November 2006 Archives

I returned from the Thanksgiving holiday to an email box full of messages from various readers.

The consensus was evenly split between people who wrote (often quite nastily, I might add) that I need to include Max in more of these things and people who want this to be about the nefarious world of Hitler Cats.

I have heard the saying "give the people what they want." I just didn't realize that all people wanted to know about was my dog and tragically mustachioed felines.

The big news over at www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com is that one kitty, Aldo, has gone beyond exterminating mice and has actually learned to salute. I am not joking; Aldo can sieg hiel with the best of them:

Meanwhile, it has gotten so cold so quickly out here that Max's coat has grown even thicker in an attempt to stay warm when he's out in the morning herding Rhapsody's specially selected herd of sheep.

To make his life even busier, the Rhapsody Arts Commission has commisioned an impressionistic portrait of Max and his (surprisingly tender) relationship with sheep. Max has been sitting for that painter for weeks now. Thanks, Rhapsody Arts Commission!

Anyway, it has been freezing cold lately. Much of the country has already been hit by blizzards, snow flurries and early re-runs of Christmas specials. But it only feels like winter. It is still fall, which means I can spotlight another couple of songs.

The Small Faces' "Autumn Stone" is so great that you can listen to it any time of the year, but it gives you something extra when you play it when can see your breath coming out of your mouth.

Stan Getz's solo on "Early Autumn" is so beautiful that it actually made him a star when he was playing with Woody Herman's big band. This string-laden version lays on the syrup a bit too thickly for my taste but Getz's tenor work on it is (as usual) completely flawless.

It was a shock to learn that the great film director Robert Altman has passed away.

Altman directed many of the best movies that I've ever seen. He also made a number of the worst pictures that I've ever had the displeasure to sit through. But that's not a bad thing.

Altman's constant flirting with cinematic disaster wasn't only brave (or even misguided), it also helped to make his movies special. You never really knew what was going to happen in one of his films, and the best of them contained the messy magic of real life. That couldn't have been easy to pull off.

Altman was a life long jazz fan and maybe its improvisatory spirit had an effect on his film making style. Like jazz musicians, critics chose to hit upon the improvisatory nature of his movies a little too much. A whole lot of planning, structure and care goes into making something seem off-the-cuff.

Everybody knows the theme song to Altman's breakthrough movie, M.A.S.H. Here is the Johnny Mandel film theme to M.A.S.H. The song is also known as "Suicide is Painless" and this version has  words and vocals provided by Altman's own son.

Given Altman's feeling for jazz, here is Cal Tjader playing the "M.A.S.H." theme, with Scott Hamilton on the tenor sax and Hank Jones on the piano.

Early in his career, Altman made a documentary about James Dean. Here's Chet Baker's theme song to that long forgotten flick.

In Robert Altman's last movie, someone says that "The death of an old man is not a tragedy." Altman was a man, he was old, and he got to do the thing he loved right up to the end. So, on a happy note, here is Woody Harrelson & John C. Reilly singing a song in very bad taste from Altman's last picture.

And here's an an old jazz barnstormer that features many of the Kansas City musicians that Robert Altman grew up with. I'm betting that this kind of devil's music is being played in heaven.

This past weekend Juliette and I went to the Two Days Of Autumn music fest put on by Folk Yeah at Fernwood up in Big Sur.

Nat Russell from Birds Of America made these rad posters for it.

The music was so inspiring that I made this playlist with most of the artists who played. (Click here if you're on a Mac).

Jenny Lewis showed up sans Watson Twins and played a few songs (photos by Danielle Rubi). She was accompanied by Jonathan Rice and Farmer Dave Scher. Damn, she's got a good voice.

Fresh from touring with Feist, Rubies played an awesome set of soulful funk folk. They just finished recording in Stockholm, so we should have a full length any time now, right Simone?

Winter Flowers showed up and beat the living crap out of a bunch of people in the audience with baseball bats and then they played an exquisite set of beautiful, British psych-folk inspired songs. After that, mandolin player Christof and I burned down the venue and played music around the flames as helpless people ran for help (photos by Rachel Frank).

Just kidding. But we did get to kickstart the campfire sing-a-long jam. After my fingers got sore, Juliette and I sat around the campfire and made like real hippies (photo by Danielle Rubi).

On Friday night I also got to sing one of my own songs as well as Bread's "The Goodbye Girl" with Bart Davenport and Etienne de Rocher.

It was good to see Farmer Dave. Last time I saw him was over a year ago in LA.

Dude was super busy Saturday night. He played steel with Jenny Lewis, Vetiver, Jonathan Wilson and someone else I'm forgetting.

This guy totally stole my lighter.

This gal totally stole my heart (photos by Danielle Rubi).

That's Paula Frazer. She actually brought her band Tarnation along to play.

My old friend Jennifer Maerz showed up and we caught up briefly and then watched Birds of America.

After their performance Nat said we should start a band called Beards Of America. I don't get it.

Vetiver played with Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats. It was cool and all, but I'd much rather hear them perform with Alyssa on cello (just sayin'...)

Giant albino coyotes sang quilted backing harmonies to Matt Baldwin's awesome finger picking and Sam Flax's analog soundscapes. At the time, I thought I was just "seeing things" but this photo proves that it really happened.

Terri Loewenthal was on double duty playing bass with Rubies and the Court & Spark. Here's a really bad photo of her (sorry, Tee) with Elisa Randazzo of Fairechild.

I really wish Elisa would have played some of her new songs, but she told me that she was only there to drink beer and kick ass (you should have seen what happened when she ran out of beer).

I also got to see a horse. I called this one "Old Paint."

On the last day Juliette and I went to Pfeiffer Beach, where there's this doorway cut out of the rock. I'm not sure how it got there. I guess nature did it. But as the sun went down, it started beaming right through the door and I think it was the prettiest thing I've ever seen in my whole life maybe.

Big thanks go out to Britt for putting this on. Can't wait for the next one.

Over here at Rhapsody Jazz HQ, we don't have anything CMJ-centric to report. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure what CMJ is. Coltrane & Miles Jam maybe?

My bosses did give me a bus token and sent me over to an arts center to watch a new documentary on the jazz arranger and vibraphonist Gary McFarland. You can check out the trailer for the movie here. They definitely had fun with this one and use a lot of groovy animated images to give a feeling of the hip world McFarland lived in.

Unlike almost every other musician, Gary McFarland seriously got into jazz pretty late in life.  After he was drafted, he was stuck on an army base and had plenty of time to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He was so talented that he was immediately successful at jazz and he won a full scholarship to a prestigious university. McFarland quit school after only a semester and headed off to New York, where he instantly found professional work. It didn't hurt that he was friendly, popular, and seemed to get along with everybody. He lived a charmed life for a while there.

I have some of McFarland's solo albums and his superior 1962 set with Stan Getz (Big Band Bossa Nova), but the guy did a lot in a pretty short amount of time. The movie introduced me to the album that he recorded with the incomparable pianist Bill Evans. While the original record is long out of print, all the tracks appear on the box set The Complete Bill Evans on Verve.

The songs "Reflections in the Park" and "Tree Patterns" should give you some idea of how beautifully Evans and McFarland sound together. While he never gave himself much credit as a vibraphonist, the arranger sounds fine playing with Bill Evans -- something you have to be at the top of your game to accomplish.

(On a side note, I'll be working with Verve to get more of McFarland's Verve and Impulse records back in print on Rhapsody).

Gary McFarland then turned part of his attention over to what the kids now call lounge music. Bands like Stereolab are big fans of the easy listening stuff Gary McFarland did. McFarland also crafted the first jazz/rock/classical fusion record, beating Miles Davis to the punch.

The cover painting of a crying bald eagle should clue you into the fact that America the Beautiful is an instrumental protest record. So should song titles like "Suburbia: Two Poodles and a Plastic Jesus" and "Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow Has Been Canceled." Believe it or not, this complex song suite was a big hit...the album was nominated for a Grammy and its cover actually won the coveted award for best designed sleeve of the year.

This is where the story starts to turn dark. America the Beautiful suddenly disappeared from the shelves because McFarland's manager had robbed him blind, causing his new record label to fold. A Gentleman Drinker (always drinking, rarely acting drunk), he also started to do various substances to help him work at a feverish pace. Then, in 1971, Gary McFarland and another man died from an accidental overdose (a third friend went into a coma but luckily came out of it alive). There are two stories, both involving a filthy hippy who didn't need his dose of methadone because he just scored heroin.

One story is that the hippy slipped the methadone into three drinks at a bar. The other is that he dared three guys at a bar to drink his methadone. We'll never know the truth because the bar where it happened in was run by the mob. The mob was protected by NYC's finest, the very people who are meant to solve questionable deaths. That meant that the cops refused to even give Gary McFarland a cause of death. They also refused to question the filthy hippy, and even threatened his McFarland's family to stop pursuing the case.

While I actually think that somebody could make a whole documentary on a jazz arrangers death and a crooked police dept, the movie This Is Gary McFarland is well worth seeking out. Its currently touring the film festival circuit and will hopefully end up on DVD. Its full of choice footage and interview with jazz legends and lets you remember the work of a talented, successful musician whose jazz, lounge and rock music still resonates today.

By Tim Quirk

CMJ ended days ago, and I haven’t had a drink (or an ill-advised second round of pizza at 3 in the morning) since, but random memories keep resurfacing, like the flashbacks to Iwo Jima in Clint Eastwood's new movie…

Mew's a band whose record I heard before seeing them play, and thought, "eh." Then I saw them live and thought, "eh!" But there's a lot going on in that exclamation mark.

By Tim Quirk 

Beer. Lines. Texting friends to see if the lines they're standing in are any shorter. More beer. Every once in a while, some actual music. Still more beer. And, every once in an even greater while, some music that is actually great and makes all that other stuff worthwhile. Which means you must buy some more beer to celebrate, and text your friends to let them know they stood in the wrong long line.

This is CMJ, something that probably sucks if you add up all the pros then subtract all the cons, but which I am nonetheless glad I attended, and not only because I wouldn’t be in love with the Whigs right now if I hadn’t.

By Tim Quirk

What a week! At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, this year's CMJ was the best one ever. OK, maybe not, but it was the best one that I've ever attended, although the tone of my trip was set somewhat stressfully -- when I arrived at SFO my flight was delayed four hours. But the airport’s museum was coincidently showing an awesome music themed exhibit entitled, "The History of Audio: The Engineering of Sound." 

So I checked it out. There were triumphantly geeky displays of vintage recording devices that would have fogged up the glasses of Steve Albini and the guys from Tape Op magazine. In loving contrast to the invention of high fidelity, I took these lo-fi pictures on my janky, dated Motorola phone:

Day One:

After finally touching down at JFK and checking in to the historical Hotel Chelsea (yes, I am a total sucker for rock and roll cliches), I picked up my CMJ badge, scarfed down a Katz's pastrami sandwich

By Tim Quirk 

All the sordid details will be coming eventually. These include, but are not limited to, answering the question, "Who shouts out 'woo!' at a Carly Simon show?"; determining if the front dude in Mew is a T-Rex (really, just look at the way his non-mic-holding arm simply hangs there unmajestically); explaining why the Grates actually are, even though the singer comes across as Karen O as played by an oddly giggly Reese Witherspoon; counting how many times Erase Errata sing about knives; trying to figure out if the Knife actually made any music or just danced around in front of it, and if it matters either way when you have such super cool disembodied heads projected around you; and providing context for Jon Langford saying, "I would take the Dalai Lama roughly from the rear while Bono tickled my testicles with a real estate brochure."