Rhys Chatham

He'll do the same thing with gongs and trumpets he does with guitars.  Rhys Chatham just doesn't give a damn.

Drone with a capital "D", mesmerizing with a capital "M".

Ryhs Chatham - An Angel Moves Too Fast To See: Selected Works 1971-1989

Typically great commentary from the top-notch GLOWING RAW blog, so I'll leave the rest up to him, other than to say that Chatham, along with Branca, formed the baseline that Sonic Youth built from. On second thought, I won't say that . . . because, as much as I love Sonic Youth, such statements only diminish the music of Rhys Chatham.  So, do yourself a favor, check out the Glowing Raw blurb, and listen to this album.

Oh. (guitars, etc . . .)

Roger Miller (Mission of Burma Roger Miller, not the do-wacka-do Roger Miller, though I am a fan of him as well) tossed off this minor gem on Forced Exposure in 1988. Constructed on a four track, Miller plays all the instruments himself, save an appearance by Peter Prescott on bass.

Miller always had a rocker's heart to go with his avant garde head. Clint Conley had the rep as Burma's hook guy, but for me, Miller's "Forget" is one of the best rock songs of all time. Here as well, the obviously experimental nature of the project is unified by a pop-like structural undercurrent. Though there are the straight up experimental moments (the original recording of Burma's "Fun World" played over and over again, each time sped up beyond recognition and overlaid with record surface noise, seems to be an overt nod to Fluxus), there is a skeleton here often lacking in noise records.

There are voices here, though not a lot of recognizable lyrics per se. Miller applied randomization techniques to Burma lyrics for one song, and sang another in a made up language vaguely resembling Russian or German.

Front and center is Miller's fascination with guitar textures. On all the tracks he stacks up guitars electric and acoustic, tuned and detuned, picked, strummed, and feeding back. This approach matures on side two with a version of Sun Ra's "Space is the Place" followed by a feedback meditation called "The Forrest".

Being a huge Mission of Burma and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic fan, I kept an eye on Miller's output, but most of it was somewhat uneven. This record, though considered by Miller to be more of a sketchbook (from the liner notes: "I consider this record to be a collection of ideas, which hopefully will be felt as unified."), still to me is the best non-Burma or Birdsongs record that Miller recorded. I also had a chance to see him live around the time this record appeared, and it was a fantastic show . . . better than the No Man show I saw a few years later (a show that remains the only show I've seen where I thought a band I liked was actually too loud). I'm not sure if this record is still available through Forced Exposure, or if it is anywhere on the internets, but if you can find it, snatch it up. It's a pearl.

If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old

I posted this on my regular blog, the death of everything, but it occurred to me that it might fit here as well. Or not.

Against my better judgement, I rented a copy of It Might Get Loud yesterday. I found it to be a charming, if inconsequential, little movie. If you think you might enjoy it, then pick it up. If it doesn't look interesting to you, take a pass. It won't dramatically affect you either way.

It Might Get Loud is a summit meeting of sorts between three generations of rock guitar "gods": Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. The Edge is as you expect him: soft spoken and even tempered, ridiculously (and genuinely) humble in spite of his huge world-wide rock star status, and always smiling. Jack White, also as you would expect, does his best to live up to his provocateur status to sometimes cartoonish results. Jimmy Page, though, is the true revelation here: I was a fervent Led Zeppelin fan in my teen years, and over time consumed all kinds of articles, interviews, and videos about the band, yet Page reveals far more of his personality here than anywhere else I've seen.

Some thoughts:

• Page, far from being the dark, mysterious avatar of heavy metal cool he has projected in the past, is an aging music geek . . . and I mean that in the best possible way. One of the highlights of the movie is watching Page's crazy joy while he plays records for the interviewer - jumping up and down and giggling with glee as Link Wray's "Rumble" blasts through the speakers at ridiculous volume, playing air guitar along with every song on the phono (and this is Jimmy Page air guitar, mind you, so that left hand is going crazy) - and just how thoroughly he loses himself in the music. In the past, Page on camera has always seemed so aloof and distant, as if speaking out from under a hallucinogenic blanket. Here he is, at all times, actively engaged and often quite animated.
• You always knew that The Edge was heavily dependent on effects, but the sheer scope of his sound setup surprised me. They moved his rig into the shoot site with a freaking forklift, for the love of god. He has a full time engineer to help him set up and run the rig. To his credit, he is very up front about his dependence on effects. I also like the fact that he neither defends nor apologizes for his effects mania: it's just another way of playing electric guitar.
• The Edge has a really cool home studio that overlooks some body of water. I like that. The master of machinery also pulls out his old Fostex cassette four track to play old demos. That was my little piece of nostalgia.
• It's so cute the way Jack White discovered the blues, as if no rocker before him ever discovered the blues. He makes a strong case for Son House as a gateway drug. His experience on this count mirrors mine, for it was Son House who really got me rolling on my blues journey. For White, the song was "Grinnin' in Your Face"; for me, it was "Death Letter Blues", from the same '65 sessions as "Grinnin'". By the way, if you have any interest in music at all, you need to have Son House's Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. It's even on vinyl, if you swing that way. And, while you're at it, pick up this Son House/Bukka White video. It is, in my opinion, the single most stunning musical document on film. For years, I made everyone who visited my Brown County house watch this video.
  
• Jack White also makes an argument for the superiority of cheap guitars, and anything in general that makes you work harder to make music. The theory is that if you have to fight to play guitar, your music will be better for the struggle. At one point in some Raconteurs live footage, the director zooms in on White's bleeding right hand as he plays a lead, and then shows the bloody Gretsch in all its glory after the set. Speaking as a bloody-handed guitarist who played cheap guitars with bad action for years, I'm not sure how I stand with this idea. I can't speak to how all the Silvertones and Kays affected my technique over the years (well, I can, actually - my left hand is like a vice, and not particularly nimble), but I do know that when I finally picked up a couple guitars with good action, I became a better guitarist. Not just a more technically adept guitarist, but better . . . against Mr. White, I would argue that playing with the guitar is better in the long run, though playing against the guitar has its charms as well. I do very much sympathize with the thought, and I agree that smooth proficiency has nothing to do with rock -n- roll.
• White was showing off a mod they made on one of his Gretchs, where a luthier added a bullet mic on a cable spool to the body of the guitar. Now he can just reach down and whip out the mic when he wants to howl instead of play. That is one of the goofiest mods I have ever seen. It reminds me of that old John Belushi, samurai guitarist gag, where he had an SG with a gooseneck mic stand bolted to the body.
• Oh, and while we're at it, Jack, it's a little disingenuous to talk about the superiority of cheap guitars when you have all those Gretschs lying around.
• The Edge may be the "sound" guy, but White shows the true beauty of the electric guitar with a collection of busted up Kays and Nationals going through that Silvertone Twin Twelve (which looks like it has been modified to a six sixes).
• In spite of his rep as a "sound" guy, The Edge busted out some beautifully lyrical (if way too brief) slide on the "In My Time of Dying" jam.
• White tried to keep up a punk rock exterior throughout, but when Page plugged in his Les Paul and started wailing away, White sat there like a grinning, gaping twelve-year-old with his jaw on the floor. Both he and The Edge appeared as if they were in the presence of a deity.
  

All in all a pleasant, if non-essential, little movie.