Crypto Musings

CRYPTOWEEK IN NYC: THE FIRST NIGHT

Thanks be to Steve Smith, Assistant Editor over at Time Out-New York, for his timely review of Crypto's debut performance at the Jazz Standard Monday night with the Jeff Gauthier Goatette. (We hear Nels broke two strings on the first song! DAT'S OUR MAN!!!) Stay tuned for more from the blogosphere on Night # 2 (anyone? anyone?)

NOW, SIT FORWARD KIDDIES, CAUSE GRAMPA CRYPTO'S GONNA DUMP A WHOLE LOADA FARGIN' SHNIT ON YE...

Things are coming to a boil here at Crypto Central as we count down our last days of LA-LA Land sunshine, preparing to haul a bunch of West Coast hicks out in some wacky weeklong caravan at NYC's Jazz Standard ("Where Live Music Lives"!), which, uh, I'm told, is near Union Square, right? (Pause for collective slap of New Yorkers' palms on foreheads.) Well, anyway I hear they have superlative BBQ Ribs, and that's Your Humble Blogger's fave food (and I hear they have good deviled eggs, too, our NYC friend Bonnie Wright tells me -- what God did I please? A Midwestern boy's McDreamy!) So this week we're finalizing plans, plugging holes, putting out all final fires, shipping around 300 CDs (which we hope we can sell at our shows in a wheedling, snake-oil saleman, "Colonel" Tom Parker kinda way), shipping out 500 postcards, shipping out ships-in-bottles (for the audience to tinker with between songs) and generally getting reeeeel uptight about getting on a plane and flying 5 1/3 hours. Don't get us wrong: We Love New York. Last time we were there was the Winter of Ninety-Seven, in the Time of Guiliani, standing in one of those classic ancient NY bars (with the grand embossed-brass cash registers dating back to the 1880s) with my man-purse, and some friendly guy with huge forearms leaned over and said in the requisite Brooklyn Brogue: "Y'know, I wuddn't be wearin' that thing outside on yer body like dat."

"Why not?" I replied, clinging to Cali. "Will someone steal it?"

"Not exactly," he grinned. "More like someone'll fuckin' shoot you in the fuckin' face with a fuckin' gun and then fuckin' steal it."

I liked him immediately. He was a Union Steamfitter. I can't help wondering if he came down to help at Ground Zero -- on or after that Day of All Days. If he did, I wonder if he survived.

So here's the pooh: Your Humble Dr. Winston O'Blogger isn't flying in to NYC until the night of the 29th, the first night of "Nels Cline and Friends Play the Music of Andrew Hill" at about 8pm into JFK, then I shall take an exquisitely odiferous taxi to my hotel, where I will be squatting for the last four nights of Crytpoweek fun. Then, if I can't get the taxi driver to sit and wait for me while I run up and deposit my Army Surplus duffel bag, I shall take yet another taxi directly to the Jazz Standard and hopefully I can get there by the time the 2nd set begins (again: land JFK 8pm, then hotel, then to Union Square by 9:30pm. . .what do think, is it possible?). There, I will be selling CDs and hopefully blogging about the show WHILE THE SHOW IS HAPPENING, OHMIGOD ISN'T THAT JUST PRECIOUS? I even propose doing a tribute to Lester Bangs by blogging with my laptop right on the stage during Nels's second night. Needless to say, I have yet to bring this up with L'Man himself. Better get on that...

The estimable Don Lucoff of DL Media just sent out an E-card to our friends and faves (and even some of our foes) that we think is pretty snappy (much love to its designer, Jeffrey Gauthier, who as it turns out has the same name as our own Fearless Leader, Crypto chiefarooney Jeff Gauthier -- God really is the greatest ironist, isn't She?). Check it out here, 'nards.

FYI: There's also a lot going on promotionalwise. Here's some goodies to look for in the next week and a half:

PREZZ*
(*Jazzspeak for "Press")

New York Times – Preview of the whole week with photo on the Sunday March 25, 2007 edition.

New York Sun – Feature story on the entire week. Don't know when yet.

Time Out-NY – Preview on the whole week with photo of Nels. Again, we'll let you know.

All About Jazz-NY – Full page ad in March 2007 issue. Yow.

Village Voice – We're working on a "Pick of the Week." (Worst case scenario: we appeal to Mr. Mailer himself, who marches down to the V.V. offices on both canes to kick ass, take names, etc. etc.)

RADIO, RADIO

WNYC (93.9 FM) – Feature on label and CryptoNights on New Sounds from the Vaults with John Schaefer (Tuesday, March 27).

WFMU (91.1 FM, "Where Dead Air Lives!") – Our pozze (jazzspeak for "posse") at Groov Marketing has gotten Nels an interview on Thursday, March 29 with Dorian Devins and are actively pitching "Crypto Week" at the station, complete with CD giveaways.

WFDU (89.1 FM) – Crypto's Bennie Maupin is doing a radio interview on Friday, March 30 on Jazz Influences with Marc Copeland.

RETAIL

Virgin Megastore Union Square – Promotion scheduled featuring the artists (P&P) and postcard distribution. Thanks be to ye, Sir Richard!

Downtown Music Gallery – Poster display and postcard distribution. Thanks in advance to Crypto's Luv Man in N-Y-C, Bruce Gallanter and the whole DMG staff!

UDDER

Flavorpill – Pick of the week preview listing on Nels’ two shows. Check it out: it's event listings for hipsters. The cool kind.

And speaking of Sir Nels (when don't we?), his oddball triumph from last year, New Monastery, continues to roll in reviews around the planet. The latest is from Australia's Rhythms Magazine:

NELS CLINE – NEW MONASTERY
CRYPTOGRAMOPHONE/PLANET
by Adrian "Action" Jackson
L.A. guitarist Nels Cline is, apparently, best known as a rock guitarist with the band Wilco. But he certainly shows sound jazz instincts on this set, subtitled A View into the Music of Andrew Hill. He is joined by cornetist Bobby Bradford (an elder statesman of the L.A. ‘free jazz’ scene who once worked with Ornette Coleman), clarinetist and bass clarinetist ben Goldberg (who has worked with Andrew Hill), accordionist Andrea Parkins (of the Ellery Eskelin Trio), bassist Devin Hoff, drummer Scott Amendola and on two tracks, percussionist Alex Cline (the leader’s twin).

They play ten Hill compositions: numbers like “Compulsion,” “McNeil Island,” “Yokada Yokada,” “New Monastery,” and “Dance with Death.,” which, for all their obvious strengths, have probably been recorded by few, if any, since Hill first put them onto vinyl. Often, the pieces are combined in suites of two or three. (The program also includes two Cline originals.) The performances are at times loud and jagged, at times joyously swinging, sometimes tense and edgy, sometimes slow and introspective. When I say that Cline shows sound jazz instincts, I meant that he does not replicate the original performances in any way.

Rhythms also gave some love to Mr. Bennie Maupin:

BENNIE MAUPIN - PENUMBRA
CRYPTOGRAMOPHONE/PLANET
by Adrian Jackson
(March 2007)

Saxophonist Bennie Maupin is a quiet achiever, probably best remembered for his wor over thirty years with Miles Davis (Bitches Brew) and Herbie Hancock (Mwandishi, Headhunters). He has kept a low profile for quite a while, but this album is proof that he is playing as well as ever, whether you want to hear sinuous bass clarinet, gentle flute, or probing tenor and soprano saxophone playing. (He also plays a little piano, which is less memorable.) Maupin is joined by Darek Oles (bass), Michael Stephans (drums) and Daryl Munyungo Jackson (percussion). On a program of original compositions (and one collective improvisation), Maupin explores each mood in a style that could be described as subtly persuasive.

In prep for Bennie's upcoming two-night stint closing out Cryptoweek at the Jazz Standard, Andrey Henkin sat down with him for a brief talk for the March 2007 issue of All About Jazz-New York:

BENNIE MAUPIN
by Andrey Henkin

In AllAboutJazz-New York’s Best of 2006 spread, three of the four Best Album lists included Bennie Maupin’s Penumbra. The disc was his first since 1998’s Driving While Black (Intuition), an album few in the jazz world really knew. A listener would have to go back to the ‘70s when Maupin released a couple of funk albums for Mercury or perhaps even earlier to his 1974 ECM debut The Jewel in the Lotus to find Maupin the leader, the composer, given a proper forum in which to work.

Maupin, who grew up in Detroit, is one of those puzzling figures in jazz. Do you know him as the tenor sax of Horace Silver’s late ‘60s quintet? The moody bass clarinet threading its way through Miles’ Bitches Brew? A Headhunter? “Musician is a broad title and that encompasses music so the various things that I’ve been involved in have been very much a part of my evolution as an artist,” Maupin intones. “So I’m pleased with a lot of it, that I had those opportunities to participate in all these different things. When you think of the life of any artist, your work should continue to evolve.”

Bennie Maupin got his start as a professional musician in a most inauspicious way—through the Four Tops. Brought along to play in New York in 1962, Maupin, who had studied in music conservatory, was quickly enamored of the vibrancy of the city’s jazz scene. The first night he saw Monk at the Five Spot and his life was changed. He gave immediate notice to the Four Tops and embarked on a career. But even this momentous decision was fraught with economic peril. The struggle of a working musician is a timeless story and Maupin, who had hospital experience back home, worked a day job taking care of research animals. “I was conflicted because…I had been in New York long enough to see what the community was all about in terms of the music, who was doing well, who wasn’t. I got to know who had record contracts and who didn’t... That was a very confusing issue to me. I started to wonder. I’ve got this day gig and I’m doing these little trio hits and I’m playing with some of my friends… It might be a good idea to have some sort of financial security.” The job allowed for Maupin to have an apartment and study privately but as more gigs came, Maupin found it harder to get up for work and in the end music won out.

From 1962 to 1972, Maupin lived in New York and participated in some of the early New Thing experiments happening with folks like altoist Marion Brown. “We were neighbors,” Maupin recalls. “Some of the guys that I met when I moved to New York were very involved with music that was classified as avant garde or free jazz... they were just doing incredibly great music as far as I was concerned.”

That was followed by immersion in Blue Note postbop with Silver, Lee Morgan, Andrew Hill and McCoy Tyner. But that was just a step towards what would become Maupin’s most recognized period. Having picked up the bass clarinet (“”A lot of people who know my work, they don’t even think of the saxophone; what they think about is the bass clarinet.”), he was tapped by Miles Davis to participate in the trumpeter’s electric period. That might be the apex of anybody’s career, but Maupin followed that up with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, an extrapolation of Miles’ work. This led to the commercially successful Headhunters, the impact of which can be said to have ushered in today’s partisan split between electric and acoustic jazz.

Maupin’s career would seem to have been set after residing in such lofty aeries, but for such a creative and probing musician, “Experiencing burnout is a really serious thing that we can confront sometimes. You can be very successful and you can be very much at the top of your field; there comes a time when you are ready to move on.”

He moved to Los Angeles, became involved in Buddhism and even went back to school, not for music but to fill in gaps he had in his general education. Though he continued to play music, the days of playing in front of thousands of people with the Headhunters were a thankful memory. “Many people haven’t seen me play live because I haven’t played live much in the past almost 20 years,” he says. “Not like I was in the ‘60s and ‘70s when I was everywhere. That period came to an end, like periods do and I was happy that it did.”

But those years were spent growing and gestating, an opportunity to “rethink some of my ideas about my music”. The result is Penumbra, a distillation of Maupin’s work with Hancock and Miles but also Chick Corea, Woody Shaw and Sonny Rollins. Cryptogramophone expressed great interest in the 2003 recording and a Maupin renaissance began. Though he, like many others, is still better known in Europe, his stateside visibility is increasing through the album and performance. “Finding ways to get the music out there is always a major issue for artists who do the kind of music I do,” he affirms. “But I feel really good because I’ve been able to do it and do it successfully and there haven’t been any major collisions.”

Recommended Listening:
• Marion Brown—Juba-Lee (Fontana, 1966)
• Miles Davis—Bitches Brew (Columbia-Legacy, 1969)
• Herbie Hancock—Mwandishi: The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings (Warner Brothers, 1969-72)
• Lee Morgan—Live at the Lighthouse (Blue Note, 1970)
• Bennie Maupin—The Jewel in the Lotus (ECM, 1974)
• Bennie Maupin Ensemble—Penumbra (Cryptogramophone, 2003)

(For all upcoming Bennie Maupin dates check out our Tour Page!)

AAJ-NY also threw Myra Melford another review in the same issue:

The Image of Your Body
Myra Melford Be Bread
(Cryptogramophone)
by Karla Cornejo

The harmonium is not a native Indian instrument. It was conceived in Europe, but adopted by India in the 19th century, quickly becoming a traditional element in the region’s folk, devotional and popular music. Myra Melford studied the instrument in India under a Fulbright Scholarship and, as she writes in the liner notes of this new album, she was “waiting to see what would emerge naturally (…) as opposed to trying to make something happen.

The Image of Your Body is the collaborative effort of Be Bread, Melford’s group with Brandon Ross (electric guitar, banjo and voice), Cuong Vu (trumpet, electronics), Stomu Takeishi (electric and acoustic bass guitar, electronics) and Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums). Here is an album that tackles mysticism and romanticism with the sort of pronounced dogmatism that is flawed if it’s not elastic; Melford would have benefited by bringing less (tangled) art and more (lucid) matter to the quartet’s accomplished effort.

Certain tracks like “If You’ve Not Been Fed” and “Fear Slips Behind” are quaint little clusters of noise that come across as ominous and divine in nature. Ross’ electric guitar does a splendid job of engulfing note after note and darting sonic spasms of the most random nature. “To the Roof” is the longest track, lined with horizontal rhythms that do not lose momentum even thought they make up an almost 12-minute meditation. What the meditation is on is unclear and remains unclear for the duration of the album. The harmonium, however, brings a refreshing otherworldly dimension to the music and it serves as a surprising backdrop to every track’s unraveling.

Melford is nothing but not audacious and her music is unflinching. Be Bread is a sonorous exercise in fusion, but it is layered in a way most fusion music isn’t, with no cohesiveness or even artful dissymmetry to speak of. The tracks are string together like Styrofoam-like bits that are soft without being mellifluous and bold without being whimsical. Still, the holistic experience leaves you drained and not that enlightened. It seems as if the album was purely an exercise in learned mysticism and its potential for clarity was overestimated. The album’s title comes from a poem by 13th century Persian poet Jalalud’din Rumi and describes the album in more ways than one. Rumi pronounces with characteristic frankness, “you’re still restless.” He’s got a point.

(*For upcoming Myra dates, you know where to check.)

...And finally, we'll hardly have shaken the jet lag out of our eyes but we are planning to do a TOTAL RELAUNCH (or -- as my Star Trek ubergeek friend calls it -- a "systems refit") of our online music-store offshoot, Indiejazz. We're shooting for APRIL 9, so stay tuned for some great new releases by great labels who have joined the Indiejazz Famdamily, including prime booty (er, the pirate kind) from Pi, Thrill Jockey, Thirsty Ear, Sunnyside, Innerhymthic and Zappa Records.

That's about it for now, ffolkes. See ya'll in the Big Snapple!