On one hand I was working on a piece about the local Jewish congregation and it’s Bob Dylan-based Shabbat service.
On the other hand, I had interviewed jazz pianist Matthew Shipp about his new album.
So why not combine the two pieces, before my right hand loses her cunning, and imagine what would happen if a congregation asked the jazz musician to look at the service with fresh eyes and jazz it up a bit?
It reminds me of the conversation I had about jazz education at Stanford, and whether a music professor was upset that so few of his students made a career in the arts. The elder musician in the conversation added, “If you were going in for open heart surgery, you would want it that you doctor knew how to improvise, right?”
edit to add, Monday, April 2: I ran into Aleta Hayes, the triple threat Stanford instructor and collaborator of Matthew Shipp and mentioned this idea to her and she didn’t laugh me out of the room, not even after I tried to squat next to her table on using my Penguin Jazz encyclopedia as a stool, which sent me falling back onto my backline. Aleta, who toured with William Parker and I think also Shipp overseas, is a “triple threat” in that she sings, dances and acts/directs.
In the Bob Dylan Shabbat 3/30/2012 “Fifth Friday” Evening Service, by Ari Cartun of Etz Chayim et al, on page 16, v’Sham’ru (based on Exodus 31:16-17, and Debbie Friedman version) it says “and on the 7th day, ceased (shavat) and infused-the-universe-with-soul(vayinafash)”
It also reminds me, especially this time of year, about the link between blacks and Jews regarding Exodus and “let my people go” and “Go Down Moses” the famous spiritual. Also, without even asking him about his spiritual beliefs or upbringing, I notice that his catalog has both a folk mass and a title about Ultimate Power or The Almighty or the Infinite. So although he is drawn into this hypothetical conversation somewhat randomly — his album came out in the last month or so — he would not be the least qualified person to be asked to do this type of thing, to re-imagine a Shabbat service and “vayinafash” it — infuse it with some jazz soul. Rather, Shipp is one of a fairly large universe — by my reckoning — or beautiful jazz minds who could probably, if asked nicely, add something to the Jewish experience and worship. I am thinking also of Dar Williams at a Jewish camp in Pennsylvania, I watched some video on recently.
Wednesday Andrew Bird performed live on Jimmy Fallon to congratulate himself on the release of his sixth solo cd “Break It Yourself.” Wasn’t too long ago that I caught Andrew playing in the convention center daytime during SXSW, and it was just his manager Andrea Troolin and I as the audience. I recall meeting Andrea because my client Caroline Beatty thought Howie Greynolds of Overcoat would like her recent material, and he passed me the name of Andrea, who actually lived out here for a while before moving to Minnesota. All these people are effective refutation of the Leo Durocher adage “nice guys finish last”.
It was about a year ago that Jack Walrath and other members of the Charles Mingus Workshop jammed with student musicians at Stanford including a promising trumpet player I befriended named Amitai.
edit to add, April 2: I spoke to Jack Walrath briefly Saturday, spurred on by meeting the NoLa styled jazz band I met at a computer-themed street fair on High Street in Palo Alto, including a guy named Eric Burger playing a plastic trombone he said he bought for $150. Jack said he was not out here recently this year with the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Mingus project.
The New York Times today has a featrued story on Mac Rebennack, the artist known as Dr. John, the artist formerly known as Dr. John the Night Tripper.
He was in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time, and all dat.
He has a new cd on Nonesuch, a collaboration with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys (from Akron, Ohio, to Mac’s New Orleans).
My only Dr. John story is first of all that if you are hip you refer to him as Mac; this is a little confusing if you also hang out in Chapel Hill and talk obsessively, as I do, about Mac from Superchunk and Merge.
The second thing about Mac is that he is or was a fantastic producer and multi-instrumentalist, well before the Dr. John thing.
And the third of course is that his schtick was originally very tied in to the New Orleans voo doo scene, which I guess the article is saying he is shedding like a rattlesnake skin.
When I was briefly Henry Butler’s manager, for six months in 2002, I tried to immerse myself in the entire history of New Orleans musica and for example very deliberatly sought out Dr. John. I waited in line to say him to him at Yoshi’s in Oakland. I bought him a Zuni fetish, of a bear, from the trading post on College near Clarmont in Berkeley or Oakland.
Meanwhile, tonight or this weekend there is Galactic and Rebirth in SF, at competing locales. I think Rebirth also plays Santa Cruz or Felton in the next couple days.
I am off to see not Rebennack but the Rebbe Ari Cartun work some Bob Dylan ju-doo if you feel me on that.
Not merely to confuse Satan I would say in the right place wrong time category that Mac is at BAM, I am at Etz Chayim but Dan Bern is in Sacramento.
edit to add, like four minutes later: the article says its a Nashville album, but with an Ethiopian jones; I would try to see this when it comes through here. And he plays farfisa not piano.
I rang the doorbell and said I was your student in 1968 and she let me in. Before leaving she took me to the magic mirror again, like she did forty years prior. Did all this really happen or did a just step through the mirror and step out an adult?
I saw this mural and pulled over before realizing it was in the shadow of the landmark Capitol Records and part of same complex, near my friend's home.
Matt The Electrician, Saxon Pub, Austin, Spring, 2009
I met Greg Camp on a SWA flight between Burbank and San Jo in the weirdest way in that I was blabbing on about Smashmouth to the dude on the aisle and then the dude at the window pulled out his earbuds and said "You are talking about my band."
Akira Tana and his organ trio will perform at Santa Clara University De Saisset Museum Thursday, April 12, 2012 to honor "Indelibly Yours" Tattoo art show featuring Enrique Chagoya, Kara Maria, Kathryn Kain and George Herms.
Artist, printer and teacher Kathryn Kain is one of twelve artists comprising "Indelibly Yours" which debuted at Smith-Andersen last winter and continues at Santa Clara De Saisset Museum, and in a beautiful catalog of the show.
Stanford professor and artist Enrique Chagoya chats with Palo Alto arts commissioner, Stanford affiliate and artist Terry Acebo Davis at the Fall, 2011 opening of "the Tattoo Project" which is on display at Santa Clara University.
THE LOVELY SANTA CLARA CURATOR LINDSEY KOUVARIS IS EXPECTING great things from the Thursday, April 12 opening party for the tattoo art project.
Henry Adams wrote a famous essay about a hundred years ago about the dynamo and the virgin. He was observing changes especially technology and his eloquent treatise states that the machines are upsetting the apple cart in terms of the way people looked at nature and nature and Mom and Jesus and Europe and all that.
Gosh, what would he have said about Nellie McKay the triple threat and almost femme fatale pop jazz whirlwind, who I noticed in New York Times had some sort of song-cycle or thru-composed piece?
Reminds me of the time….twinkle, twankle, tfinkle, tfum….help Mr. Wizard…transporting…
I once barged into an interview that Steve Horowitz of Pop Matters was conducting in the lobby of the Driskill Hotel in Austin during SXSW2009 and put Nellie McKay on the phone with Ian MacKaye and just noticed, two years after, that the incident made it into Steve’s piece.
At this point in the conversation a stranger intrudes and asks who we are and what we’re doing. This is one of the perils of doing an interview in a public place during SXSW. His name is Mark Weiss. And he’s a concert promoter. When Weiss learns who McKay is, he volunteers that he’s a friend of the musician Ian McKaye (Fugazi) and proceeds to get him on the telephone because the two share the same last name. The two musicians have never met before and chat briefly. I hear a mention of Washington D.C. and the names of shared friends. The two people share a history of combining their music and social activism. After the call is over, I ask McKay what they talked about and if it felt like an historic moment. She laughs.
“He’s in San Francisco at a party with Shirley McLaine. So it’s a “Mc” kind of day. The Scots must be out in force now that St. Paddy’s is over.”
I had met Ian a couple years earlier when I had presented The Evens (Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina) at Terman Middle School Auditorium in Palo Alto, and, although I had no business doing such, I had saved his cell phone number in my handheld. But Ian took the call and I put him on with Nellie. Steve’s account differs slightly from what I heard, but I thought Nellie said, punning on their mutual prefix, “It’s a ‘muck’ kind of day.” or something (Steve has it spelled out “mc” more literally, but easily confused with the abbreviation for “master of ceremonies”).
Ian’s The Evens show was notable for having taken place in a room that years earlier was the scene of a school dance in which, or so he told the crowd, he was too shy to ask anyone to dance: Ian had lived in Palo Alto that one year, for him eighth grade, when his father was a fellow at Stanford. The Palo Alto Weekly reported this, about Ian’s Palo Alto connection. It is also true that Ian or someone in his camp had seen listings about my all ages series at Cubberley and had tried to rent the space for a show but was refused.
Besides seeing Fugazi at Ian Brennan famous co-bill at Dolores Park (with Sleater-Kinney, Greil Marcus described it in the New York Times
check p 202 for mention of Sleater-Kinney in this new book, as I saw it in Mountain View store
) I also happened to visit the second floor of the Whitney Museum in New York in 2000 at the precise time Jem Cohen’s “Instrument” was sceening, which I took as a sign and took in the film.
It was Ian Brennan (pronounced “EYE-an”, and not the guy from “Glee”) who put MacKaye (“mick EYE”) in touch with me, and he also produced the show the following night at Cafe DuNord (that featured BARR as openers — at that show I recall Kim Chun of the Bay Guardian introducing me to Joanna Newsom as “an old ‘G’ concert promoter”!!!).
Ian MacKaye, as memory unwinds like an onion or salt-water taffy, also graciously did a “meet the artists/ career in music” lunchtime appearance at the middle school day of show. He later said he had lost his yearbook of that year but fellow Palo Altan Gina Arnold had had a mimeographed copy made, which he keeps. (There is supposedly an archive at Palo Alto Library, via Steve Staiger, called “Palo Alto Rock and Roll Archive / Jerry Garcia Day” and I add musicians to it as I find them — The Donnas, Third Eye Blind, the dude, Chris Appelgren from the Pee Chees, who did one year in PAUSD — and I hope to get a copy of the copy of Gina’s gift to Ian — maybe now that Karen Holman is on City Council the Palo Alto Historical Association will actualize my concept here, but I really, really digress…)
Here is a brief excerpt from the Fugazi film:
Edit to add, the next day: not to digress too far from Ian and Nellie, but Greil’s long review of the Sleater-Kinney Fugazi show is actually for Food Not Bombs 20th anniversary, fitting in with Steve’s socially conscious theme.
Edit to add, forty five minutes after previous — 2:30 Friday, April 29, 2011: I am going to paste in Molly Tanenbaum’s 2000 preview of The Evens in Palo Alto because there is some vagary in the way it is archived on the Palo Alto Weekly site; there is also a less relevant (!) review of cd by Marc Burkhardt and I found a blogger review and photo of show itself — and kinda fits, in “plastic alto logic,” because Horowitz notes that Nellie McKay appeared on a panel about concerts in unusual venues:
Terman Middle School proves just the right venue for Fugazi founder Ian MacKaye
by Molly Tanenbaum
It’s hard to beat paying $5 for an evening of live music in Palo Alto. But punk rocker Ian MacKaye will tell you that’s exactly how it should be.
MacKaye will perform with his new band, The Evens, next Tuesday evening at Palo Alto’s Terman Middle School. All are welcome — and the price is right.
Performing in a school auditorium is nothing new to MacKaye. As singer-guitarist of indie-legends Minor Threat and Fugazi, Mackaye’s anti-corporate reputation set him apart from the crowd. Believing in music for music’s sake, Mackaye has released $10 CDs, favored community concert spaces over rock clubs and turned down numerous lucrative offers from large record labels over the course of his career.
“What it does is it inhibits innovation and new ideas,” said Mackaye, the co-founder of Dischord Records, a 25-year-old independent label. “The thing with new ideas is they have no audience. They haven’t been thought of yet. I think it’s important to have access to spaces. The idea of free spaces is very important,”
MacKaye’s new group, The Evens, is comprised of himself and drummer Amy Farina of The Warmers. The two are longtime friends who met through MacKaye’s brother, Alec, the Warmers’ guitarist and singer.
Farina and MacKaye have performed over 50 shows since forming a year ago. The Evens will arrive in the Peninsula after a week of touring in Los Angeles.
When asked about The Evens’ style, MacKaye replied, “That’s the thing about music. If you could put it into words, you wouldn’t have to play the music.”
But he did provide some hints.
“I will say this: We’re not super loud. We sing. Lots of singing going on. And we’re definitely not interested in playing in rock clubs. We’d like to reclaim music and let it come back into spaces that are a little less commercially oriented.”
The Evens selected the Palo Alto concert venue because of MacKaye’s history in the area. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he attended seventh grade at Terman Middle School while his father was on fellowship at Stanford University.
“That was the only nine-month period that I didn’t live in the District so it’s significant in my mind,” he said.
MacKaye was dismayed at how difficult it was to find a concert space in Palo Alto, but he is pleased to be able to play in Terman’s auditorium, the locale of his very first school dance.
The concert will bring back memories, both fond and a bit painful, of the time he spent in Palo Alto. He remembered the difficulties of being the new kid in school.
“I had really long hair and was pretty tattered. I was a hippy kid. It was 1974. I walked into junior high and these kids were wearing corduroys and Adidas and Izod. I felt like I was dropped off in another land. It was intimidating. No one would talk to me and I thought they were all snobs but it turned out everyone was scared of me because I was from the East Coast,” he recalled.
Prior to the concert, MacKaye will give a lunchtime talk to interested Terman middle-schoolers. But, from experience, he doesn’t expect the students to have heard of him, The Evens, Fugazi or Dischord Records.
“I’ve only spoken to one younger school and they’re like, “Who is this guy?”
MacKaye won’t bring a prepared speech; he just hopes interested students will attend and ask him questions. But MacKaye has an inkling as to why producer Mark Weiss asked him to talk to the students.
“I just don’t practice the general American business ethic, which is to grow and sell, grow and sell, grown and sell. And I actually have a really different approach. So maybe he thinks that it’s a voice that has been overwhelmed by the din of avarice,” MacKaye said.
Palo Altan Weiss, producer of the upcoming show and fellow Terman graduate, set up the afternoon Q&A session because he views MacKaye as a potential role model for the young audience. He was impressed when he heard MacKaye speak in the past.
“He’s not a really famous musician on MTV but I think kids can tell who is an interesting person when they meet an artist or a musician. He’s an interesting guy and he’s done interesting things with his life and I think kids will find that rewarding and inspiring,” Weiss said.
MacKaye’s modesty and down-to-earth attitude about creating music may be just the right message for middle schoolers who have grown up on MTV, “American Idol” and the fleeting stardom of countless performers.
“If you think back to when you were 10, 11, 12 years old, kids are just coming to grips with music and they’re engaging with the music that’s being spoon-fed to them.”
MacKaye admitted to liking The Monkees as a youth, pointing out that simply the idea of music fascinated him at a young age, and that was what was available to him at the time.
What’s important for young aspiring musicians, MacKaye said, is sticking to their passion and not prioritizing money over art.
“What’s more discouraging to me is when people make decisions based on what’s expected of them and that’s crippling in the long run in terms of creativity. It’s more important that people actually believe in what they’re doing,” he said.
“If me and my friends could do it then anyone could do it. My advice is not to get caught up in the way things are supposed to be and focus on the way you want them to be,” he continued.
Recalling his middle-school days, MacKaye said he felt discouraged about the possibility of becoming a musician.
“I had given up at that point that I’d ever be able to play rock because at that time it seemed like rock and roll was out of reach and that people doing it were anointed by the queen. They were so high falutin’ and so far removed and unreachable by a kid like me,” he said.
It wasn’t until 1979 when high-schooler MacKaye taught himself to play the bass, and then the guitar. It was the freedom of punk rock that revived him.
“That was what was so deeply important about punk rock in the late ’70s…For me, punk rock was a free space where new ideas could be presented because profit was not the primary motivation.”
His late high-school band, the Teen Idles, launched his music career. From those roots, MacKaye formed Minor Threat in the early ’80s and Fugazi in 1987. The band, comprised of Mackaye, Brendan Canty, Joe Lally and Guy Picciotto, was known for its austere, mid-tempo punk sound. They toured for 15 years but have been on hiatus since 2002, allowing members to attend to their personal lives.
Although The Evens will release their self-titled album March 8, they decided to tour the Bay Area in February. When asked why he wasn’t waiting for the album’s release to tour, MacKaye said, “I’m of the mind that records support shows and not the other way around. The industry has skewed that idea.”
Ok, that’s more about Ian MacKaye and Me than it is Nellie McKay — I’ve really mucked this up. Her show is called “Silent Spring – – How not to Fool Mother Nature” and for someone called Earthwise Productions I should really get down with it so to speak and think about how to bring that to the 650.
Nellie played the excellent and influential Los Gatos free music series recently — Palo Alto lags there. We are like that dun beetle in that children’s film I took my nephews to about 1993 pushing the little ball up the hill and back like Sysyphus. But he or she or dun beetle who is first will later be last and vice verse, although the recent Philip K. Dick essay I was reading here at Foothill College library makes me worry that time is a lot more complicated than that.
I think of Nellie McKay as piano but she also plays uke and what we have in common is that she has a song title from a previous recent album that is the same as my Fantasy Football League team: Beneath the Under Dog.
She is on Verve now and I wonder if she overlapped with Jason Olaine there. I met Jamie Cullum for the first time via Jason, at IAJE.
I don’t think the Rachel Carson tribute NY residency new stuff has been recorded yet but her birthday is coming up April 13, she turns 30.
I captured Meridith Valiando, a publishing executive with Universal, about an hour ago, while watching Letterman, then cracked upon the laptop for some random post, meanwhile vaguely monitoring now, 45 minutes later, Charlie Rose about “Ad Men” a show I haven’t really seen, although I am a refugee from that industry, would see the Lee Clow doc, and dug the reference to “Putney Swope”.
The lady in the ad says she gets 1,000 emails every day, and also says that if we buy the other brand of hand-held computer and phone device we would not be able to type as easily so many emails.
Notice that she does not, of course, say that she returns 1,000 emails per day. That part would be fibbing. Or fibbing twice.
I won’t mention the brand name, the people that paid for her endorsement –although it seems they spelled her name wrong — “Meredith” vs. “Meridith” — or is it just me — that’s the danger of late night blogging — I got the Valiando part right — I am leaving it tagged both ways — but it is the one that had or has a nickname that references an addictive cocaine derivative.
Although they don’t say this in the spot she is the founder of a tour of bands that all score well on the leading online video site which I tend to name but don’t here even though it integrates so well with this format and with Patch.
It came thru Oakland at the New Parish which I somehow missed, but is coming to Boston (or Cambridge) to the Middle East a cool club, I saw Mark Kozelek there and I think was even guested that night by the Mitch Okmin’s office. As cool as I am.
The nice looking publishing lady and tour producer also, to me more relevantly, attended or was perhaps a panelist at something I also missed called Creators Project, a joint production (“are you cool?” — did I really post on Patch about Joe Simitian speaking “High” …”on what?” today? ) of Intel and Vice. That was at Fort Mason — though strangely overlapping a wee bit too closely with SXSW -which I also missed this year — and featured Yeah Yeah Yeahs and something I sussed up Zola Jesus which must be cool because it is booked by Sam Hunt of Windish.
Off topic slightly but I liked the cover of Joe Jackson “Fools in Love” by a female vocalist I will have to track down later. Unless of course my new best friend Meridith Valiando knows off the top of her head, or better its her song — her company or division is actually called Rondor and seems to be a residual of AlMo records — Herb Alpert and Al Moss — I recall them as Ozomatli’s first label –and writes me back.
I will drop her a quick line — maybe thru the tour publicist — and see what happens and will report back.
Oh yeah (but not Karen O. Yeah Yeah Yeah) the digression to Creators Project led me to suss up a local band –although one site said Brooklyn not Frisco, like Sleepless the band that opened for AOL at GAMH at Noise Pop that I have been saving in my phone but maybe can sneak in here uber-gratuitously I mean Big Sleep — its a little rary reference Chandler and all that, don’t you know, but from Brooklyn, but not Motherless Brooklyn but close enough, lethem read it and weep, I wanted to mention Hundred in the Hands — which for a second hand me believing included a South African visual artist I kinda like named Zander Blom —no they don’t work with him they just write about him — that sounds familiar — a guy and girl named Friedman I think and something kinda Frenchy, with 18,000 “likes” on the leading over-valued pre-IPO but only six reviews of their cd on Amazon, and no agent or management contact one can find quickly — the record was 2010 on Warp and the name seems to reference Lakota vs what Custer’s Last Stand or something? Anyhow, maybe they partied with our Miss Meredith. http://thehundredinthehands.com/
link on! Do people say that, like for a while they said “Right on!” (the second time — then they said “right arm” — “link arm?” that sounds like you are getting ready for pepper spray or something — man, Charlie Rose is dead I mean done, why am I still writing? I wanted to say that it took me and my stupid phone 8 minutes to load up Ms. Meridith becuase I had to delete something else to fit it. Now I’ve deleted her, accept here at wordpress and my yahoo storage).
Danny of Big Sleep at Noise Pop 2012 booked by Windish Agency and formerly on Frenchkiss but not necessarily endorsing a smartphone or Universal or Meridith photo by Mark Weiss sounds like Sonic Youth
edit to add, June, a few months later:
This is a surprisingly popular post for me. I will link to the dude who is outright claiming less delicately than me that the lady in the video does not actually get 1,000 emails per day. Also, I answered my own question, rather than waiting for Valiando to do so, that the Joe Jackson cover I heard on “Grey’s Anatomy” is by Inara George, daughter of Lowell George of Little Feet, and partner with the ex-partner of my friend Tommy Jordan Greg Kurstin ex-Geggy Tah Bird and Bee. Joe Jackson makes about 8 cents per unit for every bit Inara sells and presumably half the money from movie and ad placements, although don’t quote me, tv might be part of a blanket agreement.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 