Subtlety and delicacy aren’t usually associated with hard rock. But those are the qualities that (to these ears) stand out when you unpack this recording and hear the tracks separately. Listen to the guitar, the bass. Sledgehammers? More like sushi knives.
Mixing a record, as I learned when I worked at Alligator Records (back in the 1970s), involves a seemingly countless number of decisions. After a few hours, everyone starts to get a little punch-drunk. By the end of the night, for instance, this track had morphed—in the warped warble of engineer Freddie Breitberg (AKA, in his personal mythology, Eddie B. Flick)—into “Serve Me Rice For Supper.”
Jimmy Johnson, “Serves Me Right To Suffer” (Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 1, Alligator Records, 1977 [Grammy Nominee])
. . . Van Gogh’s letters are the best written by any artist . . . Their mixture of humble detail and heroic aspiration is quite simply life-affirming.—Andrew Motion, The Guardian (11/21/09)
Here, in MP3 format, is a track featuring a guy we listened to the other day: Cecil Taylor, with drummer Tony Williams (“Morgan’s Motion,” from Williams’ 1978 album The Joy of Flying).
—Cecil Taylor (when asked what advice he would give to a young musician)
Cecil Taylor, live, 1981 (Imagine the Sound)
**********
lagniappe
art beat
Going to an art museum you never know what you may encounter. This painting, for instance, I’d never laid eyes on—never even heard of the artist—until I happened upon it the other day at Chicago’s Art Institute.
Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857-1922), Boats at Rest
music clip of the day 