Moanin' and moanin'

Ah, the miracles of the iPod shuffle function...

The other day, I was walking down a London street listening to my iPod. I don't know how the shuffle function works (and sometimes I think it's a little strange, with the same artist recurring several times over the course of 10 tracks played) but on that day it produced a little miracle for me. It played Moanin', by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, followed a few tracks later by Moanin', by Charles Mingus.

Now you would be forgiven for thinkin that these are two versions of the same tune. After all, reinterpretation has always been a staple of jazz exploration. But youd be wrong. They are just two tunes from the same era, and both are masterpieces.

The Jazz Messengers have precedence of age. Moanin' was composed by Bobby Timmons (the Messenger's pianist) and recorded in 1958, it was released on the album Moanin' and became the Messengers' first ever hit. Unsurprisingly for a track written by a pianist, the backbone of the harmony of this tune is laid by the piano, as evident from the very beginning of the theme. The theme is very characteristic of the two elements that make this tune memorable. It starts with a soulful vibe, low key saxophone, but the phrase evolves into something harder, more driven, in the second part. As the theme fades, Lee Morgan's trumpet soars into a wonderful solo, with Blakey's drumming hard and steady, very much at the front. Tenor sax Benny Golson then picks up the last phrase from Morgan's chorus and builds on it. This is typical hard bop sax, not focused on fast, but rather on deep and hard. There are some fast passages, but they are there more to build the tension that gradually increases towards the end of the chorus and then suddently drops when Timmons produces his rather subdued, soulful solo. Bassist Jymie Merrit picks it up from there with minimal accompaniment by Blakey, and his deep solo segues back into the theme, subdued, then hard, and into a rousing finale.

Mingus' Moanin' is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, although it also swings hard, even harder than Blakey's. It's also a more intricate, composed affair, in the manner of Mingus. It was released on Blues & Roots, an album that Mingus designed as a challenge to the jazz critics who dismissed him as being unable to swing. It opens with a strange, wonderful and deep barytone sax hook played by Pepper Adams, and gradually a somber trombone backline adds a layer of harmony (and sometimes disharmony) as the rhythm section swings harder and harder. The saxes add a second voice to the barytone theme, then suddenly, the harmony shifts and for a short moment you think it's going to get mellower, but no, the swing builds up again until Pepper's catchy barytone brings the theme back to its completion. There follows a fairly classic alto sax solo followed by a more out there tenor sax solo that ends sans backing for a good while. At the end of that solo section, the rhythm section goes mad with double time until the chord sequence resumes, the solo ends and Pepper Adams' hook comes back again to reenter the theme. The buildup this time is even harder than the first time, and the ending is simply wild.

I like these little miracles of life. Moanin' and Moanin', two monuments of jazz, same title, in sequence, all by the randomness of the shuffle function...

Brüno reinterprets jazz, soul and funk...

I just spent half an hour skimming through the blog of comic book writer Brüno, and discovered that he had a passion for roughly the same musical era I have. There's a section on the blog called zik where he draws covers for famous CDs in these genres. I can't resist reproducing one of them and strongly encourage you to check it out, this is pure talent !

Rrkirk

Whole Batch of Harmonica CDs for sale...

The time of Spring Cleaning has come and I find myself forced by the powers of my family's ultimate ruler to shed out some CDs. I've put a whole batch of them for sale on Ebay for 3 EUR. Some of them end tonight, some end next week. Here's a direct link to see them all. If you purchase some, let me know you read Musical Ramblings, I'll make sure I include some extra goodies for you.

Mildly iPod annoyed...

I love my new iPod. It's crammed full of goodness, especially now that iPod Fully Loaded has taught me how to get videos on there. There's one thing that annoys me though.

I still buy CDs. And why shouldn't I. CDs are cool, and while I see the practicality of digital downloads, I still enjoy sorting through piles of records and impulsively buying one or more.

With my iPod though I've lost a crucial component, and that's the instant gratification of the CD purchase. I can't go out of the shop and feverishly rip the protective film, push it in the player shakingly and enjoy my latest purchase. It's a little bit frustrating, but I can live with it...

What's more annoying is that content protection and Apple's compulsive closeness makes it impossible for me to load music onto it from any computer, and since my music collection is hosted on my home computer and I'm abroad, I'm now sitting with four CDs I purchased yesterday and won't be able to listen to on the train home tonight.

I understand there's a good piece of software for Apple Mac that allows you to circumvent that (Senuti, I think it's called) but no equivalent for PC as far as I know. I wish Apple would apply the care they devote to user-experience beyond the device itself in a slightly less proprietary way...

Oh, and the four CDs?

  • Warpaint by the Black Crowes
  • Post-Industrial Blues by Bob Brozman
  • Pointless Nostalgic by Jamie Cullum
  • Bokoor Beats, a compilation of Ghana Afrobeat from the 70s (with tons of harmonica!)

I'll let you know what they're worth when I've been able to give them a good listen...

The Soul Shack is a Treasure Trove

Yestersay I stumbled upon a music blog I didn't know, The Soul Shack. I instantly fell in love with it. Despite the name, it's very open musically and while soul music, or more generally music that stirs the soul is it's core, it's above all a blog about music and what loving music is all about.

The posts are long and documented, with mucho links, videos and record references. I wish I had the time and patience to do the same on Musical Ramblings...

Anyway, excellent read and immediate addition to my RSS Feeds and Blogroll. Check it out!

Jamie Cullum

Jcullum I just got back from Barcelona where I was spending the week for the Mobile World Congress. Wednesday night, however, I was lucky enough to be invited to a select party hosted by Research in Motion (the manufacturers of the Blackberry mobile phones). And they had invited Jamie Cullum to perform for the audience. He played for about 45 minutes and I discovered an intriguing and interesting jazz artist who is not only a superior piano player and superb singer in the Sinatra vein, but also (and perhaps more importantly) someone who plays with the form and manages to be interesting to younger audiences not by dumbing down but by making his music more radical.

I don't know how well this stuff translates in the studio, but I'm sure to check his stuff out now...

Wood Brothers' second album out on April 1st!

The Wood Brothers have recently announced that their new album would be released on April 1st. It's going to be called Loaded. Listening to the sample tunes on their Myspace, it sounds much like the first one: acoustic, warm, with heavy, fat double bass and Oliver Wood's high pitched nasal voice. This is going to be a real treat, I can't wait.

Woodbrothers

A night out in Boston

Last night I went out with a couple of colleagues at the Green Dragon in Boston. Great place, claims to be the oldest tavern in Boston and rumour has it that's where the American Revolution was hatched (aversion to Tea certainly didn't seem out of place...)

There was a band playing there, called the Spitting Vinnies. It's a cool line up for a small place like that, two acoustic guitars, a percutionnist and a trumpet player. They were a cover band, but what I'd call an interesting cover band. A fun cover band. Basically they would cover any pop song from any era, and twist it in their own, sweet, campy way. The thing I loved about it is that it would take you sometimes up to a full minute to actually recognise some of the most famous tunes. The crowd was very fun to watch as well, clearly enjoying themselves.

Another trick i found really impressive was that people would come up with requests and most of the time, they would start playing that song just next. Imagine the amount of stupid lyrics that must force you to remember!

Anyway, a fun night. I intend to spend more time exploring Boston nightlife next time I'm around...

A discovery of digital music

I never had any use for digital music or inclination to use it. Call me old fashioned, but I like those CDs with their quality sound, their nice sleeves, and their informative sleevenotes. Until I received my iPod for xmas, that is. Not that I suddenly discovered I disliked CDs or anything (I think I'll be the last ever customer of a good many second hand CD shops - hopefully years from now - as I make it a point to find and visit them everywhere I go...), but of course owning a digital music player makes you relaise how convenient it is, especially when you travel as much as I do.

So last week I did my first playlist and decided to share it on iTunes. You know, the web 2.0 thing to do. I was even going to tell you about it! So I import it on iTunes and what message comes back: iTunes features none of the tunes on this iMix, therefore it cannot be imported. Now that's rich. I will admit that my playlists contain some obscure stuff, but come on, no King Crimson, no Gil Scott-Heron, no G Love, no Dr. John, no Blues Traveler. No way!

After a while, I thought about this and realised that the issue wasn't that they didn't have these tracks, it was that I hadn't purchased them from the iTunes store. How web 1.0 is that? It also reminded me why I profoundly dislike the iTunes store (besides poor sound quality and absurd DRM). Won't be buying from them...

Today, I was importing some really obscure harmonica stuff a friend from the US burned on CD for me some years back. No we're talking really obscure here. Let's make a test: those of you who know of George Armaos, put your hands up... Hrm. Just as I thought, and bonus points for the smartass at the back. Anyway, I import the few tracks I had of this guy, no titles no nothing, of course, and then I wanted to get at least a photo of the guy (I hate having blank covers on the iPod's cover flow. Yes, I am anal.)

So I Google Gearge Armaos hoping that a fellow geek would have put up a photo of this greek harmonica and oud player up. To my surprise, I find a record cover on Rhapsody's website. Now Rhapsody is a subscription based music service (also DRM riddled, a no-no for me), and known to have a huge library, so I think "wait a minute, if Rhapsody has it, maybe Amazon has it". And sure enough, there it is, George Armaos - Greek Fever. Wow.

But the trip doesn't end there: I go to buy the album from Amazon, it's an $8.99 download, they offer a download manager that will get the music straight into iTunes, what more can you ask for? That they have international distribution for their mp3 store. Unfortunately, they don't. Damn. But I notice at the bottom that Smithsonian Folkways is the rights owner. Wait a minute, I've already purchased some obscure harmonica music from these guys, Eddie Manson's Suite from the Little Fugitive. I go to their website and bingo, Greek Fever is there and available for download. It's slightly more expensive ($9.99 plus a $0.25 tax) but allows you to download FLAC format as well as mp3 (FLAC is a lossless compression, when you uncompress it you get WAVs which is the regular CD format) and is also DRM free.

So there you are. In one day I discovered that iTunes had a poor catalog (I checked afterwards, they don't have George Armaos' Greek Fever), that Amazon's Catalog was impressive but not available to me, and that Smithsonian Folkways is selling the kind of obscure stuff I need. Welcome to the world of digital music.

So, what's this album by the way? It's an album of oriental sounding instrumentals by Greek chromatic harmonica and oud player George Armaos, and honestly, it's stunning. The most fluid eastern scale lines you can imagine, with a lot of improvisation and imagination. Well worth checking out. Some of the songs sound Greek in rhythm (but it's miles above anything I've heard in Greek restaurants), some more middle-eastern. But remember, this was 15 years before Howard Levy or Roland van Straaten were doing it!

So, assuming you live in the US, I can only recommend that you get hold of this superb stuff that you cannot miss if you like chromatic virtuosity, world music or any combination thereof. get it from Amazon, it's easier and cheaper. If you do not live in the US, ou can also get it, from Smithsonian Global Sound. How's that for choice?

This whole episode gave me matter for reflexion on the value and convenience of digital music. The simple fact that copyright laws prevent Amazon from selling me music because I'm not in the US shows how much these laws need to be rehauled. And if the digitisation of music allows all these long forgotten masterpieces to become available again, then I will become a regular customer, and sleeve notes be damned (although I do hope they find a way to integrate those digitally as well...)

News from Kwakland

Kwak Kwak is one of the most promising bands from the French pop/rock scene, and it incidentally features harp player (and ball of energy) extraordinaire Damien Tartarella. They opened a pre-order scheme for their 3rd album a few months back, and we've just received some news today that the soundtakes were done, that the mastering would take place at the end of February for a production in March. At this stage, those who pre-ordered will receive their CDs while the rest have to wait until May 2008 for the official release. Release parties/gigs will take place on May 27th at La Boule Noire and May 29th at Le Nouveau Casino.

Cool! I'm really excited about this, if only because it'll be an opportunity to see them live again!