Doom & Gloom Dispatch #50: Making The Nature Scene
Jeremiah Chiu, Jonathan Demme, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, Sonic Youth
Jeremiah Chiu - In Electric Time
I was a big fan of Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer’s Recordings from the Åland Islands, so I was excited to hear whatever Chiu cooked up next. In Electric Time does not disappoint in the the slightest. It’s a fully improvised modular synth fantasia, filled with beauty and light. Playful and flowing at times, deep and mysterious at others. Chiu has a great sense of rhythm and melody, following the sound where it takes him. And hey, he’s currently on tour with Mary Lattimore … see you at the Denver show!
Jonathan Demme - SNAP! on KCRW, Santa Monica, California, November 4, 1984
I finally got it together and went to see Stop Making Sense on the big screen last week. And, wow, I’m glad I did. Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads extravaganza remains one of the best (if not the best) concert films of all time. Demme was a perfect match for Byrne, Weymouth, Harrison and Frantz.
Every frame of Stop Making Sense tells you that the late director loved movies, music and — above all else — people. By the end of the film, you feel like you know the players personally. You almost feel like you’re in Talking Heads. Experiencing it all again made me wish that every great band (you know the ones) had had the good fortune to team up with such a sympathetic filmmaker. (Why oh why didn’t Jonathan make an entire Feelies flick at Maxwell’s when he shot this video???)
So! Here’s Demme in 1984, popping up on KCRW with DJ Deirdre O'Donoghue right around the time that Stop Making Sense was in theaters for the first time. It’s a great two hours of SoCal radio, with Jonathan spinning some favorite tunes (Robyn Hitchcock! The Fall! The Damned!) and chatting amiably about all sorts of topics. Including David Byrne’s eating habits.
Well, what’s it like working with David Byrne?
He’s unusually easy to get along with and real funny. The biggest thing about David, that I was startled by, is the fact that he’s an unbelievable chow hound. The man never stops eating.
David Byrne? Come on.
He’s a slender dude, but I’m telling you, he never quits eating.
It’s that metabolism.
That’s right.
High energy, constantly moving, and dreaming up all those ideas.
When I first met him, he was eating sushi and carrots and stuff, but now that he’s been staying out in Los Angeles while we were doing the movie, it’s cheeseburgers, and hot dogs, and things like that, yet he remains the same.
Herbie Hancock - The Spook Who Sat By The Door (OST)
Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters turns 50 years old this month — whatever the actual release date is, it should be a national holiday, right? Over on Aquarium Drunkard, you can check out one of the earliest glimpses we have of Herbie and the Headhunters, a live-in-the-studio FM broadcast out on Long Island.
If that well-traveled recording is old news to you, then how about this? Herbie’s score for The Spook Who Sat By The Door, Ivan Dixon’s 1973 action/spy flick based on the book of the same name. As a soundtrack album, it’s a little confusing — it seems as though United Artists released an LP sometime in ‘73 or '74, but good luck finding a copy. Some collectors say it doesn’t actually exist!
But Herbie’s funky, cinematic music is stellar; you’ll hear “Actual Proof” which opens the WLIR tape and would be re-recorded for Thrust. But there’s plenty of unique music, too, featuring Hancock and co. flexing their blaxploitation-style muscles. Watch out, Isaac Hayes! The soundtrack isn’t the only thing that’s hard to come by … the film itself doesn’t seem to be streaming in any official capacity, even though it’s in the National Film Register (and was referenced on a recent season of Atlanta). Get thee to YouTube to check it out while you can — it’s very good.
Pharoah Sanders & Starship Orchestra - Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreux, Switzerland, July 22, 1978
Plenty of Pharoah Sanders chat recently, mainly thanks to Luaka Bop’s much-overdue reissue of the legendary Pharoah. A truly beautiful record, and the extra live material is very nice indeed. There’s some cool ephemera and extra stuff via the Harvest Time Project, too.
Lonnie Liston Smith: Miles was encouraging us all to put our instruments through effects pedals; Pharoah didn’t need that. He was a one-man effects pedal!
Pharoah isn’t a mellow record by any stretch, but it does highlight the saxophonist’s gentler side. A year later at the Montreux Jazz Festival, things were anything but gentle. The video linked above with the expansive Starship Orchestra is a 25+-minute blowout, with Pharoah and the group barely coming up for air as they dive deep into the currents of a churning afro-latin groove. A thrill-ride, to say the least.
More Pharoah? Definitely check out Andy Beta’s excellent “Pharoah & Phriends” mix for The Lot Radio, featuring a bunch of sweet Sanders sounds.
Sonic Youth - Central Park SummerStage, New York City, June 26, 2003
Just over 20 years ago, Sonic Youth was back in NYC, back in Central Park. This time, they were sharing a bill with Wilco, who were then riding high on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wave. It would’ve been an odd pairing a few years earlier, but the two bands’ paths were converging in the early 00s — thanks primarily to Jim O’Rourke. Thank you, Jim.
Murray St. was still dominating setlists in 2003, but the band was already cooking up some new stuff that would eventually appear on 2004’s Sonic Nurse — this show kicks off with a long, languorous “Peace Attack,” one of Sonic Youth’s loveliest reveries. Less lovely is “Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream,” a tune I’ve never quite cottoned to, in spite of its title.
Oh well! Plenty of other rad sounds to get into, including an extremely nice “Rain On Tin” and a “Karenology” that’s even longer than usual, its feedback spilling out onto the Upper West Side. “Sympathy for the Strawberry” is magnificent, too — listen closely and you’ll hear that strangest of sounds: a keyboard on a Sonic Youth song! I had always thought it was Jim on the organ, but no, it’s Lee, adding some Terry-Riley-plays-“Sister Ray” vibes to the middle section. Very very nice. Sonic Youth hadn’t forgotten their scuzzy Lower East Side roots; the encore includes a ripping version of the old Confusion Is Sex fave “Making The Nature Scene.”
And what about Wilco!? They too were looking towards the future, playing a bunch of tunes from the then-in-progress A Ghost Is Born. Most interesting is the new-to-me arrangement of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” which is inching towards its final monomaniacal motorik moves but retaining a certain melodic power-pop bounce. I like it! Check out the whole show here.
Bandcamp | Merch | Concert Chronology
From the Doom & Gloom Archives
Still workin’ at the Jazz Workshop! Today, we’re spending Halloween with Rahsaan Roland Kirk. “If I pass through this land and split offa this earth, and I find somebody puttin’ my music out on bootleg, I got some cats and sisters gonna take care of ya with some karate chops and some knives,” Kirk cackles during a lengthy preamble. But hey, I’m glad someone taped this WBCN broadcast for all of us to dig into almost 50 years later. Rahsaan and his Vibration Society sound glorious throughout, peaking somewhere in the middle of a fiery, extended “I Say A Little Prayer” which masterfully adds A Love Supreme’s “Resolution” into the mix. Plenty of Kirk’s crazy one-man horn section action here, but it’s the full band workouts that really impress. Black Classical Music at its finest …
Currently Reading: The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
Fun fact that nobody will care about: the keyboard in "Sympathy for the Strawberry" was intentionally ripped off by some artist in this song (around 1:00): https://asaurus.bandcamp.com/track/the-greenest-age