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The Band at the Pantheon Party

A new friend mentioned to me over the phone the other day, “Did I know Los Lobos, did I know they are coming to Cleveland?”

Besides being reminded once again about how much fun it is to discover with ‘somebody fresh’ shared musical affinities, I smiled on my end.

I told him, “Los Lobos is one of the greatest rock bands ever.”

Ha! My fondness for Los Lobos goes back to when Jamie Cohen excitedly told me over the phone that “there was this great new band on Slash,” and had I heard of ’em? This was in 1983. Slash had sent me the promo a few weeks before.

“Yes! Outrageously unadulterated rock and roll, right my man?”

I’ve seen them a couple of times. Loud. They are as good a live band as there has ever been.

Although, for me, Clarence White will always remain the greatest electric guitarist of rock and roll, in the august group in the next (non-slide guitar) spot, David Hilgado joins Clapton, Thompson, Robertson, Cippolina, Garcia and Cline. The other Los Lobos guitarist Cesar Rojas is also a barnburner and one of the greatest ensemble guitarists rock and roll has produced.

2015:

Reverb and Patterns

Cistern from Claudia Esslinger on Vimeo.

The Old School II (2016)
The Old School II (2016)

My art and image making have gobbled all my creative time for a year. (This puts the couple of hundred or so hours of recording activity in 2014 in bittersweet relief.) At the moment the only way to join the two creative urges are to contemplate their meta-integration at the one counterintuitive spot that a bridge is possible.

The bridge, existing right now as a vague complex archetype, integrates reverberation and symmetric pattern.

This Kamelmauz track from 2014 captures what I’m dreaming.

Piscina Mirabilis – Salvatore Carannante in Spare Parts Sound Project. from Salvatore Carannante on Vimeo.

Last year the blog visited The Tank
“:

Zimoun «Sculpting Sound» : The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, USA, 2011/2012 from ZIMOUN on Vimeo.

musical table & pendulum sound machine live at pola museum annex from kyouei design on Vimeo.

Aspiration and Visualization from kevinballon on Vimeo.

Kamelmauz envisions this bridge in 2012:

Lesley Flanagan – my music all comes from the same process of throwing down a palette of sounds and then intuitively organizing them

Lesley Flanagan, singer, composer, instrument builder, sound conceptualizer, deep listener

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

I think it’s about listening. I feel that when we take time to truly listen — to actively engage in listening to another person, to music, to sounds in nature and in cities, to all the many sounds in world around us — we give ourselves time to be present in our lives. That’s very meaningful to me.

Five Sound Questions to Lesley Flanagan – via everydaylistening.com

Interview at Disquiet

The Speaker Is Present – A Conversation With Lesley Flanagan (2016)

Lesley Flanagan Recordings at Bandcamp

Peter Kirn – performance and the space, time, sound continuum

A Festival to Ponder the Nature of Time

From Create Digital Music, and right up my alley; although nowadays I am more observer than participant. Right up yours too if you are concerned at all with future music, performance, experimentation, field recordings, and the integration of sound with other modes and domains.

Nous

Diane Birch is one of my favorite singers, oh, heck, she is my current favorite singer! Her new album Nous was released earlier this year, and is on Bandcamp. (I guess we’re sort of label mates in the new fangled version of not-really-a-label label mate.) Her youtube channel is worth spending an afternoon with. She is a terrific songwriter too.

Nous is a tour de force.

I discovered her on Daryl’s House.

Her admixture of the tamber of Carole King, Carly Simon, and Dusty Springfield results in one of pop’s most beguiling voices.

He Sailed Over

“He sailed over, he wouldn’t fly.” Cleveland Plain Dealer journalist Jane Scott, quoting David Bowie’s wife.

David Bowie’s American debut took place at Cleveland Music Hall on September 22, 1972. I had graduated from high school on the far east side of Cleveland four months earlier. I don’t recall why there were so many of us still around, but, nevertheless, Jamie Cohen had supplied a group of us with passes to attend the after party at the, I believe, downtown Sheraton.

None of us were in anyway fans of Bowie’s music. That said, I managed a record store, Music Madness, on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, and the owner, Marc Epstein played the shit out of Bowie’s new record, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. By that September, I had heard it tens of times.

My own tastes echoed the folk-rock foundations laid in by my musically worldly friend Jamie, whose father started and owned the Disc Record Chain. 1972 was a good year too: Little Feat (Sailin’ Shoes,) The Band (Rock of Ages,) Ry Cooder (Into the Purple Valley,) Grateful Dead (Europe ’72,) Bonnie Raitt (Give It Up,) Brinsley Schwarz (Silver Pistols,) Manassas, Richard Thompson (Henry the Human fly) were just a few highlights. Still, we were hardly hipsters. My social group was full on into the cosmic cowboy artifice etched for us by the cover of The Flying Burrito Brothers’s The Guilded Palace of Sin.

And that was the sensibility we marched into the Sheraton with, on a chilly September night. The bouncers did throw one of our own down the stairs. Other stories unfolded.

Nobody caught a glimpse of Bowie.

Over the years I heard a lot of Bowie. The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of my top twenty favorite movies. Bowie is probably the best example of a musical giant who is not in my own subjective pantheon.

***

David Bowie and Michael Jackson and Prince are the great auteurs of post-hippie era pop. RIP Mr. Bowie.

Sharp Rock

Courtney Barnett‘s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit came out in March last year. I got to it in late April. By May it seemed to me that unless Wussy delivered something unbeatable, Barnett’s second album would rule the roost.

She write indelible songs and delivers them directly. She helps me understand the younger generation.

Courtney Barnett web | Facebook
Courtney Barnett Pitchfork
How Courtney Barnett’s Thoughts became 2015’s Sharpest Debut

Avant Gardener is from 2013. Courtney is from Australia.

Trophies of Sand

Synthesist Rheyne (Jon Barbieri) and guitarist Robert Manganaro mine the vein of improvised ambient on a terrific playlist full of chilled goodness.

The duo records their improvisations live and so all the loopng and sequencing and mixing is in real time. This is very hard to do as tautly as the two do it. Lots of technological acumen underlies the organic feel of these slow building improvisations.

Robert Manganaro – guitar
SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/robert-manganaro
Instagram http://instagram.com/rmanganaro
Twitter http://twitter.com/robertmanganaro

Jon Barbieri (@RheyneMusic) – keyboards
YouTube http://youtube.com/rheynemusic
Facebook http://facebook.com/rheynemusic
Instagram http://instagram.com/rheynemusic
Google+ http://google.com/+rheynemusic
Twitter http://twitter.com/rheynemusic
SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/rheyne