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Strange but not a stranger
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derspatchel and I saw the Bernie Worrell Orchestra tonight at Johnny D's.I think that might have been the closest I will ever come in my life to seeing Stop Making Sense live.
Bernie Worrell being, famously, the keyboardist with Talking Heads for most of the 1980's—visible in the concert footage for Demme's film; he is quite recognizable—and one of the founding members of Parliament-Funkadelic. We got an extended instrumental jam of "Burning Down the House" and "Genius of Love." Vamping the bass progression, the audience starting to smile, holding back to see if those last words of his about burning had just been a tease, and then those shivery, theremin-like quivers on the synthesizer. Collective grin with appropriate admixture of shouts. I couldn't tell if we were in for a singalong, but Worrell played all the vocals, dancing over the melody: holding the chorus with huge, symphonic chords. At one point he threw a hornpipe into Tom Tom Club. Because he could. The sing-along turned out to be "Come Together," which snuck up out of the bass and saxophone noodling around at the end of the song about spies: the audience got into shouting the refrain of that one. ("Over who?") And over that unmistakable rolling bass riff, Worrell picked out the melody of "Eleanor Rigby"—very simply at first, then with increasing improvisation, like a violin or a vocalise. And in between and around and after we got a solid wall of swirling, crunchy funk-jazz-rock-anything-the-band-felt-like-I-swear-there-was-a-brief-interlude-of-cool-jazz-in-there-lacking-only-whisk-brushes-for-the-true-West-Coast-sound. They played a two-and-a-half-hour set. No breaks. No encore, either, but we did not feel shortchanged. I never expected to hear either of those two songs performed by anyone who had originated them. I never expected to hear anyone who could get so many different sounds out of a Minimoog as Worrell. I don't think it's hyperbole to say the show was the best live music I've heard all year.
The last few days have been rotten for my health: I felt so wiped on Thursday, I didn't see
rushthatspeaks; I had the kind of sore throat that hurt to swallow with for Thor: The Dark World and by Saturday, during an ill-advised foray to the Boston Public Library, I was running a recurring fever. Today I was mostly fine until halfway through the opening act (Chroma Concept; we liked them better the later they got in their set, when they left off the free-form Phish improv and just started grooving) when I felt suddenly dizzy and head-pounding and went through a brief flash of paranoia that I had been accidentally caffeine-poisoned until it went away; I don't think I've made the recovery I was hoping for. I would prefer to make my voice lesson tomorrow, but I'll have to see how I feel in the morning. It's kind of sucked.Between discovering Moss of Moonlight on Friday, however, downloading a ton of obscure Owl Service and associated English folk from Stone Tape Recordings last night, and then tonight's experience with Bernie Worrell, it's been a great weekend for music.
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Your health, though, man. If only we could tell your somatic systems that fevers and inflammations are an unacceptable form of everyday self-expression.
So people can perform without an encore? I hadn't realized that was even possible; I thought it was a sort of non-optional optional feature.
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downloading a ton of obscure Owl Service and associated English folk from Stone Tape Recordings last night
Do you mean an audiobook of Alan Grant's Owl Service? I didn't think it was long enough for there to be a ton of it. Or have actual owls been doing service projects somewhere (with folk music?) and I didn't know about it?
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So sorry about your health! Hope you finally shake this soon.
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The Owl Service is an English acid-folk band I discovered via Rebsie Fairholm in 2009 and then spent the next several years banging my head against the internet in fruitless search for any of their EPs, which were all very limited edition, out of print, we made fifty copies and handed them out to the audience at our house concert kind of thing. I was able to find their first full-length album, which I had mixed feelings about. As far as I can tell, all of their recorded material to date is now freely available for download from Stone Tape Recordings, and I like their weirder directions—like covers of British cult film music—just as much as I'd thought I would. About half of their arrangements are too gauzy for me, but the other half make them worthwhile. Impetus for discovering Stone Tape Recordings was Alasdair Roberts & Robin Robertson's Hirta Songs, which I read about in the Guardian and didn't expect to hear later that same day; they're amazing.
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I hope you feel better soon.
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It is a timesink; I approve of all its musical and literary antecedents; I think you will like a lot of what's up there. I'm hoping Robin Robertson writes more songs! He's been one of my favorite poets ever since "At Roane Head," but the music is new.
If only we could tell your somatic systems that fevers and inflammations are an unacceptable form of everyday self-expression.
Stop trying to be edgy! It's not performance art! People will like you just as well when your lungs function fine!
I hadn't realized that was even possible; I thought it was a sort of non-optional optional feature.
Heh. We applauded, but the band did not come back. And we were cool with it.
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It was great. I am not into loud music—I wear earplugs to all concerts, the same way I wear them to all movies and most forms of public transit—but we bought tickets for this show as soon as I saw the flyer outside Johnny D's. It was worth it.
Hope you finally shake this soon.
Thanks. Me, too. I've had to cancel my singing lesson for the second time in a week and it just depresses me.
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I highly recommend it. You may also get a kick out of their last Halloween's mixtape. It's one hour-long track, but it's awesome.
I hope you feel better soon.
Thanks. I refuse to spend my winter sick.
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Sorry your health has been lousy--I hope you feel better soon.
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I am still envious! Someday I may see David Byrne and I trust he will still be incomprehensibly strange.
Sorry your health has been lousy--I hope you feel better soon.
Appreciated. I am drinking a lot of hot tea.
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Be well.
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LOOK HOW SURPRISED AND APOLOGETIC I AM.
Enjoy.
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That's incredible stuff. Thank you for sharing his work. I'll have to check out the songs when I find the chance.