Musical Ramblings

HADOPI BLACK-OUT

HSC09 #7: Nine Below Zero

The final concert of the 2009 edition of Harmonica sur Cher was legendary British blues-rock band Nine Below Zero with Mark Feltham on harmonica. I hold Mark Feltham in very high regard, but much as I tried I simply did not enjoy this concert. The first reason, I think, is that I didn't for one minute think that these guys enjoyed playing that evening. It felt to me like the absolue bare minimum that a band can do.

Throughout the concert I felt that the musicians were on automatic, there was no palpable feeling. The reason I like blues is for the thrill that starts in your guts when you feel that the guy is not just playing the music, he's living it. The flip side of that coin is that there is no music I find more boring that Blues without a Feeling.

Let's be clear, this isn't a dig on them as musicians, and I have no idea what the reason of their lack of involvement that night is or even if it's a recurring thing with them. But they certainly weren't there for me that night. Having said that, there were people dancing and clearly enjoying themselves, so maybe it's just me. Go figure.

Anyway, I still shot the obligatory video just so you could hear for yourselves. The strange thing is that I still thought that Mark's harp playing was interesting and distinctive, he played very differently from other blues-rock harp player's I've heard. But irrespective of that, the thrill was definitely gone.

You can see for yourselves, the (few) photos are here and the video of Stormy Monday is here:

Splurge out on cool and inexpensive music...

I'm sorry if this is only relevant to my French readers, but...

Amazon has finally launched its mp3 store outside of the US, and particularly in France. In order to boost visibility, they have a promo currently with 500 albums sold for 2.99 EUR. I had a quick look thinking there wasn't going to be much of interest, but I was wrong. There's a lot of really cool stuff there. Here are a few pointers if you're feeling like splurging out:

The Folk section has:

• Moriarty's Gee Whiz but this is a Lonesome Town
• Alela Dian's The Pirate's Gospel
• Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around

The Jazz section has:

• Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething
• Weather Report's Heavy Weather
• Miles Davis' Kind of Blue
• The Bad Plus' These Are the Vistas
• Charles Mingus' Blues & Roots
• Erik Truffaz' The Dawn
• Herbie Hancock's Headhunters
• Oscar Peterson's Night Train

The Rock section has:

• Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon
• Nirvana's Nevermind
• Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
• Queen's A Night at the Opera
• Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin
• Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV
• The Doors' The Doors
• The Police's Regatta de Blanc
• The Cure's Seventeen Seconds
• Telephone's Un Autre Monde
• The Clash's London Calling
• Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland

The World section has:

• Lhasa de Sala's La Llorona

Knock yourself out! I'm off to purchase stuff I don't have yet!

Fun music for a sunday

My kids and I just found this on Youtube and loved it. Maybe I did too. A bit...

HSC09 #6: Pédro Kouyaté & Mandinka Transe Acoustique

Much as I enjoyed Gutpuppet's concert at the Harmonica sur Cher festival, it wasn't exactly a discovery since I'd be listening to their music for a good while. Pédro Kouyaté, on the other hand, was totally unknown to me and while I have been listening to Vincent Bucher's harmonica alongside a variety of African musicians, this concert was still an absolute smack in the face for me, and as it ended I only wished it could have gone on for longer.

Pédro Kouyaté plays n'goni, acoustic guitar and calabash as well as a variant of kora with less strings which he named during the concert, but I don't remember the name. He was accompanied by a drummer, a percussionist, a tenor sax and flute player, a bassist and a harmonica player (the aforementioned Vincent Bucher).

I don't have a huge background in appreciation of Malian music, but I love Ali Farka Touré and I've heard a little Toumani Diabaté and Lobi Traoré. I was under the impression that a large part of the charm of this music was a certain tendency towards an apparent simplicity, even rusticity in the musicianship. Perhaps I felt differently during this concert because of the live effect two yards from my face, but this was not at all the impression I got from Pédro Kouyaté. His sense of rhythmic placement was simply astounding, no matter which instrument he was playing and it didn't in any sense feel rudimentary or simple.

Of course, this is transe music, built amongst rhythmic patterns and essential modal. Someone hoping for harmonic or even melodic complexity would be dissapointed. Thankfully, that's not what I was hoping for, and as all good transe, it's hypnotic. I fell into the pattern immediately - drawn into it by Pédro's great introductions to his songs, providing context and sense - and so, it seems, did most of the audience. You could see heads bobbing and after a few songs, a sizeable number of (mostly) ladies started dancing in the aisles.

Truly, it is impossible to resist this stuff. Furthermore, the presence of the drums, electric bass and sax gave a touch of afro-beat to what might otherwise have felt more as a roots thing (not that that would have made it less enticing to me...) Vincent's harmonica playing has a slightly different tole as it emulates mostly the malian violin and therefore feels rootsy. Vincent makes great use of his deep and powerful vibrato when he's improvising, and doubles the melodic riffs the rest of the time.

Pédro and his boys played for a little over an hour and then had to leave the stage to the next act, but I think I was not alone in regretting that they couldn't play longer. I am determined to check them out again in or near Paris, and will probably go along my son Corentin who kept raving about the concert for days afterword.

If you want a feel for it, here are the photos and here is a video of a tune which, as far as I can determine from the record is Seguin Magnydé. I apologise for the video flying around during the first minute, I was trying to get it stabilised on my new gorillapod and it took me a while. After the first minute it's stable:

Podcasts are back!

Since June 1st, the podcasts are functional again. Sorry for the hassle. I notice there are no comments at all about the latest podcast. Do you really all hate it or have you not listened to it ?

Session Americana in Cambridge

I'm writing this from Boston, where I came over for work this week. I landed on Sunday afternoon, and as soon as my luggage was laid down at the hotel, I jumped in a cab to the New School of Music in Cambridge, where Session Americana was playing.

Session Americana is one of the bands in which the amazing Jim Fitting of Treat Her Right fame officiates as a harp player and singer. It was an incredibly fun gig with a really cool atmosphere, and it's not that often that you hear musicians playing unamplified to an audience (although there was a vocal microphone at the center of the round table).

In their normal concerts (this one was unusual, in a very small room in a music school), the round table that they're all sitting under has a microphone for each musician just under the table and the central mic for the vocalist. Thankfully, the small room helped with a (mostly) unamplified sound.

Last night I shared a few beers with Jim and we talked shop, and also discussed Morphine and Mark Sandman. Jim is a harp player I really like, he's got a sober quality that is not the best shared skill amongst harp players, pro or otherwise, and there's always something really interesting and different about his bands.

In addition, it's very humbling to talk to a guy who played with one of my musical heroes for so long. Jim mentioned that Dana Colley and Jerome Dupree of Morphine were playing that evening with a slide player, but I stupidly didn't write down the name of the club and subsequently couldn't find it... Oh well, I guess that'll be for my next Boston trip!

I took some photos and shot a few videos on Sunday, including the following song called Coal Oil Johnny:

HSC09 #5: Lavach'

There comes a time in any music festival when you need a break from all the good music. Sometimes you time that break on the basis of the program, choosing to skip a particular concert, and sometimes, it just falls on you that you need the break no matter what. Unfortunately for Lavach', this break time feel for me at the beginning of their set.

I love music influences by Eastern European tradition, and so I should have been the perfect customer for Lavach's brand of Armenian Folk meets rock. The line-up was interesting, with a violin, trombone (doubling on electric guitar on some numbers), drums, harmonica and a surprising (and effective) female singer/accordion player.

So I can't quite explain why it didn't work for me. There was nothing that I found objectively wrong with Lavach's music. I felt that the first few numbers were a little lacking in energy, so used am I to listening to the dynamitic AKB, and from then on I was lost. I ended listening with a distant ear while sipping bears and chatting with various festival goers.

Still, I decided to shoot a video so that you can make your own mind:

HSC09 #4: Gutpuppet

Where is the fine line between entertainment and uncompromising artistic endeavour? This eternal question is probably here to stay, but this year the Harmonica sur Cher organisers certainly demonstrated that they would not shy away from difficult music in programming Gutpuppet. Gutpuppet is a lap steel guitar(s) and chromatic harmonica duet formed of Scot Ray on guitars and Bill Barrett on harmonica. If you read this blog regularly, you will no doubt have heard me talk about them as they are one of my favourite bands right now and one of the concerts I was most eager to attend this year.

Bill and Scot are about as unencumbered by ego as it gets, and they came up on stage very humble, even a little too quiet I felt (the language barrier when playing to a French audience can be intimidating, especially since Bill's brand of humour isn't exactly first degree...) Still, the music is what you're really here for, and Bill and Scot certainly delivered on that count.

The thing that makes Gutpuppet potentially "difficult" is that their music is built on non-western foundations to a sometimes extreme degree, especially when it comes to structure. I was talking to Scot after the gig and he told me that more or less no matter what the flavour of the music (gospel, greek, indian, american jazz, etc.), the structure was raga inspired, with a long and swirling introduction that led into the theme and then interweaving of theme references and improvisation. This makes it hard for ears and brains trained to hear the underlying structure and the melody from the first bar to connect.

And indeed, talking to the audience after the concert, Gutpuppet seemed to have evenly split the public between people who absolutely loved it and people who didn't get it at all and thought it was all "chaos", or, more bluntly, "n'importe quoi". Interestingly the people who did get it all mentioned the colour, the texture, the atmosphere of the music, and indeed I think that's where Gutpuppet really excelled: in setting up different moods. In many ways, this is ambiant music, something to be experienced, not analysed, and if you don't get hooked early on then you'll be left by the wayside.

Highlights of the evening for me were their rendition of Medio de Nada, a spanish flavoured tune, a new Gospel-y composition with Bill on Harmonetta, and both of their solo spots. Bill's was mostly (if not all) written, a complex piece full of tongue blocked diads and triads. Scot's was a dreamy slidy thing, very atmospheric.

I personally loved this concert, and was even more thrilled that my guitar beginner eight year old son also loved it despite the potentially difficult nature of the music (but I think he just experienced it without any thought for analysis, although he was looking at Scot's playing intently). This was my first opportunity to see Gutpuppet live and although I did think that Bill and Scot should have tried to connect with the audience more despite the language barrier, especially during the long intervals where Scot was retuning his 22 string indian guitar, the music was just what I'd expected and more.

We had long talks with Bill and Scot that evening after the gig and at the jam, and one thing Bill said struck me. i can't remember if he was quoting someone or not, but essentially what he said was:

"When I'm told we do musician's music, I ask if people would tell a chef that he does chef's cooking..."

On this philosophical note, you will find my (not very exciting) photos here and below is a video of Medio de Nada:

Hot albums to buy...

A short break from my Harmonica Sur Cher write-ups. Yesterday I received an email from a musically (and harmonically) inclined friend that read:

<< I'm looking for some recommendations for some hot albums to buy. It seems like an age since I bought a decent, let alone classic album.>>

Needless to say I was very flattered that he would turn to me, and my ego being what it is, I drafted a long response with numerous comments, links to videos or reviews, etc. This morning, I suddenly realised that I could share that with my readers too. If you have been reading Musical Ramblings faithfully, most of these might be familiar to you, but I think there's a certain value in it being all gathered in one place.

So here goes:

I'm gonna go on a limb here and assume that you know Son of Dave. If you don't, this should give you a good feel for it, and I recommend both 02 and 03.

I have very eclectic tastes, so I'll try to qualify the stuff that really moved me recently so that you can sense whether it fits your paradigm or not.

I've been on a Blue Note kick. I remember you mentioning that you discovered a lot of the old jazz cats when you were a young 'un, so none of this might be new to you, but the one guy who I really dig and is a recent discovery for me is Leo Parker, a baritone player who cut two records for Blue Note and then had the stupid idea to die. His album Let Me Tell You 'bout It has really been a major discovery for me (and I'm now exploring more bari players as a consequence). There's a review I wrote here. Apart from that, Blue Note must-have records for me include Lee Morgan's Sidewinder and Art Blakey's Moanin' at the very least.

Two other jazz cats of the same era (but not on Blue Note) who I really find interesting are Mingus and Kirk. For Mingus, I would absolutely and unreservedly recommend Blues & Roots. If you don't know it, go for it, you can't but love it (and there's great bari there too!) It's harder to pick a favourite for Roland Kirk, and his stuff is way weirder. This video is a good sample of what I love about him (and features great bari, again!). If I had to pick a favourite I'd say Volunteered Slavery which has some studio and some much wilder live stuff (you can see me doing the title track theme on harp here). You might however want to check out the Live in Copenhagen (aka Kirk in Copenhagen) which has a surprise appearance by none other than SBW2!

Let's keep it at that for the old jazz. As far as recent jazz go, I really like saxophonist Skerik and particularly his short lived project Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet. Check out this video for a taste. This a track from their studio album Husky which I really love. Another avant-garde-ish band I really like is jazz trio The Bad Plus. It's not for the faint of heart, but they're truly post rock. Probably the most accessible of their CDs is the latest which features a singer and is mostly covers of rock songs. This is them doing Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb for a taste of their approach. If you think it's a straight cover, you haven't listened long enough. A more "classic" cover of theirs from a previous album is Smell like Teen Spirit. Still, I'd recommend For All I Care as a good start if their weirdness doesn't put you off.

Still in the jazz realm but a lot more accessible, is Avishai Cohen. I really fell for him listening to Continuo and Gently Disturbed. This is a good sample of that era. Lyrical, blending the jazz tradition with classical and oriental influences. On Cohen's recently released Aurora, he sings and the feeling is overall less jazz and more world, but I like it a lot nonetheless.

Finally, I've been digging into the modern New Orleans crowd lately. First of all, you need to check out Stanton Moore. He's the drummer from Galactic (see below) but also has a solo career that's more in the jazz vein. I dearly love his album III (reviewed here) which has some very funky horn laden stuff and some deeper, darker trio stuff with organ and guitar, including a really heart-rending version of When the Levee Breaks. Can't find a decent video of his on Youtube, so you'll have to trust me on that (and you can check the Galactic section below for a feel of his playing).

Enough with jazz. I must confess not to be a big purchaser of blues these days, and I haven't been for a good while. About the only guy that excites me in that area is Ian Siegal, and I don't think I need to introduce you to him ;-) Straying off a little bit from pure blues though is a superb duet called the Wood Brothers which features Chris Wood (of Medeski Martin & Wood fame) on double bass and Oliver Wood on guitar and vocals. Luckiest Man is from their first album Ways not to Lose (reviewed here by yours truly). Lovin' Arms if from their second album Loaded. Both are well worth checking out. Don't get them for the harp playing though.

There's a Franco-American band that's worth checking out in the Americana realm as well. They're called Moriarty and feature great instrumentation and a female vocalist that simply has a voice to die for. Private Lily is an awesome song and incidentally, that's how they play live too (huddled around a microphone). The album is called Gee, but this is a lonesome town (here's my review of a concert) and I found it for a friend in New Zealand so you should be able to find it in Britain!

To end in the blues realm, I hesitate to recommend but will anyway an album by James Blood Ulmer called Birthright, solo on electric guitar. It sounds like John Lee Hooker on acid after taking jazz harmony lessons. This video is kind of representative although the album is a lot more disturbing than this suggests, IMO.

On to rockier shores. On the safe side, you could do worse than check out John Butler, assuming you don't know him. He's like a cross between the rocky side of Ben Harper, the groove of G Love and the laid-backness of Jack Johnson but, in my opinion, superior to all three both musically and artistically. My favourite album of his is Sunrise over Sea (see review) but the latest Grand National (reviewed here) is not half bad either. Here's Zebra from the former and Better Than from the latter.

While not exactly rock, Galactic is New Orleans funk rock and you might particularly appreciate their latest studio album From the corner to the block which has guest rappers on virtually every track. For a feef of their instrumental stuff, this is a cover of Hendrix's Manic Depression shot by yours truly earlier this year, and this is a great video of them with Boots Riley. Here is a review of their latest album.

I don't know how you stand on ethnic/world musics, so I won't go in too much depth on that, but let's just name a few names: check out Amsterdam Klezmer Band if you're into raucous jewish music. Here's Opa D to give you a feel for it. If you dig it, try to find Limonchiki, and failing that, their latest CD Zaraza.

Also check out Lhasa de Sela if you don't know her. Her album Living Road is really good and mixes her Spanish, French and English influences (she sings in all three languages). This video gives you a sense of it (the song in the first half really gives me shivers every time I hear it.) She has a new album out but I haven't heard it yet.

Also in a Spanish vein, another favourite of mine is flamenco-rock band El Bicho, particularly their album II. This is De Rodillas from that album.

I could go on, there's so much stuff I've discovered these last few years, from Camel to Bojan Z, from Tool to Pedro Kouyaté. But there's probably more than enough for now. Guess you got more out of that than you expected!!! And since I spent the last two hours doing this, I want some feedback on what you like and what you don't if you pick something up from that long list!

HSC09 #3: Marko

I've been familiar with Marko's playing for a decade, and although he kind of fell through the cracks for some years, he's been back on the scene, first playing on some tracks with French rock band Café Bertrand and more recently with his own project and album, Mille et Un Réveils. His brand of music has always been heavy rock and the new band is clearly in that vein: Deep Purple is a clear influence, as is the most famous French rock band Noir Désir.

I had never, however, seen him live, so I was quite eager to attend this set, especially since it's not the kind of music that usually gets played in Saint Aigan. In fact, the first few minutes saw about a quarter of the audience (mostly with white hair) leave. The rest, however, really enjoyed the powerful rock sound that Marko and his band (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums) delivered.

I was happy with the band's sound and music overall, and Marko's role as a harp player is really an interesting one. He doesn't solo on all songs, but quite often uses the effect-laden harp as an underpinning to structure lead guitar riffs. When he does solo, it's with a fast and furious phrasing, maybe not terribly inventive but quite efficient. As a side comment, what impressed me was his cool despite repeated sound issues with his amplified harp. He ended up playing some solos in the acoustic microphone, to great effect.

I think the band could do with a little more experience on two counts though: first of all, Marko's lyrics could do with a little more cynicism. As it stands, they're a little too "cute" (to my ears) for the style of music that backs them. Another aspect which was a small dissapointment was that despite evident talent the lead guitarist had very few spots in the light. Maybe that was a conscious decision due to playing at a harmonica festival, but in any case he (and the music) would have deserved a bigger solo contribution.

Still, it was a very cool and very heavy set, of the kind that Saint Aignan had never seen until now. I'll be checking Marko's band again in Paris when the opportunity arises. Meanwhile, you will find the photos I managed to make here and below is a video of Sous L'Manteau: