in free jazz was too constraining.  Guitarist Michael Karoli was a former student of Czukay’s who gave up studying law to be a musician instead.  Schmidt was a working conductor and composer who visited New York City where he was introduced to underground rock and the pop art scene.  He returned to West Germany inspired, and with Czukay committed to starting a rock band.  Johnson soon departed as the band pursued more of a focus on rock than pure avant-garde electronics.  Malcolm Mooney was an American traveling the world under the alias Desse Barama to try to avoid being drafted into the military during the Vietnam War, and ended up connecting with CAN partly out of confusion — he wanted to find a visual artist’s studio but ended up in a musical studio.  Although not intending to be a singer when he arrived in Germany, and having no real experience as such, Mooney helped the band coalesce its unique syncretic approach to music with a strong sense of rhythm.  Anxiety about returning to America and being drafted eventually necessitated Mooney’s departure.  He was soon after replaced by “Damo” Suzuki.  An anarchist by disposition, Damo had left home dissatisfied with Japanese culture through a connection with a pen pal in Sweden.  He had made his way to Germany where he frequently busked on the streets of Cologne and also was involved in a theater orchestra/band.  Holger Czukay encountered him on the street and invited him to sign at a concert that evening, with no rehearsal.

Most band members came from a middle-class backgrounds (in one case more upper class).  This gave them access to unique opportunities and allowed them to overcome obstacles that would have caused the demise of other bands.  For instance, Damo was very nearly deported before Irmin’s connections to West German state radio lead to a high-level government intervention that allowed Damo to remain.  Another sometimes overlooked aspect of the band’s history is that they formed in the wake of the so-called West German “Economic Miracle,” which partly stemmed from the Marshall Plan but was primarily a function of the USA forgiving WWII debts and using West Germany (and Japan, and later South Korea) as special economic development zones — something explicitly and purposefully denied to the UK and France.  In that climate of economic abundance there were funds and materials floating around for artistic projects.  The band maintained a very collective approach to music-making.  Everyone’s contributions were considered at an equal level.  There was no band hierarchy or designated leader.  Compositions, production and similar efforts were credited to the entire band regardless of specific individual contributions.  They also exactly equally shared band income, at least once Hildegard Schmidt became manager.

Achieving modest popularity in West Germany and the United Kingdom, they had some minor commercial success with recordings but had only one regional “hit” song with “I Want More.”  As the 70s rolled on, new members Rosko Gee and Reebop Kwaku Baah (both formerly of Traffic) joined in.  Czukay left the band by the end of 1977.

The band formally split up in 1979.  Irmin Schmidt then founded Spoon Records, and, via a distribution arrangement with Mute Records, CAN recordings are now more available than ever.  A few archival releases dribbled out in the early 80s, as well as some compilations.  A reunion instigated by originally vocalist Malcolm Mooney happened in the late 80s that lead to a new album.  A few additional reunion recordings of individual songs and sporadic reunion concerts took place too.  The former band members mostly pursued solo and other new musicals projects, and often collaborated.

Legend:

Continue reading “I Want More: A Guide to the Music of CAN”

Anthony Braxton – Six Compositions (GTM) 2001 | Review

Six Compositions (GTM) 2001 album cover

Anthony Braxton – Six Compositions (GTM) 2001 Rastascan Records
BRD 050 (2003)

One of the best of Braxton’s ghost trance music (GTM) recordings.  At over three-and-half hours in length, originally spread over four CDs, this is yet another mammoth collection of music.  The opener, “Composition 286,” is the clear highlight.  Blending nods to classic jazz with skronky fee jazz solos, this species of GTM offers the best of both worlds.  The characteristic pulsed rhythms of GTM are fully present but leavened with lots of individualized contributions and less of a mechanical adherence to unison group statements.  It demonstrates the flexibility of GTM.  That track might actually be one of the best places to dip a toe in the waters of GTM.  It is massive unto itself, clocking in at over 90 minutes (spread across four parts and two CDs).  Basically it is, alone, a symphonic-length piece.  “Composition 277” and “Composition 287” continue on in a similar vein without hitting the brakes. These first three compositions, which make up three-quarters of the entire collection, pack quite a punch.  The crispness of the studio setting captures every detail while allowing for crystal clear moments of silence that enable the performances to breathe.

The last CD of the original release does disappoint, however.  “Composition 278” may add some variety but its lethargic pace has the effect of bringing the proceedings to a halt.  “Composition 289” does little to improve the situation.  The closer, “Composition 195,” a duet between Braxton and guitarist John Shiurba, offers only a marginal improvement.  What the last three tracks demonstrate is that GTM struggles to succeed with small combos, and sometimes fares better with a larger combo or ensemble.  Although, other small combo recordings like GTM (Syntax) 2003 and Composition N. 247 disprove that notion, and suggest instead that the real problem here is that with small combos the music has to have a greater density than the fairly sparse approach used here.  At most, these last few tracks, “Comp. 195” in particular, offer a kind of granular exposition of the basic elements of the music, but the results come across as fairly pedantic.  Still, if listeners experience this collection by skipping the last disc or treating it as featuring mere bonus tracks, they are left with a whole lot of impressive music.