Mist = missed

I woke to a misty morning, and over coffee, decided my wife and I should unfurl ourselves amongst the approaching hour to the music of Susanne Abbuehl, a Swiss/Dutch "Jazz" Singer, Composer, and Teacher.  She has two records out on ECM -- "April" (2001) and "Compass" (2006), both with a curious instrumental lineup of voice, piano, clarinet, and drums. I say curious not because a band of those four elements is by definition "weird" -- I mean, you have the rhythm aspect (drums), the harmonic aspect (piano), and the melodic aspect (voice) and the support aspect (clarinet) -- all the basic bases appear covered -- but because the "band" never really all plays on each record (if they do, I didn't hear it, which is probably intentional on their part - there are private things recorded here they don't want me to hear). Susanne sings a good deal, even when there are no words to sing, but that's probably the most prominent and consistent "sound" on these records -- the half-melted mist of her voice (there's an out of print record by a similarly silent singer, guitarist Bill Connors, from the later 70's called "Of Mist and Melting" that fits in narratively here, a similar evoking of a misty land slowly surfacing -- where?). Sometimes you forget there's a drummer. Sometimes the piano seems to have been lulled to sleep by Susanne's liquid equanimity, the solid yet fluid hum of her words and non-words in the misty space. Sometimes the only thing besides the vocal is the voice of the clarinet, like some ancient animal awoken in the midst of grey clouds, an animal instantly singing behind Susanne so as to hope to join her, wherever she comes to us from, to sing something for us to weep against.

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I could call these records quiet, and I would be describing them pretty objectively if I were to do so. But that would then be my assumption that it is the sound of the records, that the sound of the music on these records, is a quiet sound. If you think about it, that's nearly impossible. A sound just is, almost without quality; even adjectives like soft or hard are implied, applied, determined, weighted and given applicable context. And yet, sound is all quality, evoking characteristics of every world we bear within us or might soon know in the coming moment. Susanne Abbuehl's music is the sound of quiet at the center of something severe, as though all there is to do is mourn slowly, evenly, like the mist that passes and that, once passed, you cannot imagine. Susanne Abbuehl's music even mourns the moment that is to come soon, almost too fast, which is what makes that moment an inexplicable object of loss.

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Like anyone else who had a mother, I dream of being comforted by a voice that might surround me and warm me forever, that might always renew me when I feel the misty chill of dawn upon me. But I also want that voice to tell me that sometimes it is cold outside, that sometimes the sun is underneath the clouds, and that these things are part of the mourning of the day, and the day is the strongest thing we have to lean our lives upon. I hear this voice in the music of Susanne Abbuehl -- (here, this voice). But I also hear what she brings of music that is behind us. This is "jazz" only because it can't be any other music, since jazz affords a freedom of harmonic and improvisational form that is simultaneous with its categorizing totality. It is ancient music, but it does not hearken back to a time that is lost to us. It hearkens back to a timeless pause of things. A timeless pause of the space that defines where each thing ends, where each thing won't have ever been. The music that is behind us was played by musicians who were their own music, who carried it across each chasm, who knelt in the sand with it at their breasts. They soothed it, and it in turn, like an infant stretching its arms towards the sun, grew into a giant, and it walked the earth with silent steps.

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I was drinking my coffee and looking out the window at the mist, and it occurred to me that the mist would just be gone at some point, and that I wouldn't be able to watch it leave. I would have only known that it had left, that the mist signified the patience of the day that I lacked in watching it. I felt gloriously, almost proudly sad at everything that I could know of my losses. Suddenly Susanne reminded me that "Black / is the color / of my true love's hair". Which, weirdly, it is, for me. How could she know, I asked the room where my wife sat, listening, too, with me, amongst the music. I have a feeling I would ask the same question in the same way if my true love's hair were white, too.

Gone Shootin'

"Gone Shootin'" is the 3rd track on side 2 of AC/DC's 1978 "Powerage" album; it's 5 minutes and 18 seconds long, and it is notable on this particular record for how "un-heavy" it is in comparison to the entirety of the rest of the record. I wrote that line from memory -- and I say that not to prove my prowess, but to express the depth of this song on my psyche as a material fact amongst the rock and roll debris that remains littered there.

"Gone Shootin'" is notable for not only its "un-heaviness'; but for its subject matter. I'm not going to look up or quote the lyrics. I don't even know what they are, and I don't actually care what they are - since they are there to suggest. What I note is what I heard on my walkman, 30 years ago, at 10 years old:

bon scott's talking about something that he doesn't want to talk about. he's tired, he's sad, it's late, the lights are too bright for the time of night. he likes the music behind him. the music behind him is holding him up to be as sad as he is.

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Quick aside to which I will repeatedly return -- lyrics are not important in songs, just like actors are not important in movies.

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When you are a kid, you don't think anything of being sad. You are sad when something sad happens.

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If you know AC/DC -- and you most probably do, but you might not -- you know them in a particular way. Like all successful rock and roll bands, they have an image that they both inhabit (images are real) and exploit (images are fake). They always looked old, even when they were young; they always looked dirty, even when they were clean; they always looked poor, even after they became rich. Lead guitarist Angus Young has always proffered his love of the King of the Golden Age of Jazz - trumpeter Louis Armstrong; yet he plays the simplest, white knuckle-est rock that a man can play (this point is certainly up for debate, but it is nonetheless valid in service of my argument). What to make of all of this? Are they just a bunch of liars and thieves? And, if they are, how do we make meaningful sense of this ruse when we listen to them?

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"Authenticity", as a measurement of "truth" or expressed as a redeeming quality in art is certainly overrated, but it is also equally untouchable. How do you know someone means what they sing, they play, they write? How could they not mean it? Does a gambler "mean" to "win" when s/he "loses"? Does Anthony Braxton, "jazz artist" only eat "jazz hamburgers"?

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What I always thought about "Gone Shootin'" was that there was a soul on the line. Now, I can't honestly speak about the soul, and certainly, if I could, I would be breaking all kinds of sacred laws by doing so in speaking about the soul whilst talking about rock'n'roll -- but nonetheless, I always thought this song sounded like a train passing slowly in the dark against an even darker distant mountain range set against the horizon. And on that train, a man, with the light over his head to signify him being awake and alert enough to look out the window, looks out the window into the dark, for someone who has left, gone, to shoot something unknown with an unknown shotgun.

A Continuance -- Dino Saluzzi - Part 2

"El Encuentro", released in 2010 from ECM, is Saluzzi's "composer" recording. A strange thing for me to claim, as it is actually a live radio concert recording from Amsterdam, 2009. Yet, his pieces, arranged for orchestra, extend his personal whisper into a collective sign of whispers -- a forest of strings, a sea of open sound that sings the whispers of many as a sign of the singular, a united front, one could claim, against silence itself (which is curious, since a whisper both acknowledges the silence it breaks open and succumbs to it by risking that it not be heard above anything). The first track, "Vals de los dias" (Waltz of the Day), arranged for bandoneon, violincello, and orchestra, begins almost aggressively, with large sweeping waves of strings that shimmer and dissolve as soon as Saluzzi's instrument appears, And yet, he disappears just as quickly, as the orchestra builds a staircase of sound on air into the empty sky, then hovers lovingly over Saluzzi's lone figure (I imagine, anyway) bent in solemnity over his instrument.

Three minutes into this fifteen and a half minute piece, and Saluzzi the player has given us 20 seconds of sound, while Saluzzi the composer has arranged the sky to his liking. And then, at 3:01, a bandoneon solo, a hush against the silence, no strings for at least 30 seconds, and then they descend like angels to gently lift him into the same sky that they occupy. Saluzzi's sounds begin to dance slightly, and weave, and nearly (but not quite) soar. Not quite because at some unknown point (I can't tell where the sounds distinguish themselves) Anja Lechner's cello rises up and becomes the sun in this day-waltz. Saluzzi flutters in the sun's shadow, and then he's gone. The cello has become high noon, not the typical mournful voice we have all agreed it must always be. No, the sun can't be sad, else how could it actually rise before us?

And then the sky reappears in the form of strings that can only dramatize the day, the cello and bandoneon swaddled in the blankets of these strings, as the day is the protection we seek under cover of night, under cover of time, under cover of the world. the strings dissipate, the whisper returns, the day continues, and then fades in a glory of movement.

My guess is that Saluzzi -- and this guess is my poetry of this moment -- sought to express the day in all its glory, all its silence, all its ever lastingness. I mean, what did you wake up to today?

Ode to the Rhodes - Part 1

I can't have been the first one to write that sentence, to title something that way with a nostalgic longing for a time when technology was goofy and ridiculously and totally not portable.

I used to be in a band with an incredibly talented keyboardist/guitarist/singer named Joe Kennedy, who is now a professional touring musician. Joe owned a Fender Rhodes and used it quite a bit in our songs. When the band broke up, I remember Joe throwing the Rhodes down the stairs of our rehearsal studio and howling with laughter like someone who just did something totally forbidden. If my memory is anywhere near reality, Joe commented that he was "psyched" to "never have to carry that f*ckin' thing anywhere ever again."

And that's the fact of it. The Rhodes probably weighed, in and of itself, as much as the rest of our equipment all lumped together -- 2 guitar amps, bass amp, trap kit, cymbals, and so on. It was horrendous. It made us all wish we had spent more time thinking about things rather than just "doing" them. Of course, as soon as we would get to a gig, and Joe plugged it in and played a major or minor seventh chord, all was forgiven, and Jesus could have only always been right.

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If you drop a Rhodes on your toe, you might as well go home, in other words. Or at least to the podiatrist....

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The Rhodes -- what was also considered an "electric piano" -- has a distinct sound, simultaneously distant and close, like the past and the right now glued front to back. A weird image, I know, but only as weird as an electric piano could be, since the piano is built to be acoustic by default, it is the naturally occurring sound of elongated strings ringing out in space beneath a sea of wood. The Rhodes evokes an entire era, and an entire world, of sound. Of the 70's, of funk, and fusion, and someone deciding that a wah and a distortion pedal could take the mellow sound of chorused chords and transform them into the stripes jumping off the back of an angry tiger. (Watch out for that growl in your ears -- we will get to Miles' electric music soon enough!)

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Chick Corea's Return to Forever, (ECM, 1972) begins with the track called, perfectly, "Return to Forever" (totally great and eerie Lord of the Rings still shot You Tube vid here) (as an aside, I imagine that Night Ranger's debut record Night Ranger, with the track "Night Ranger" is a kind of off-kilter homage to this triple-naming of band, debut record, and title track; why doesn't every band do this? I have no good answer). A creepy, slinky Rhodes drone doubled by a ghostly voice ushers in this iced earth world (if forever is in the past, our return to it would have to be from above, down into a world of ice, would it not?) before Chick hits, of course, a minor seventh/eleventh chord, and then begins a circular Rhodesian riff that rides the rhythm entire of the next 9+ minutes. Chick keeps everything, in his own words, "Light as a Feather", because the Rhodes is, for him, an instrument of white magic, where the magus of music rides in from the deep white north, where the grey light of the sky is part of the world we hear humming within us.

Eventually, of course, since this is 1972, and jazz hasn't fully succumbed to the rock that would soon enclose it, Chick and Stanley Clarke (Electronic Bass) and Airto Moreira (Brazilian Percussionist Surprisingly Agile on a Trap Kit), eventually freak out a little bit, letting the Rhodes lead them in a minor dance of flickering night light while Flora Purim (Crazy Vocals, and, I mean, Really Crazy) surfs through the Rhodes waves to the jagged edge of a sunless sea. Returning to where we would always have been is not so silent, after all...

A Beginning -- Dino Saluzzi -- Part 1

I'm certainly NOT an expert on music, but I don't have to be. In fact, I will begin by saying that, given all the music I've listened to -- mostly in recorded form, since concerts are frequently and often (yes, that double adjective is intentional) disappointing -- I ought to know a lot more than I do. Shame begets shame, then, and the confession begins where the imagination lies silent....On this point, I claim absolute guilt, but the kind of guilt out of which ignorant bliss is born. Borne upon the wings of my guilt, then, I promise to bring you something I have heard that you may one day wish to hear, too.

I may also reach deep into the future as an example of honoring the past, which is never buried as deep as the future is wide. That is to say, I will reach wide into a future whose height exceeds us, only to remind us that we are going where from we whence came, which is from darkness and light.

I don't know anything about the Tango, other than that it's ferocious and sexy and seems dangerous (although, if you walk down the dark corridors of Venice in the middle of the night, and you meditate on their dangerous poetry, a Venetian in the light of day will screw up her face at you and interrogate you for poeticizing her ordinary reality). I don't know anything about Argentina, other than that Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, writers who have spun reality into a dark web of fiction from which a reader cannot extract themselves, both claimed themselves to be "of Argentina". Such is the same knowledge that accompanies what I know of Dino Saluzzi.

Saluzzi plays the bandoneon, an accordion-like tango instrument, which seems to hearken back to some imagined time when a musician hunched over his tools at the end of a dark alley, his face breathing its way through each note to bear the storm beyond it.

(You almost think that what you imagine is true, except it has little if nothing to do with sound itself. What it has to do with, of course, is what sound is like. Meaning, the moment we determine that words are what we need to describe sound, we launch ourselves from what David Toop has called the "Ocean of Sound" onto the dry land of language. I chose a clunky image there because, well, it's clunky imagining what something could be in another form, you know? I mean, music SOUNDS to mean, words MEAN to mean. Anyhow....)

Saluzzi's music sounds like a whisper. I mean it. I have, I think, 6-7 of his records, all on the ECM label (www.ecmrecords.com; I will write on that label later). The records (I call them records because that's what they are; more on that to come as well) each show him in different musical settings -- Solo (Bandoneon, Voice, Percussion); Jazz Quartet (Bandoneon, Trumpet, Acoustic Bass, Percussion); Jazz Trio (Bandoneon, Acoustic Guitar, Acoustic Bass); "Classical" Duet (Bandoneon, Cello); "Classical" String Quartet (Bandoneon, 2 Violins, Viola, Cello); Orchestra (Bandoneon, Saxophone, Cello, Orchestra). Why list all this, which is kind of tiring to read through, let alone imagine? Because each instance of the musical grouping, the circle of instruments gathered to express Saluzzi's project, these moments (which are more than moments, but they end up being only what lasts slightly longer than a moment, which is a recording, or a record) end up gathering everything into Saluzzi's whisper.

What is it that he whispers? What is a whisper like that is a description of a sound whose description is the image of a whisper?

Now, it's kind of easy to use music as a way to throw an image into space, where it will only endlessly float, never to return...(I'm reminded of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi's "fake" blues band "The Blues Brothers", with their song "Rubber Biscuit" -- "A Ricochet Biscuit / is the kind of a biscuit / that's supposed to bounce back off the wall / into your mouth / If it don't bounce back / you go hungry...") My image of Saluzzi as a whisper, though, is meant slightly differently. I'm aiming at the thought of what a whisper is, and what it is not. Of what it could be, and how you remember it. Of where it is, and what it reveals about the words that it surrounds.

I mean that it is as if Saluzzi himself is hovering on the outside of each note, as if each note is, in the words of the poet Gustaf Sobin, "the husk of experience". That would mean that the whisper of his bandoneon is the whisper of a world that is yet to come, whose passing is not yet past.