Musical Ramblings

Camel - The Snow Goose

The Snow Goose is an 1975 instrumental concept album by British not-as-famous-as-they-deserve prog band Camel. The Snow Goose is an album inspired by Paul Gallico's romantic novel of the same name, and although I haven't read it, I understand that the music follows the narrative fairly closely. The Snow Goose has been described as Camel's masterpiece and although some of their tracks on other albums are, to me, more inventive, this record definitely has a cohesive whole that is not to be found elsewhere.

The music is dense and driven, very romantic and lyrical in quality although you can still hear the frequent rhythmic breaks or shifts that abound in Camel's music and make them so enticing. Unlike Mirage which had more or a hard edge or the darker Moonmadness, The Snow Goose is generally uplifiting, alternating melancholy passages with soaring melodies. The flute and oboe (at least I think it's an oboe) give it a medieval, naturalistic quality that is reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn while the more driven, guitar based melodies are in the same vein as Meddle era Pink Floyd, sans psychedelic madness.

The Snow Goose is a great listen and a great piece of music, in the firm tradition of progressive, and while the general positiveness of it sounds a little naïve by today's standards, it's still well worth a purchase. Some of the tracks stand out (Rhayader goes to town, The Snow Goose, Dunkirk, etc.) but the strength of this record is its unity. In other words, don't listen to it in bits. The bonus tracks are various single edits and two live recordings, including an excellent The Snow Goose>Freefall.

Hazmat Modine Videos

At about the same time that I reviewed Hazmat Modine's Bahamut a few months back, the band went touring in Russia. They played on a TV show (and were compared to Zappa's best), and the segments have shown up on Youtube. So here is, in all it's chaotic glory, the Hazmat Modine videos (including Bahamut, Who walked in, Yesterday Morning and Last Fox Train !

Thanks to Fernando Bresslau for pointing out this great segment !

St Aignan - Addendum

On his website, Jason Ricci just posted a long narration of his European trip. Lots of funny anecdotes (or not so funny, depending on where you look at it from). Not sure it's very flattering for us Europeans, but it's a fun read anyway.

Jason's concert that night was recorded and it's been uploaded on archive.org so there's no excuse not to listen to Jason Ricci at Harmonica sur Cher. Here's what Garry Hodgson has to say about the recording :

This one is a soundboard recording, which is both good and bad. It's good in that the sound is really crisp and clean, with no crowd noise. It's bad in that the harp and vocals are a little loud in the mix, and sound just a bit harsh to my ears.  The sound was mixed for how it sounded in the venue, not for recording.  Nothing terrible, just different from the normal audience recordings.  YMMV.

St Aignan 2006 - Part II

After a (way too) short night staying at my friends - god, how I hate being woken up at 7:30 AM by excited, screaming children when I went to bed at 2 AM the previous night - I had a pleasant morning and lunch and then left for St Aignan again. When I arrived, Jason Ricci was giving his masterclass. I only managed to listen for twenty minutes or so before I had to dash off, but it was interesting to hear Jason's very systematic approach to blues, applying what I understand to be jazz tricks of the trade to spice up blues improvisations. The inevitable Robert 'Sunnyside Bob' Koch was doing the translation as best he could considering Jason's very associative speech, jumping from topic to topic faster than the translator could safely follow ! It reminded me of the rough time I had translating Howard Levy's masterclasse in 2005...

Christophe has asked me if I'd organise a jam session with the house band, a French blues-rock outfit called Double Stone Washed. It was set in a very small bar, and absolutely impromptu since there hadn't been time to rehearse. We found elements of a common repertoire and went from there. It gave the chance to sing and play for a good hour and invite up five or six of the attending harp players. There, sitting by a small table, I also met with Damien Tartamella, the harp player and singer from the French pop band Kwak. Sweet guy, great player and a fresh approach to harp : despite an amazing technique, Damien is not particularly into using the instrument for improvisation on the Kwak material. Quite refreshing. We talked oriental scales and he gave me their latest album Des Thunes, which I'll review later on.

I was pretty exhausted after the gig. I relaxed over a meal and came back to the concert hall for the first concert of the evening, a 15mn presentation by 4-year olds from the local schools. Not very musical, but so very cute ! They were followed on the stage by Barefoot Iano. Ian is an Australian guy who's been living in France for the last twenty or so years. He is the absolute sweetest guy ever, a little on the daydreamy side, and a damn fine harp player and showman to boost. His concert was eminently accessible, his musicians being both proficient and self-effacing. His Elvis-esque vocals carried a sophisticated blues and rock'n'roll repertoire peperred with anecdotes told in an often slightly broken French that contributed to the charm. Ian was, of course, barefoot on stage (as he is elsewhere) and always moving. His concert may not have been the pinnacle of musical originality, but it was very endearing and accessible.

I was so tired that during the intermission I dozed off on a chair. I was soon woken up when Olrando Poleo and his afro-venezuela jazz band. The line up was tight, especially for latin jazz, with drums, double bass, piano, chromatic harmonica and, of course, percussions. From the get-go, I was hooked. The sheer energy of the music was unbelievable, the tight interweaving of the drums and percussion with little opposing space from the piano and harmonica gave it a very powerful drive that only abated on one or two tracks for the whole concert.

Harmonicist Laurent Maur had the difficult task of being the sole solo instrument if you except that some of the melodies were doubled by the piano or the bass. His impressive velocity and precision, however, allowed him to lead the melodic part of the music beautifully, and his improvisations were just as pertinent. I particularly appreciated the way he used octaves and double-stops to give the music an Argentinian accordeon flavour.

Orlando Poleo himself, while seemingly cold at the beginning of the concert (and you could see that the band is tight under his leash) seemed to lossen up in front of the response of the audience. They played for a good two hours and it was a real joy from start to finish. All the tunes were originals, mostly instrumental latin jazz but a number of pieces had vocals in Spanish. The compositions, most by Poleo himself or by his Argentinian piano player (whose name I didn't catch) were very interesting, sometimes quite out, but always drivent by such a powerful beat that even the sometimes surprising harmonies felt at home.

I already knew Laurent Maur's music and I knew he had increadible chops, but I was amazed how well his playing fit in what I assume to be a very challenging musical context. He felt at home, and despite his sober appearance he was visibly enjoying himself. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted by the end of the concert that I headed back to my friends' for sleep without taking the time of congratuling him about the concert. I really hope the band as it stands records, because the relative intimacy of the line-up really brings somehting more to the music. I'm no expert on latin jazz, but rarely have I enjoyed this kind of music as much as I loved that band.

A further unfortune was the fact that this was to be the last gig of the festival for me. I missed the last evening with Sébastien Charlier and Jason Ricci. I also missed Sébastien and Laurent's masterclasses... That's what happens when family life and Derek Trucks gigs get in the way of good harmonica festivals... all the more frustrating since I hear that these two concerts were absolutely amazing.

Oh well...

St Aignan 2006 - Part I

Two weeks ago, the latest (and fourth) edition of the Harmonicas sur Cher festival was held in St Aignan. It was abit of an odd attendance for me because I went down there with my wofe and kids who were staying at some friends nearby. I therefore wasn't immersed in the festival as much as I was the other years: somehow, sleeping in a dormitory full of harp players makes the experience wholly different...

Anyway, I arrived in St Aignan on Thursday 25th of May in the afternoon. At the same time the evening bands were doing their soundcheck, the minimalist expo center of St Aignan was opening with the usual launch party. More photos than instruments this year, but there was a nice batch of pictures from last year's festival to peruses. More interestingly, I got the opportunity to meet with Paul Lassey, with whom I've been in contact for a few years by email but we never got a chance to meet. Paul lives in Eastern France and is an accomplished harp player. He also has one of the best instructional websites in French. With him was Eric Frèrejacques, another talented French harp player hailing from Nice. Eric works a lot with storytellers and did a show for children on the Wednesday before I arrived.

They told me how I missed an amazing jam session on the Wednesday night when the musicians from the jazz band Le Monde de Kota and Jason Ricci's musicians played amazing music for a good part of the night at the Mange Grenouille restaurant. And yes, I'm only mentioning the name of the restaurant because if means Frog Eaters.

At the request of one of the organisers, we whipped out the harps and played a three-part boogie. Eric had just purchased a Low Bb Seydel harp, so he was stuck with the rhythm playing. Paul and I traded licks and apparently it sounded pretty cool since the locals were looking at us appreciatively. I then whipped out my weird Chinese bass harp and started playing a bass line in G (the only key in which I can play a blues bass line, that's how weird the note layout is on this baby...) and Eric and Paul played their hearts out. I really do enjoy these moments...

We then moved to the sports center where all the musicians and organisers have their meals and sleep throughout the festival and there I first met Jason Ricci and his band. I talked a lot with Jason's bass player, Todd. Nice guy, if a little drunk ! We discovered lots of musical tastes in common and I drove him back to the concert hall for the evening concerts. It was really funny because I was flicking through the tracks on one of my homemade CD comilations trying to find a track I wanted him to hear, and he recognised nearly every single band or track after half a second: Bela Fleck, Derek Trucks, Dirty Dozen, Meters, Weather Report, Gov't Mule... Wow.

Anyway, we got at the concert hall just in time for Le Monde de Kota (Kot'as World). I had only heard the band by name and knew that they had really impressed Christophe at a gig last November and he decided to book them then and there. All I knew was that they played jazz and that there was no drummer. Turned out the line-up was trombone, chromatic harmonica, double bass and electric guitar. If there's one feeling I love it's discovering a new band that blows me away. This one did.

Le Monde de Kota's music isn't exactly accessible. In fact, it's downright complex, very much influenced by jazz-rock but with elements of free (as far as I understand free) thrown in there and much crazyness besides. The tracks (all instrumentals) alternate between very constructed and very wild, with four amazing improvisers on stage and yet they manage to draw the audience into their world with surprising ease.

Olivier Goulet, the harp player, is damn fine, but it wasn't his performance that made me enjoy the gog so much, it was the amazing ensemble work, and particularly the inventiveness and solid virtuosity of double bass player Guido Zorn. I was enraptured from start to finish, I went to get hold of a CD twenty minutes into the concert so I wouldn't miss out on it, anticipating the end of gig rush. In other words, I simply fell in love. If you're a fan of jazz music, especially when it gets a little out there, go check out the tracks on their website, chances are you'll like it !

This auspicious intro gig was followed by a hip shaking set of funk from Karl W. Davis and the Milkmen, a ten piece franco-american band formed in part of members of the French blues band Malted Milk, including harp player Emmanuel Frangeul. Their stuff was a little less out there than the previous gig had been, and it made for a nice balance between cerebral and visceral. These funky horn lines were very nice, and Karl W Davis is an awesome singer with as much stage presence as he has voice and an awful taste in flowery shirts.

Emmanuel's harmonica was used alternatively as a solo instrument or as an organ-like backing presence (with effects most of the time) and his approach was reminiscent of Steven de Bruyn's, though less mature, in my opinion. Still, great player and great concert. There was a touching moment when Karl invited the St Aignan children's choir to sing a song with him on stage. It was a minimalist R&B thing and very nice and fitting.

After that, a jam followed that I wasn't able to attend. I was staying pretty far from St Aignan and it was getting awful late. I called it quits and listened to Le Monde de Kota's CD on my way back in the car. What a great first night !

Beautiful photos

I will probably be posting all the details about the 2006 Edition of the Harmonica sur Cher festival in St Aignan which occured this week-end, but in the meantime, talented photographer Français Berton posted photos from the three previous editions on his website. You can find the photos here, and they are well worth perusing !

Derek Trucks in Paris !!!

Last Saturday, Derek Trucks was playing in Paris for the first time. There was no way I could miss that, and those of you who know what else was happening musically that week-end know that it was a tough choice. Still, the DTB managed to do their Paris and London gigs based on the opportunity provided by Derek playing wit Eric Clapton, and not knowing when the opportunity will arise again...

Anyway, as usual, traffic in Paris was awful, and I very nearly arrived late. Just as I was in the lobby of La Scène, a small bar/stage near Bastille, I heard the crowd cheering as the band was setting up. Just in time. The place was packed to the gills, with around 200 people standing in front of the stage. There was a video of the stage on a small screen on the side, so I'm hoping an sbd recording will come out.

Count M'butu was sitting on the left side of the stage, with Mike Mattison next to him. Derek was center stage and, from where I was, Yonrico Scott was hidden behing him. On the right hand side, Todd Smalley was standing next to Kofi Burbridge's multiple keyboards.

They opened with five tracks straight from Songlines : Chevrolet, Volunteered Slavery, I'll Find My Way, Up Above My Head and Crow Jane. Though the playing was top notch, they were all fairly short and not significantly different from the album versions. To me, the magic started operating with Sahib Teri Bandi/Maki Madni.

For those who don't know Derek's repertoire, this is a medley of Afghan tunes adapted from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's songs. Maki Madni was released on the 2002 album Joyful Noise and a medley of both tunes figures on Songlines (one of the best tracks on that album). These instrumentals have been a staple of Derek's live shows for years. At this moment of the gig, Derek started stretching out, took his time and started finding those improvisational gems that, to me, make him such a distinct artist. From then on, it was pure gravy. Even Sailing On, a track that I find particularly grating on the album was good.

The highlights of the second part of the gig were For My Brother, probably my favourite DTB track of all, an awesome Mahjoun>Greensleeves and an unexpected Goin' Down Slow. I love that arrangement. It's very similar to the arrangement on the bonus tracks of Junior Wells' On Tap and I don't know if that's where the DTB got the inspiration of if they came to it separately, but it's just beautiful.

I've been a big fan of Mike's from the first bootlegs I got where he was singing, and I utterly love Scrapomatic too, so it was a particular treat hearing his raspy, breathy voice that night. Kofi was also on fire, his long flute solos being a particular case in point. On For My Brother, he got applauded nearly more than Derek which, considering the audience seemed mostly constituted of guitar players is saying something. The way he uses the breathing sounds rhythmically in his playing is very cool, and there are few flute players I know of that have that capacity to go beyond the "beautiful" sound generally associated with the instrument...

The end of the gig was stellar, with Susan coming up on Spirit in the Dark to sing with Mike. At the end of the song, the band double-timed in that characteristic Gospel way, a very intense moment. The encore was Freddie's Dead, followed by The Weight, both cool.

I had a few disspointments over the evening. First of all, I was there on my own, with no one to share the goodness with. Strange how a gig shared is a better gig... More dissapoitingly, the band didn't play for as long as I would have hoped (a little over an hour and a half) and they didn't play Sonida Alegre (my second favourite DTB tune).

Still, all in all, it was a great gig, and I'm very pleased I was there. I hope a sbd of it circulates. Truth be told, I've been kinda dissapointed by Songlines, a much more pop album than what I hoped for and tend to like. The beginning of the gig felt like a continuation of that, but the DTB soon proved that they still got it. I hope the trend doesn't continue in future albums, and I'll be sure to attend any further gigs in France...

I'll try and find some photos of the gig on the web and I'll link to a bootleg recording if one comes out !