The Roving Musicologist

Weyes Bluhd Part 2 (Baltimore and other places)

That’s how it goes.

This is a song from a set recorded in October 2009.  The other song can be found in an earlier post. 

This was the first song from the set, and it has a way of wrapping itself around you like a mist.  The mixture of tapes, live instruments, and singing in this song is done very well and shows some good instincts.

I’m not sure what exactly Weyes Bluhd is up to right now, but she seems to stay busy wherever she goes.

Travel post #17: Thai Karaoke Hypnosis Therapy

Finally something that rocks!

Giant Kittens and Karaoke are two of the prime ingredients for Thai night ambiance.

Many times, the batteries run out.  That’s it, give up, moments gone.  Not this one, though.  I had time to go downtown, buy batteries, and come back.  They were still at it.  They invited me in for a few drinks…and musicologist gold.  Then they asked for money and the moment was over.

The Karaoke was done with live instruments.

Travel Post #10: Jackie Triste at Garazsfesztival (Dunaujvaros, Hungary)

Getting a good grip is essential for certain performers.

People like Jackie Triste.  While he is primarily a conceptual artist, he also makes music.  He doesn’t seem particularly concerned with booking shows or releasing material, but because people like what he does, he ends up doing both.

I met Jackie Triste to catch a ride with some other people out to Dunaujvaros for the festival.  We were waiting for someone in a band called Rovar17 and also an internet DJ.  There was a delay because someone had forgotten their keys across town.  Then there was another delay because of general incompetence.  Then they stopped answering our calls.

As the restaurant we were waiting in began to close, Jackie, whose actual name is Peter, began to make ultimatums.  He’d had enough of these hippies.

“Another ten minutes and if they’re not here I’m not going to play the show.”

Another ten minutes went by.  He asked if I was really interested in this thing.  I said, well yes…

“OK, another half an hour.”

Another span of time went by, with Peter saying he wasn’t going to play, walking back and forth in the street.  Finally, he turned back to me and said

“I should just give up music altogether.”

Jackie Triste Trudging Forward

Of course he didn’t that night, and when we arrived in Dunaujvaros we found the row of garages and the festival.  It was something paid for by the government to spread the arts outside of Budapest.  The noise garage was far at one end, barely even part of the festival.  Right across from it was the metal garage, and there was something of a sonic battle going on all night.

http://www.myspace.com/jackietriste

http://garazsfesztival.blogspot.com/

Travel Post #7: GFF part 2: The Old Man

I’m always trying to find old men playing any kind of instrument.  I don’t like it when people can sing too well, when their voices can handle any note with ease.  Playing traditional music makes some people work…they can’t change the notes around to fit their range.

There were about fifty people onstage when this guy played.  Various people would play together during the set, and sometimes the entire orchestra.  Then there were a few two minute solo songs.  This guy came forward, did his thing, and then rejoined the line, like it was no big deal.

This is probably it for the traditional music posts for awhile…I am currently in Turkey which abounds with interesting street noise.

The lucky charm of an Albanian bus driver.

Travel Post #6: Gjirokaster Folk Festival with Three Women

High in the Mountains

Gjirokaster is a small town in the south of Albania.  All of the old houses are made of stone.  Even the roofs of the houses are made of a black slate that is found on the hillsides.  Because of a lack on investment in the town, there isn’t money to keep them up and there are wrecks of the houses scattered around town.  But many of them are still up and there is an Ottoman castle on the top of the mountain.  That’s where this festival was, overlooking the valley far below.

These singers were about the first thing I heard when I came in, and one of the two best things I recorded over the course of two days there.

While it sounds like it has been looped, it hasn’t.

Grandfather Claws (Portland, Oregon)

This Band performs sitting on the ground without back support, hence stretching is necessary to maintain proper posture.

Grandfather Claws is a band, two men and two women, that I happened to catch shortly before I left Oregon.  I found them in the few recordings that I took with me when I left the country and they seem to be an appropriate thing to post after Michael Hurley, as they both represent, for me, a sort of rambling approach to folk music.  What people call noise music, while it is approached from many angles, is at its core more folk than anything else.  While it is influenced by esoteric ideas from all over the spectrum of music (well, hopefully), when you go to a noise show you are seeing these ideas being refracted in a way that will almost necessarily reflect a homespun approach.

http://www.myspace.com/grandfatherclaws

What I have posted here is only about a quarter of the show; to post more I would have had to reduce the quality to the point that many of the quieter tones would have been lost.

Michael Hurley of Astoria, Oregon

There is scratching at the beginning, then things get better.

How you will see the world after Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley was there for the folk scene in early 1960’s New York, was associated with the Holy Modal Rounders, and now lives out in the land of the Goonies.  He played this show in an art gallery run buy a big guy with a ponytail.  We came in a little late and so paid at the end of the show.  Right after we paid, one of the small town weirdos came up to the art gallery owner and started talking about how someone had ruined their system for stealing breakfast from the local diner.  Ponyman was just trying to get us out of there at that point…this is who we had given our money to, some guy that loved to steal breakfast, not to Michael Hurley.  So I bought a couple of his comics and my friend bought a cd…because we have to keep Michael Hurley alive:

http://www.snockonews.net/

He wears this shirt a lot.

Radio Eris (Philadelphia)

This Gorilla/Earth Juxtaposition courtesy of Radio Eris Myspace (Link at Bottom)

Residing in the Eris Temple Artspace, Radio Eris provides a space for musicians to fill with sound as well as a solid band to anchor the shows.

The tastefully done basement.

The artspace is a three or four floor house in Philadelphia.  Coming in off of the street, which has all the charm of the cheaper parts of town, you find yourself in a strange music haven.  There were instruments of various kinds known and not, records, weird books, everything you come to expect from a good house venue, but done on a scale that is rarely found.  The Eris Temple has created a place that reflects the approach of Radio Eris to music and the possibilities for how it can be shared.  They even offered every band that played a copy of their show on CD-R, right on the spot.

Please dress appropriately and exercise erudition when visiting the temple.

Link to Eris Temple Artspace:

http://www.myspace.com/eristemple

Link to Radio Eris:

http://www.myspace.com/radio5eris

Sioux City Pete and the Beggars (Sioux City and Seattle)

Sioux City Pete feeds his fans in more ways than one.

Sioux city Pete is something of a legend among punk kids in the upper midwest.  Every show seems like something of a debacle.  Things get broken, intra band drama is always at high pitch, and things fall apart completely more often than seems possible for a band that continues to tour.
Formerly of the Chickenhawks, Sioux City Pete formed the Beggars with his girlfriend Amanda on guitar, Lexi Lutter on another guitar, and a rotating cast of drummers, among them (and I believe currently) Joe Ross.

It’s never what it seems.

It’s hard to pin down exactly why I find this band compelling.  If you listen to the track carefully, you can hear that some of the guitar playing makes no sense.  That would probably be Amanda, who at this show was basically sprawled out on the stage looking like she was about to pass out.  She was strumming almost at random, but then again, not quite.

For me, this band exemplifes what I call a “chaos band.”  It has nothing to do with the style of music.  It is more of a designation for a band that gives you no idea what they might do when they show up, or whether they will show up at all.        
For instance, the last time I saw them in Portland, Oregon the drummer had just been kicked out because he drank (sort of a no-no with these guys, stick to your meds!) and attacked the other people in the band.  The roadie did his best to fill in but had never played drums for more than 10 minutes at a time. It wasn’t a great show, but if you were a fan of the band, it was just another strange event in the continuing legend of Sioux City Pete.

The clip above is from a  show that was much better, although I heard that at another show shortly after this Lexi kicked some glasses off of a bar and had to take a break for awhile.

Sioux City Pete’s page:

http://www.myspace.com/siouxcitypeteandthebeggars

Maths Balance Volumes of Mankato and Toledo

MBV is constant change.  Any attempt to classify them will be out of date by the time you hear them again.  They have never been too crazy about traditional song structure, and in time they moved past jamming, past performance, past reckoning with anyone but themselves.  It’s not that they don’t want you to listen to them; they just want to be sure about what they are saying, even if it stamps out any idea of what others think music should be.

Music can be fun, although at times a standoff may develop.

Maths Balance Volumes began as a music collective but the prime movers have always been Jameson Sweiger and Clayton Kohlbinger.  After releasing the album “Lower Forms” featuring vocals by Alena, they went on a tour of the Midwest and Northeast with Weyes Bluhd.  Their only instruments at this time were vocals, tapedecks and a reel-to-reel, run through various effects.

Wood becomes a table for instruments in the hands of these intrepid performers.

This recording is from Charlottesville, Virginia, from a show they crashed when the show they were supposed to play fell through.  By fell through, I mean the venue was locked and darkened, the owner didn’t answer his phone, and the late October cold kept getting colder.  Fortunately, some kids at an art gallery were nice enough to let them play, although they didn’t fit with the mellow form of folk-rock that preceded them.  In order to set the mood for yourself, imagine a crappy James Taylor wanna-be coming on before these guys, and I think you will understand why they were almost literally swept out the door.  I was right there…they opened the door and swept a cloud of crap right in our faces.
The last I heard, these guys had moved on to Toledo, Ohio in search of a bit larger town.  Their releases are available on the Chocolate Monk label.

The Maths Balance Volumes web page:

mathsbalancevolumes.tripod.com/

Smegma of Portland, Oregon (Part 1)

There are very few people who have been continuously active in experimental music for as long as Smegma.  They have been making music, in various combinations, since they formed in Pasadena in the early 70’s.

This recording is a collaboration with Nour Mobarak and Parker Lemus.  It was performed as a live soundtrack for a movie Nour had previously made.

The next part of this series will feature an interview by Smegma where they talk about their beginnings, what it was like playing shows during the early punk years, and the recent interest in their music by younger fans.

http://www.myspace.com/smegmatheoriginal

Weyes Bluhd of Bucks County

In this song, taped noises that sound like lost artifacts are balanced against the slow river of a girl’s voice.  Weyes Bluhd continues the singer/songwriter tradition with an awareness of its past and possibilities.

Weyes Bluhd performing in Baltimore, in a room darkened at her request.

Weyes Bluhd’s page:

http://www.myspace.com/nataliewiseblood

Sejayno of Baltimore

Sejayno channels cultures of the future through cross-tuning and meditative chant, among other things.  Listen to the monologue in the audio for an example of where I want the roving musicologist to go.

Peter Blasser, member of Sejayno and Builder of instruments, relaxing in his home:

The instruments used in the recording.  The venue was the Theosophical Society of Baltimore:

Sejayno’s page:

http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/