In response to this interview with Matt Levine, owner of NYC's newest hotspot The Eldridge, Chef Suffolk of The Suffolk Kitchen, creator of the $12,000 Knish, was inspired to put his culinary quests on hold in order to conquer the world of New York Nightlife. We recently caught up with him to talk about his new venture - "NM-UH" - a hotly anticipated, ultra-exclusive Lower East Side nightclub that he promises will take NYC Douchebaggery to heights heretofore unseen. Excerpts have been posted at Grub Street, but here's our unedited Q&A with the reclusive genius...
When are you opening? We're open, but we still have a few kinks to work out. We need to come up with more pretentious names for staff positions than any other club. The Eldridge really upped the game, with their "butlers" and "chaperones" and such - we have to compete with that. This is not an easy business. Our staff deserve better. They're all highly-paid professionals. We're leaning towards "whores" but haven't really made up our minds yet.
How would the waitresses feel about being called "whores"? Isn't that sexist? To most waitresses it would be, yes, but not ours. Ours have no souls, and thus no feelings. They're from a special breed that is only concerned with the bare necessities of survival: food, shelter, tanning... most of them work for free just for the chance to rub elbows with celebrities, because life is meaningless if you can't personally interact with people you see on "Access Hollywood."
Our waitresses, while we're on the subject, are one of our features that set us above any other club - you can have anything you want. If you like the classic model-type, we've got those. You want Latinas in assless chaps? Done. Former nun turned lesbian folksinger? Done. We have a quartet of Japanese schoolgirls with a number of different outfits at the apex of Japanese Youth Fashion. We actually stole them from Gwen Stefani - they were part of a custom jacket put together for her by Yohji Yamamoto. She was totally wasted and didn't even notice they were gone. We feed them a special diet of caviar, chestnuts, and pineapple juice. And gold leaf. It makes their urine very sweet, which goes into one of our signature cocktails.
But maybe the Lower East Side doesn't need this kind of venue. Isn't the appeal of that neighborhood that it's grimy? We keep the facade grimy because our patrons, while the upper crust of society, are the kind who can still relate to lower class people. But we keep it classy at the same time. We have our own signature grime - a blend of Nile River mud, truffle dust, the Colonel's Secret Recipe, Karl Lagerfeld's dandruff flakes, and dried vomit collected from anorexic runway models. And gold leaf. We sprinkle it liberally around the sidewalk so that those few steps from the limo door to our secret entrance are perfect. It looks and smells exactly like real NYC grime.
What I don't get is how it's going to be that vastly different from anything else out there. You still have bartenders. You're just calling them something else. We have chocolate and fresh fruit. No one else - I mean NO ONE else - has chocolate and fresh fruit. Our classic cocktails are taken to a level no one's ever experienced before. Like, we make our margaritas with Cointreau, not triple sec. And we put gold leaf in them. And we use very, very expensive liquor. And because it's so expensive, we water it down with only the finest, purest water - from a secret source in Maine, guarded by a moose. Very exclusive shit. And our selection of name-brand liquors that signify status is incomparable. Like, for Cognacs we have Hennessy, Remy AND Courvoisier. Only we call them "'yak" because when they're downtown our celebrity clientele like to use the popular slang terms.
And we just inroduced a special collection of "His-n-Hers" cocktail pairs. The most popular is probably the "Romatic Getaway" - for him, a secret blend of exotic fruit juices, mezcal, and a raw oyster. For her: Sunny Delight, "Douché de Bagnac" Club Soda, vodka, and a floater of Rohypnol. And gold leaf.
What's the capacity? It's the size of a city block, only much, much smaller. When you walk in, we have the Jennifer Convertibles banquettes. The entire left wall is our "expensive shit" display. We like our patrons to know right when enter that they're somewhere exclusive. At the far end is our rotating collection of almost-celebrities, people who tried and never achieved mega-stardom but were never quite interesting enough to wind up on reality shows, either. We always keep at least one around.
What are they for? To drink their blood. This week we have Gretchen Mol.
Will the Smartwater Escalade chauffer people back to Williamsburg? What is Williamsburg?
It's in Brooklyn. What is Brooklyn? Oh, wait, that's that place the rapper people are always rapping about. Isn't that where they lived when they were still poor? Don't only poor people live there? I don't think anyone from this "Brooklyn" would be in here.
How do you decide who gets in? We know a lot of quality people. It's friends and family. As long as those friends and family are famous movie, TV, music, or sports stars. Or very wealthy. That's basically what it is.
How will they let you know they're coming? We give them laser-engraved enema bags. We thought we would do douchebags, but that's so last year. We wanted to take it up a level.
We also have a public line and a private line. Of course, no one from the public line will ever get in. The public line is six blocks away from the club, so no regular people can find out where the club really is. There's a closed-circuit feed, though, of the public line, that patrons can access through special screens located througout the club. That way they can point and make fun of the commoners.
If you don't have an enema bag, can you get in? Only if you work here. We can always use able-bodied men to shovel coal in the basement. You won't be allowed to interact with the guests, but knowing you're making celebrities' lives more comfortable is its own reward.
Can you drop some names of who we'll see there? Well, you'll never see anyone here, since you'll never get in. But we'll be hosting Miley Cyrus' Sweet 16 Party, and have a special "Down Low" party coming up for a select group of A-listers: Tom Cruise, Becks - I call him "Becks" because I know him personally - and some others I can't name. Lindsay is a regular, of course, just last night she was in with Mark Ronson while his sister DJ'd, and the three of them ran off to one of our private party rooms. Later one of the Olsen Twins joined them.
Which one? The one who was engaged to Heath Ledger, I think. God, we've been trying to get him to come since we opened. He's SO A-list these days.
So, as some of my foodie friends that read Grub Street at nymag.com already know, I am in fact the infamous "Ko-Thario" they (here, here, and here) and the folks at Eater have been talking about. To those of you only here for the music, or who aren't from NYC and couldn't care less about the NYC food scene, the rest of this will be meaningless to you. But I promised Grub Street a wrap-up/review and have no other place to post it. To those of you reading this because you clicked through a link at Grub Street - Hi, I'm Seth. I'm Head of Circulation at an academic library. The rest of the day I'm an abstract expressionist composer, which you'll find out more about by clicking on my name to the left. Fun Fact: I've written soundtracks to gay porn films.
Welcome to my non-food world.
But you Grubbers and Eaters just want to hear about Ko, so... on with the review. I'm not nearly as an amusing writer when I'm not making fun of something, so this'll be fairly straight and to the point. And it's 12:36 AM as I'm writing this, so it'll probably be boring and repetitive as well since I'm very tired.
So... Dominique was lovely, and all I hoped for. Her own review of our Ko adventure can be found on her site. But I'm sure all you food nerds care about is what we ate. So, what'd we eat?
AMUSE Chicharrón with togarashi - ** English muffin with whipped pork fat - ***
The chicharrón (crispy pork skin) was nice - nothing special. Light as air with a hint of spice. It set up the tongue nicely for the richness of the English Muffin, a little fella maybe an inch across that at first I thought was sourdough - turns out it was made with buttermilk - and topped with whipped pork fat. I could have eaten a bag of them with no regrets. Okay, maybe some regrets.
RAW FISH COURSE Scallop with pickled crosnes, chive oil, soy sauce powder and chive blossoms - *** Fluke with buttermilk, Sriracha, white soy, chive and poppy seeds - ****
Two great dishes. The fluke was mild, subtle, a hint of heat in the background. The scallops a nice counterbalance, with salty (soy powder) & tart (pickled crosnes) flavors. No complaints here. The crosnes (pronounced "crones") became a topic of discussion between our group and the chefs as none of us had had them before. They're a tiny little corkscrew-shaped tuber from France, and taste a bit like sweet crunchy raw potatoes. We were the first seating of the evening, so for the first couple courses we were the only people in the restaurant and had the chefs' full attention. Fun little bonus, being able to quiz them about what we were eating.
SOUP COURSE Pea soup with crawfish and stewed morels wrapped in yuba - ** Kimchi consommé, oysters, Berkshire pork belly and cabbage - ****
A bit of a mixed bag, this course. I found the pea soup a bit more salty than I would have liked - not overwhelmingly, but enough that it distracted from the sweetness of the crawfish and overwhelmed the morels. Had I paid ten bucks for it at any other restaurant, I'd have been fine but wouldn't have ordered it again. The consomme, on the other hand, was a beautiful thing. A smoky and rich pork stock base - it had the savoriness of kimchee without the heat. The pork was magnificent, and you can't go wrong pairing pork with a couple of briny, plump Kumamotos.
EGG COURSE Smoked egg over onion soubise, potato chips and hackleback caviar - **** Chawan Mushi with asparagus, ramp juice, braised cashews, hackelback caviar and argan oil - ***
While both were very good, the star here was the "hen egg" (it's been said before - like we're going to mistake it for some other kind?) with onions & chips. I could eat this for breakfast every morning if you threw in some bacon, though the light smoking of the egg gave the impression of something meaty in there. The preperation was astounding - the white perfectly hardboiled without being rubbery, and the yolk oozing out like a Hollandaise. The onions, fingerling chips, and caviar all provided a nice balance to the richness of what may be the best single egg I've ever had. The Chawan Mushi (egg custard) was nice, full of bright sping vegetables, though perhaps not quite as inspired. If it suffered, it was only because of the dish it was next to.
PASTA COURSE Spring lasagna with mushrooms, burgundy, escargot, ramps and garlic, topped with broccoli rabe flowers and ricotta salata - **
Same dish for everyone this course. I had the same problem here as I did with the pea soup: a bit salty. In this case, because of the ricotta salata. Just a little too much of it. It overwhelmed what should have been bright and springy. By the end of the dish I was liking it more, but it threw me at first. The wine pairing for this course helped a great deal - a sweet, fruity pinot noir that cut through very nicely.
FISH COURSE Trout in caper brine and bacon purée with toasted almonds and yuzu-marinated breakfast radishes - **** Halibut in pepperoncini purée with radishes, bok choy and burnt onion - *
The trout was magnificent. The caper and bacon blended incredibly, the almonds provided textural contrast, with the radishes little tart "palate cleansers" to cut through the richness of the bacon sauce. A bunch of flavors I would never think of putting together, but they created magic - tart, salty, smoky, nutty magic. The halibut, in contrast, I found a bit one-note. And slightly overcooked, which was very surprising. Not to the point of being ruined, mind you, but definitely on the dry side. It may have been fine were it paired with a richer sauce, a la the bacon puree, but with the sharp pepperoncini, it just didn't click for me. The burnt onion only served to reinforce the bitterness of the 'cini. Flavor-wise it just wasn't very interesting. The only real dud of the night.
FOIE GRAS COURSE Shaved frozen foie gras with Riesling gelée, lychee, pine nuts, and peanut brittle - *****
Like eating dirty sex.
MEAT COURSE Deep fried short ribs with mustard seeds, pickled baby carrots, pickled daikon, and scallion - ***** Chicken poulard with morels, ramps, swiss chard, and kolhrabi - ***
The short ribs were the star of this course, and had it not been for the foie that preceded, would have been the star of the meal. Rich, almost pudding-like, with a crispy paper-thin outer crust - sous-vide before the fryer, as I recall. Awesome idea to pair it with candied mustard seeds, with the daikon and carrots providing a needed burst of tart between bites. The chicken, while good, didn't compare for me, though in the interest of full disclosure some of my dining companions found them equal. A similar preperation - soft and buttery meat with a crisp outer skin - but a bit heavy on the garlic, the wonderfully earthy morels got a little lost underneath it.
PRE-DESSERT Lychee ice on sesame sand - *** Kiwi sorbet on apricot purée with olive oil - ***
Not much to speak of here, a refreshing palate cleanser to prep you for dessert. Delish, if nothing out of the ordinary. Nice that they had very different flavor profiles - if you're the sort who craves something sweet & light at that point in the meal, the lychee did the trick. If you like something a bit more tart and rich, the kiwi sorbet was the ticket.
I noticed overall that the various pairings - where two dishes were served - were well thought out to complement one another. I've been to restaurants where, in a large group, when everyone's tasting everything, it's easy to get flavored-out by the end. But here, even with 18 dishes total, I never felt that.
DESSERT Rhubarb with pea soil, peas, yellow cake ice cream, and chocolate crisp - *** Cereal milk panna cotta with chocolate slab, cornflakes and avocado - *****
The rhubarb was nice, though the pea soil didn't quite work on it's own - a bit dry unless you took a bite of everything together. It needed the ice cream to fill it out. The panna cotta, on the other hand, was brilliant. I've heard in the past it was milk steeped in corn flakes, but in our case it was Grape Nuts, with crushed corn flakes scattered around for a little extra crunch. The balance of savory, sweet, and nutty flavors was perfect. One of the best desserts I've had in years.
WINE The pairings were interesting, they all worked well with only a couple of misfires. We were lucky that in our group - four of us - we had one person go with the $150 ultra-premium pairing, two of us did the $85, and one the $50. So we got to try everything. One fun thing they offer is allowing you to "upgrade" on a course-by-course basis - if I'd been terribly jealous of the Barolo my $150 companion got with the short ribs, for six bucks I could have traded in my Rioja Riserva. The only real dud was a demi-sec Vouvray paired with the foie in the $85 pairing. The two of us who got it actually traded "down" (no charge) to the fantastic sake that came with the $50 pairing - one I'd had before, one of my favorites - Kamoizumi Komekome. On the other end of the spectrum, the $150 pairing for the foie was one of the most intensely aromatic wines I've ever had - a Beerenauslese which sadly I forgot the name of. The $150 dessert choice was an interesting dry Pedro Ximenez sherry, with a far sweeter PX for us $85-ers. The sweeter one didn't blow me away, at least not with the particular desserts we had. I think something less raisiny - a vintage port or an icewine or Tokay perhaps - would have worked better. Maybe next time I'll bring a dessert bottle and spring for the corkage fee. ($45 - would they halve that if I only brought a half-bottle?)
But one of the most amazing things about Ko, in the end, is the price. I'd expect to pay 75 to 85 dollars to get three of those courses on a prix fixe at one of NYC's finer establishments. But eighteen dishes? (Okay, only fourteen if you don't count the amuses and pre-desserts) Heck, I'd pay $85 again in a second for a three course meal of the foie, short ribs, and panna cotta.
So this decade-plus old blast from the past showed up in the series of tubes recently...
Truth be told, I'm kind of glad the sound quality is so horrible, otherwise you might hear just how awful I seem to remember us sounding. My memory could be faulty, though - maybe we rocked it like Zep that night. I guess we'll never know...
Anyway, I'm the blur on the far right being blocked 90% of the time by our dynamic lead singer, Dorian:
something new for a change...
Current mood: turnip
Category: turnip Music
So I've finally gotten about to updating the pieces here, figure the same four have been up long enough that even I'm sick of hearing them when my page opens. I've left 7YG up for the time being as people seem to like that one. Makes a good first impression. So, what's new?
Eventual Elegy in memory of K was written for the 60 X 60 Project. It became part of the "New York Minutes" program, which sadly I never caught live as there were only two performances, one in New Jersey, the other at 4:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Oh well. So it's here for those who missed it. By which I mean, everybody.
Short Piece for Two Guitars is... a short piece for two guitars. Shocking, I know. It began as something significantly longer but after much hemming and hawing it was quite obvious that I'd said everything I wanted to some fifty seconds in, and everything after that was just detracting from the whole and ruining what was so nice about it in the first place. Like trying to turn what's obviously meant to be a fling into a relationship. So good riddance to the rest of it. The New Simplicity meets The New Brevity.
Three Sketches - specifically, sketches 1, 4 and 5 towards a new project I'm working on. The three are seperated by five-second pauses, just for clarity (as if I've ever been concerned with clarity...) Getting back to the ol' sound-collage after some time off from it. A preview of something that might be finished around, say, 2015 or so.
Anyway, do enjoy.
Currently
listening
:
Edge of the World
By
Ian Mitchell
Release date: 12 December, 2000
So I never have much to say here, really. So here's the first ten tracks that come up on the ol' iPod shuffle:
1. Punky Brüster - Wallet Chain
Weird. I only have one song by this group (actually a spin-off of Strapping Your Lad) in my 'Pod and it pops up first. Funny little punk rock three-chorder with energy to burn. Good way to start the day.
2. Seeds and Stems - Giudizio Disangue
I can't remember where S&S came from, they were a group on mp3.com back in the day, doing Goblin-esque sci-fi-/horror/action movie soundtracky stuff. Loads of fun, and really good at what they did. They would have sounded right at home in some wackadoodle Dario Argento flick.
3. Slayer - Necrophobic
I don't think I need to defend Slayer. 'specially not Reign In Blood era Slayer.
4. Peter Brötzmann - Divide by Zero
PB with the Chicago Tentet, from the three-disc set of live and studio sides on Okkadisc, now sadly out of print. Holy crap. Has there been a better free jazz album in the last twenty years? Thirty? I saw these cats live and it was mindblowing - like watching a chamber orchestra spin previously unknown Stravinsky works out of thin air.
5. Opeth - Baying of The Hounds
Off Ghost Reveries. Totally proggy - and kinda goth to boot. I really shouldn't like it at all - but go figure, I'm fucking crazy about this album. Despite everything about it, on paper, screaming lame - I mean, it's prog-death-metal with folky acoustic "sensitive" interludes - it fucking blazes. And the whole thing's got this groovy Greg Rolie style organ (think Santana in '72) that takes it up a notch, puts a little 70's retro psychedelic flavor in there.
6. Ambrose Slade - Knocking Nails Into My House
Early incarnation of the band that eventually was just called Slade, circa 1969, I think. Solid guitar pop. The album is mostly covers of bigger artists from the time - Born to Be Wild, Journey To The Center Of Your Mind, Martha My Dear. That's just something bands don't do anymore. Knocking Nails was a cover of a Jeff Lynne tune which I've never heard the original version of - I can only assume it was with The Move.
7. John Cage - Ryoanji (Jeff Krieger, cello)
Damn. Probably my favorite recording of this piece. The album this is from (Krieger's Night Chains) is another out of print one - too bad, it's really tremendous.
8. Archive - Numb
From You All Look The Same To Me. Awesome elctro-pop group from the UK that no one in the US has heard of. Kind of have a Charlatans-meets-Underworld at half-speed vibe. They keep the songs simple - two, three chords, a great melody and groove and boom, you got a killer song. Their first couple albums were pretty weak IMHO, but they really came into something on YALTSTM. A great pop album more people oughta know about.
9 Giacinto Scelsi - Rucke di Guck III
Hmmm... not one of Scelsi's most interesting pieces. Not sure why I've even got it in here. Not sure, really, why anyone felt it was worth recording. Sounds like something GS wrote for goofs more than anything else. Dates from '57, just before he found his voice - the obsessively monotonal works he's more famous for. It's rather obvious, listening to Rucke di Guck, that he needed to find another direction.
10. Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Live, Brussels, 1973)
The Stones. 1973. Live. Mick Taylor on fucking fire. 'nuff said.
------------
Strange... Mostly Pop / Rock, only two classical and one jazz. And no folk / blues / bluegrass. Seems odd. I'd wager jazz takes up a good 1/3rd of what's in there. Hmm... maybe I'll try it again next week and see what happens.
First impressions of Phil Kline's John The Revelator
Category: Music
So I moseyed across the bridge to what is arguably my least favorite part of Manhattan, the Financial District, to check out the premiere of Phil Kline's John The Revelator - a Mass consisting of the "Ordinary" texts (the Kyrie, Sanctus, etc.) and some "Propers" (additional texts) he picked out - selections from Revelations, gospel blues, a passage from Samuel Beckett and poems by David Shapiro.
Musically, the overall vibe was Early Music meets Minimalism. Nothin' wrong with that. I was reminded of Terry Riley's Salome Dances For Peace (a work I have great affection for) more than anything else. The performance, by Lionheart and Ethel, was as one would expect - superb.
JTR is a very, very focused work - dare I say it, perhaps a bit too narrowly focused. For forty or so minutes the mood does not change one iota - and I may be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure every one of the dozen-plus sections was in the same key and mode. It certainly felt that way. (If it's not true, it's "truthy" at least...)
Take most any section individually, though, and it was quite good: the Kyrie and the Shapiro poems were standouts, and a section based on Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground was simply breathtaking, with Lionheart playing an "instrumental" role by humming - or, more to the point, moanin' a la Blind Willie. But taken all together, the unchanging mood became kind of relentless after awhile, and eventually lost any power. There was a point where I just wanted to say "Okay, dude! I got the point!" - I guess I could kind of compare it to my reaction to Gibson's The Passion of The Christ, how by the fiftieth whipping or so it just stopped having any visceral impact.
There is no salvation in this Mass. Instead what he have is, for the better part of an hour, a pervading sense of futility, despair, and fear. Nothing wrong with that, mind you - there's quite a grand tradition of Christian art that gazes into the darkness. But the singularity of mood coupled with the (I assume intentionally) limited dynamics and tonal spectrum seperate this work from, say, Britten's War Requiem, or a Nick Cave album - two other things that came to mind as I listened.
There were, though, a couple of passages that just seemed to meander around going nowhere in particular. The section based on Beckett I didn't much care for - though personally, I've never thought of Beckett as a particularly good choice for musical adaptation. The stream-of-conciousness prose doesn't lend itself well to a structured form, especially when working with a fairly rigid tempo - but to each their own. For me, removing that section and one other (the Credo, by the end of which I found myself fidgeting) would tighten up the work considerably, IMO making the overall impact that much stronger.
But this is only a first impression - I should and will reserve final judgement until I can hear it at home, as it's quite likely the uncomfortable plastic folding chair I was sitting in, elbow-to-elbow with people on either side, was feuling my impatience. I mean, on paper, I should loooove John The Revelator - I often like my art long, narrowly focused, and with near-imperceptible development. I've watched Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, like, a dozen times. I hold up Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood as one of the zeniths of modern music. Plus I love early American hymnody and gospel blues. And, heck, I just really like Phil Kline, too. Everything adds up to JTR being totally my cup o' tea. And it is, it's just... perhaps the bag was let to steep a bit too long. I'll be sure to blog on second impressions when it's broadcast in December.
Derek Bailey passed away on Christmas. I just found out today. There's enough obituaries out there explaining who he was, what he did, what his music was like... what can I write but my own personal impressions?
I was travelling with a friend one day to Vermont, driving up I-95, on our way to a music festival of unknown hippie jam bands. This was 1989 or so - the retro fad for groups like Phish, etc., was just beginning to creep to life. Jerry Garcia was still alive. And we're cruising along in his clunky old Volkswagon bus listening to local college radio, whatever we could find, and we came across a jazz show - some station out of Amherst, if I remember right.
I was still dabbling in serialism back then, and my fascination was for music that was complex on paper. Still, there was something about the whole serialist / modernist school that just didn't speak to me. On an intellectual level, there was something fun about it - but on a purely visceral level, it was lacking.
And then I heard something that night.
It was so... organic. There was no concern for such things as melody, harmony, rhythm. Just guitar and drums - but like nothing I'd ever heard. This was no hippie jam.
You could tell these two guys - whoever they were - had some kind of simpatico that was truly rare and beautiful. Anticipating each other's moves, smoothly moving from one emotion to another - angry, tense, and what stood out most of all - silly. These guys took themselves seriously, no doubt, but there was a gentle humor to it all.
I sat in rapt silence throughout - getting lost in the music, letting it take me where it did. Did it "groove"? In a way. Something about it let the audience "in" in a way that the purely composed music I'd been poring over didn't. It didn't require study, or acclimation. It was what it was, and took you along for the ride.
The set ended and I listened for the name - Derek Bailey and Han Bennink. ?? Who were these guys? This was in the days before the internet. I'd never heard these names before.
I demanded we pull over to a rest stop so I could call the radio station. I talked to the DJ for a few minutes - I don't remember for the life of me her name, but she schooled me with a three-minute crash course in free jazz. I'd heard some already - Ornette and late period Coltrane. Some worked for me and some didn't. But there was something different about this stuff. Was it even jazz? She gave me a few names to check out, pointed me down the path. We got back to the van in time to hear her introduce another track - just for me! - a Cecil Taylor / Max Roach duet that just killed.
I never spoke to her again, but I will marry that woman someday.
After we pulled in to our campsite, I was feeling inspired. I pulled my banjo out of the back and began plonking away, much to the dismay of our campsite-mates. I suppose it's bad enough hearing someone who doesn't know what they're doing play free jazz. But to do it on a banjo... I needed some work, but I knew I'd found a direction to explore, something that spoke to me.
And so I began. Derek Bailey was not exactly common in music stores, but finally I found some at Cutler's Music in New Haven CT. The two albums I picked up - the one I'd heard, simply titled Han, and a solo album called Aida - couldn't have been more different. I knew right off the bat I loved these guys. That humor I'd heard was right there on the cover of Han - a cartoony drawing of a destroyed guitar neck with two hands coming in from either side - one with a saw, in the other, wire cutters.
Aida was a different kind of revelation: It had it's aggressive side, sure, but it was sparse and subtle too. It made sense to me. I listened to it constantly, getting lost in the spaces between the notes, the outbursts. And the way he played - there was only guitar listed, but it sounded like no guitar I'd ever heard. It was like some combination of a guitar, koto, and one of Cage's prepared pianos, but... there was nothing prepared about it.
The more I listened, the more I read about him, the more fascinated I became. I'd had no idea, but this guy was legend among his peers. It seemed odd I'd never heard of him before, but then all his recordings were on obscure European labels, mostly on a tiny label called Incus he owned himself. I worked in a music store myself at the time, but we had no distributor who carried this stuff. Most of it was, to my knowledge, out of print. But bit by bit I found more and more: classics like Cyro, his album of duets with Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. Or the bizarre and funny Yankees, a meditation on baseball with George Lewis and John Zorn. And the indescribably beautiful Lace, another solo outing. One of the (many) great things about Bailey was the list of musicians he worked with. Through him (along with Bennink and Cecil Taylor, whose catalogs I was exploring with equal relish), I was introduced to so many other players they worked with: Lewis, Tony Oxley, Louis Moholo, and the incomparable Evan Parker. The younger guitarists he influenced read like a who's who of experimental guitar heroes: Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Marc Ducret, Eugene Chadbourne, and countless others.
I had trouble with this music as "jazz", though it certainly bore some relation - you can hear, at times, the influence of Django especially. But there was a touch of what seemed like Webern in there too. It was even further removed - further "out" than Ornette. I read later that Bailey himself wasn't really down with the term "jazz", and preferred to simply call his music "non-idiomatic" - a term which manages to be ridiculously vague yet describes his music better than any other I've heard.
John Allen on WFMU had a tribute show a couple days ago, which you can check out online here. There's some great stuff there. The duet with Fred Frith is particularly astounding, and there's wonderful tracks with Bennink and Parker of course.
What else is there to say? You can't describe Derek Bailey in words. Words are for suckers. Just listen.
Currently
listening
:
Lace
By
Derek Bailey
Release date: 08 December, 1999
For whatever reason lately I've been obsessed with slow things. Three hour art films where the narrative barely moves. Making soup stocks. Music which takes a ridiculously long time to develop. When composing or improvising I grow more and more fascinated with the details of each moment - how do I extend it? How does one make a moment more than, well, a moment? I'm focused very much on the now - taking it away from the big picture, is each event interesting in and of itself? Are the transitions from one to the next?
Music falls into a very strange place in the arts. Essentially, there are two kinds of art: those that are experienced in the moment (painting, sculpture, photography, etc) and those that take place over a period of time (drama, fiction, poetry, music)
The fundamental problem with music is that, unlike drama, there is no narrative flow. Instrumental music - though often it follows certain rules that we may be familiar with - is still purely abstract. As a form of communication, it leaves a bit to be desired. That's why the most popular form is songcraft - not pure music, but a combination form which incorporates some kind of verbal description of events or emotions. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. I'm quite jealous of good lyricists, of people who can craft concise, three-minute pop songs that bring across the artist's feelings with depth and directness. Me? I suck with words. I'm stuck using this weird non-verbal abstract form to express my deepest emotional thoughts. Fucking frustrating. Yes, one can suggest a series of events or emotions but in the end the audience member has to take a greater role in the work than in any other form. After all, what suggests something to you may not to them - we don't all have the same cultural cues built in.
The same can be said, of course, for abstract painting. A viewer's reaction to Pollock says as much about the viewer as the artist. But since painting is art type "A" - art which is experienced in the moment - it doesn't require the same investment of time that music does.
So music is stuck with the burden of straddling two forms: it occurs over time, yet has no narrative to latch on to. Yes, certain forms are familiar, and we go along with them - verse/chorus/verse, 12 bar blues, etc - but they are familiar abstractions. After all, what does I-IV-V communicate, in and of itself? Depending if it's Albert King or BB King, it could be something completely different. (For those that don't know, "I-IV-V" is shorthand for standard Blues chords.)
And then there are those in the classical ghetto for whom the forms and whatnot which are familiar to us - the sonata, for example - are not familiar to most of the outside world.
I suppose it's partially for that reason that I abandoned form altogether. I have more of a "whatever form it takes, it takes" attitude when I write. If, in the end, turns out it's kind of a sonata - well, bully for me.
But I was talking about slow things, right?
Since music is, in the way it is percieved (at least by me) similar to expressionist painting and such, I suppose it was only natural that I start focusing on shorter and shorter periods of time. How much can be communicated in a moment? In the time it takes to look at a painting?
There are different ways to explore it, repetition being the most obvious. We get to dwell on it for awhile, mulling it over and over and over again, taking our time getting from moment "A" to moment "B" - letting it fully sink in before developing into the next one. You know, the minimalist way. It works for me sometimes. Still, with repetition I find one loses the event itself and instead hears the pattern. The moment is no longer the focus, but the rhythm. It strikes me as the equivalent of taking a Pollock painting, shrinking it down and repeating it until it becomes - well, something more akin to wallpaper. I hesitate to say that because I don't want to knock minimalism - I think very highly of a number of composers from that genre - Riley, Reich, and (some) Glass in particular stand out. Granted, Brian Eno conceived of ambient music (which has a great deal of crossover with minimalism) as a kind of sonic wallpaper, so maybe it's not as insulting as it seems to sound. Anyway, I mean no offense by it.
Me? I like silence - letting a note, a phrase hang in the air for contemplation. The way one sees a painting, taking it all in at once, and then continuing to look - for a second, for a minute, for an hour.
Really, though, it's combination of the two - a repeat after it's had time to sink in. Maybe the repeat is used as a refresher, or a slight variation, playing with the dynamics of it, the tempo. Rather than repeat it identically, explore all the different ways of presenting the same information, the same expression, while keeping it fundamentally what it is. Taking that painting, and looking at it from different angles. Placing it in different backgrounds, different contexts. Changing the focus to different details, different aspects. I try to create music that has that kind of effect - and of course, be interesting enough that a listener would want to continue "looking" at it, exploring it further along with me.
So... why? Why would anyone in their right mind do this?
I suppose for some it's about going into a "zone" - creating a space for contemplation. And I readily admit I've gone that route. The tracks which are currently up on my main page come primarily from that place. But there's something else I'm trying to capture now. Something more elusive.
It's more... well, the same reason B.B. King might hold back on that resolving note for just a second - making you wait that extra bit before the V goes to the I. Only extended further. How long can you stand on that precipice before going one way or the other? That moment of excitement, of fear - reducing it to it's tiniest details, shifting, changing ever so slowly, moving towards closure but constantly delaying the payoff. Even the resolution itself is stretched out. That moment when you realize you're "there", and have been there and there's no turning back. The approaching of the inevitable. How long can that moment, and all the emotions that go with it - relief, doubt, nostalgia, loss - be extended?
Because isn't it about the getting there? Like delaying an orgasm as long as humanly possible - you want to cum, of course, because that's the payoff - but not yet. Not until there's nothing that you can do but that. And the longer you hold out the more fucking tremendous it will be - but, after all, once you climax it's pretty much over 'cept for the cuddling. Or implacable feelings of guilt. Your mileage may vary.
But... maybe it's not about orgasms so much - in fact, it may be pointedly not about them. Maybe it's more like someone you pass on the street: that moment of pure, animal, unrequited attraction, and you can't get them out of your mind - the image, the way they were framed by the light, the drip of sweat on the back of their neck that caught your eye - for the next hour. Music - like a beautiful, sexualized human being, can tease you. And you let it. Because there's something about that moment that you want to hold on to. Because maybe the tease is as good as the real thing.
Well, okay, not quite as good. But pretty good nonetheless.
Anyway, the music/sex comparison has been done to death, and by far superior writers. So no need to go there. Consider this moment done, for now.
Currently
listening
:
Uprising
By
Entombed
Release date: 11 June, 2002
I've taken a bit of a "who cares?" attitude to the whole "death of classical music" mishegas in the past, but that's not entirely honest. What's dying is, specifically, the orchestra. And because it's The Institution That Represents Classical Music, we tend to talk about Classical Music, as a whole, being on death's door.
So it's time to cut it off, like a gamey leg that's threatening to infect the rest of the body.
There's a whole host of reasons why orchestras are failing: the staggering costs, dwindling interest from the public. Most major centers treat the orchestra as their reason for existence, and the various off-shoots - chamber music groups and the like - as accoutrements.
But what if we reverse that? Take a cue from jazz: on any given night, one's choice of small combos far exceeds the number of big bands. What if Lincoln Center presented primarily chamber music on it's main stage and saved the orchestral shows for premiering new works, composer birthday celebrations, and the requisite holiday season concerts? It would reduce costs, certainly. And it would make orchestral concerts special occasions - real gotta-have-it tickets. As it stands, for a casual listener it's easy to pass on a symphony if you live in a major city. There's a symphony concert every other night. There's just nothing special about it.
On the other side of the coin, we have more small concerts. Small groups allow for a better connection between performer and audience. It's more intimate. These smaller shows can then be used to promote the big concerts. Small combos also allow more new music to be played. It's much easier to rehearse a piano trio trhough some satanically difficult modernist crap than an entire orchestra. An additional benefit to refocusing the organization's efforts into chamber work is that it's portable. Classical music needs to be taken out of the concert halls. There's no reason a small ensemble playing Ligeti or Carter - or heck, Bach - couldn't find a receptive audience in a downtown club that normally hosts left-field jazz or rock. Dress down and play Williamsburg, hype up the upcoming orchestral concert(s) while you're there.
Who will complain? Likely the musicians. The twelfth violinist might not get to be in a chamber group, and thus make less money. Well, like any other business seniority and skill come into play. Pay your dues, take on more responsibility, move up the ladder. Or get a second job. Do what the rest of the world does to make ends meet for fuck's sake. Stop thinking you're so damn special. Obviously the rest of the world doesn't think you're very special, considering how little they patronize your business.
Okay... I should say that most orchestral musicians have second jobs. Usually it's something related - teaching, etc. I think what would be healthy is if being in the orchestra was no longer thought of as the first but the second job. Joe Guitar in Joe Guitar's Bar Band who teaches guitar at Joe's Guitars likely makes most of his money by giving lessons. The fact that he's in a popular local band pays off in that it helps bring in customers. And, of course, it's fun to play. Those who are lucky - who have bands popular enough - can maybe give up a little on the teaching, maybe even devote themselves to performance full time. Orchestral musicians need to follow the same model. This will have two benefits - one, it will reduce organizational costs, and two, it will winnow out those who are just in it for the paycheck. Nothing wrong with getting paid, mind you, but someone who really wants to be there is more likely to give that extra oomph at performance time, rather than just go on autopilot.
Were I given the reins of the New York Philharmonic, this is the speech I would give to the assembled musicians:
"From this point forward we will be playing one orchestral concert per month, with additional special holiday concerts when warranted. In the meantime, there will be chamber music every night on the main stage, plus matinees on Sunday. We will select the best of you for specific performances that the head office wishes to occur. Those not assigned to groups in the meantime are encouraged to get together with one another, choose a few works on your own, and rehearse them. These can be anything you enjoy playing - canonical works, newer works - heck, you could write new pieces yourself if you like. If you don't have what you need - i.e. you'd like to perform a piano trio and can't find a violinist interested - feel free to arrange the music for different instrumentation. Get a flautist or an oboist to play the part. We will have a full-time arranger on staff to help with these matters. Come to me with a finished, professional performance and we'll put it on the schedule. Every performance of a canonic work gets $X bonus and every performance of a work by a living composer gets $Y. Those who show inititative and do well will find themselves selected more often for company-assigned performances, which pay $Z. Those who don't show initiative won't make much money in the short term. In the long term, they will be replaced by someone who wants this fucking job more than them."
"On the fourth floor you will find the office of our new booking agent, who has contacts with clubs and smaller venues around the city that are receptive to presenting classical music. She knows which ones have house pianos and which don't. You are encouraged to take the small combos you form and play in these clubs. It will be good practice for interacting with an audience in a more direct manner. In addition, it is an extra source of income. Not only will you get to keep any monies paid to you by the outside establishment, but Lincoln Center will also pay a bonus of $W for each concert you put on at an outside venue under the "Lincoln Center Chamber Players" banner."
"I am also declaring a five-year ban on Mozart effective immediately. Deal with it."
Anyway, that's what I would do. Maybe not perfect, but it can't be any worse than what they're doing now.
Currently
listening
:
Eleventh Hour
By
Fred Frith
Release date: 12 April, 2005
I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy criticizing Milton Babbitt. I am going to attempt to explain why my ire is so directed at him and not at, say, Carter or Wuorinen or Xenakis - all of whom I rather like to one degree or another.
I suppose my issue is that I don't hear any drama in his music. With the others, I feel that the process is at the service of the music, first and foremost. With Babbitt, I only ever get the impression that the music is a product of the process, maybe a by-product at best. I don't hear any unique composer's voice, any history, any influences. Wuorinen eventually grew out of the serialist mold and in his later works his influences - Stravinsky, and I've always thought Janacek - are obvious. There's - gasp! - melody and discernable rhythmic structure. In Xenakis I hear the power of Wagner, and floating above the density a skewed harmonic sense all his own, with traces of the Greek orthodox liturgy and Romanian folk music. Carter is harder to place, but the real point is I hear Carter. In Babbitt I just hear notes. I don't get the impression that he even likes music. What moves him? What music did he hear as a young man that drove him to compose? Did he love the music of Schoenberg, or did he just get off on the theory?
Is it in the eye of the beholder? Maybe to a degree, but Babbitt's own writings seem to back me up on it, what with his insistence that his music - all so-called "advanced" music is not meant to be understood by those with - these are his words - "common ears". Well, that's pretty snooty to say the least. But it also comes off as an excuse. He knows his art does not move the soul - and through logic, he has absolved himself of culpability for that. There are those who say his art serves a different purpose - not to move souls but to work the mind. Is that art, though? I mean, would you call a book of brain teasers "art"?
Maybe he should have been a scientist. As brilliant as people insist he is, perhaps, had he gone a different route, he'd have cured cancer.
I wish I could blame it all on his snooty attitude, but I had this opinion of his music long before I'd read "The Composer as Specialist" (a/k/a "Who Cares if you Listen?") - an essay I had rather a lot to say about in an article I was asked to write for NewMusicBox (that they refused to publish in the end), which maybe I'll repost here at some point.
I don't think, to my knowledge, that any of the other modernists quite so subsumed themselves under the blanket of serialism and formula as he did - Xenakis, in particular, was always conscious that everything was in service to the music. In Kraanerg I can hear his anger, his brutality exploding at the injustices he'd witnessed in his life. To me, Babbitt is the equivalent of guitarists who just learn to play really really really fast, with no consideration for what the notes they're playing mean. It's all about "Look! I can do this!" and no one ever asks "well, is this worth the bother?"
I know there are people out there who rather like Babbitt. People I like and respect, even. I don't want to say they've been hoodwinked, that they've fallen for the Emporer's New Clothes or anything. I like abstract expressionism, and there are any number of people who would suggest that Jackson Pollock is nothing but a bunch of splattery splatter that any five-year-old could do and I've been fooled. But it speaks to me (well, more Clyfford Still and Franz Kline than Pollock, but that's beside the point...)
Babbitt just bores the shit out of me, plain and simple. And on those rare occasions something interesting happens, I have to wonder if it's the intent of the composer, just an accident, or just my own head trying to amuse itself?
Babbitt has a bit of a cult following, which I guess is what happens when you're the "most extreme" at whatever it is you do. Some of his followers seem to be blinded by his brilliance. I remember a conversation once, talking about pop songs or something, and one of his acolytes insisting that if he wanted to Babbitt could write GREAT pop songs - the GREATEST.
You know, I'm sorry, but they're just different art forms. Just because someone is good at one thing doesn't make them good at another. And the idea that classical music is a "higher" art form and that everyone who does it is just "above" doing pop is ridiculous.
Anyway, so I don't like Milton Babbitt. I don't much care for Mozart either, but that's a different matter.
Currently
listening
:
Legende D'eer
By
I. Xenakis
Release date: 11 September, 2001
bored
