Fives: Autumn Up / Fall Down
james
chicago 1,863 Posts
- Not too long ago was the anniversary of the passing of my man Joe Larry, who fell several years back, somewhere in his mid-thirties, to the big disease with the little name. I'm sure he was as complex and fucked-up and scheming as anyone, but to those of us who only really knew him toward the end, he was a simple, sweet, burnt greyhound of a man, loved dearly.b, 21b, 21The sores on his feet kept him from wearing anything heavier than ever-fresh white tube socks, so whenever our parking lot was wet, I'd have to carry him to my car. The bird-like rustle of his vanishing frame and the clock-tick of the heavy meds that filled his canvas tote made it feel like carrying a bag of leaves in which someone had hidden a glass jar of river stones. It was a horribly awkward transaction for both of us, but necessary, so we always spent those whole minutes just bullshitting and trying to avoid making eye contact.b, 21b, 21And he was always cold--just deep, bone cold. In the car we had to keep the windows rolled up and the heat blasting, even in the hell's mouth of deepest Carolina July. I'd keep telling him it was no big deal, but he'd just stare out the window and shrink into his blanket (One of his estranged daughters had bought it for him: it was some ridiculous fleecey children???s thing covered with yukking cartoon characters, given to him--a grown man--as an insult. He treated it like it was laced with smallpox, but nonetheless always wore it, sometimes in tears, and always with the penitent air of the guilty parent. He seemed to consider it another part of his burden.), calculating how long before he could reasonably apologize again for all the trouble. b, 21b, 21Anyway, peace to my man Joe Larry. I think of you often.b, 21b, 21b, 21
the way he felt. I read something about Marcel Duchamp that said although he spent his career laughing at the idea of "art history," at the same time, he made damn sure that his art ended up in museums. I think Stepney was the same. I think he had a deep devotion to his own complicated vision, but also a deep need to convey that vision, and a deep understanding that to do so he would, above all else, need to connect. He recognized that his vision was difficult, and knew that without that essentially human connection, that completed circuit between the music and the listener, he'd end up "plying [his] seductions in the mirror." b, 21b, 21And in lesser hands this kind of thing goes so so poorly: lofty but ill-conceived notions of bridging the avant-garde and the popular that instead end up insulting both. So consistently, though, Stepney's is the sound of truly complex personal ideas getting put across fully and warmly, in every shade of plain humanity. The hard math beneath Earth Wind & Fire's radiant optimism; the dark brain behind Electric Mud's stiff dick; the Taj Mahal through which flits and flutters the Dells' do-you-like-me?-check-box-yes-or-no; the spiral staircase building itself faster than thought to rise and meet and elevate Minnie Riperton's every heavenly breath. Omnivorous and focused, Stepney's sound is the all-overness you feel expressed with the clarity you want, prickly in the conception, but warm in the transmission--deep-seated, but reaching forth. b, 21b, 21And in this season, when our bodies, our minds, our hearts--our sparks--start to begin to get layered under, to withdraw, who can't feel the hope in such a sound?b, 21b, 21....b, 21b, 21Anyway, I know y'all got some shit out there, too. What's really going on?
b, 21b, 21b, 21- As close as I try to hold my beautiful City With The Bent Frame, things continue to fragment. Chicago, somehow I think we will part / before the cup appears. No sip, no grail, just like a ship without a sail. I'd like to be wrong about that, but I don't think I am. b, 21b, 21b, 21- Slum Village's "Fall In Love" is really some of the hardest shit for me to listen to. I mean, just terrible. Has a beat that beautiful ever been betrayed more completely? The lyrics are clunky, misogynist, have no fucking flow at all, and include that hoariest of denials, invoked at one time or another by a wide array of cornballs, from lowly no-names all the way up to, like, Timbaland: "Fuck this rap shit, I listen to classical." As if that weren't enough, after the fade but before the end of the track (so you can't program around it), there's an endless minute of perhaps the shittiest mummy-rap freestyling ever committed to aluminum. b, 21b, 21The track is just so surpassingly gorgeous, though. I need it need it need it. But not like this. Not with these fucking dudes all over it. Look, I've given up on a true instrumental (and that J.Rawls thing is butt), but I've got that Mangione record, so what I really need is for someone to up that record with the drums (it's some NYC studio breakbeat record, right? doesn't Quo or somebody have this shit?) so I can Frankenstein something up for my own listening pleasure and be done with the godawful vocal version forever. Won't you please help?b, 21b, 21b, 21- I saw a freshly dead animal in an intersection outside the hospital, and it looked exactly like a wet, wadded American flag.b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21We ate all the leaves. All of them. We roared in from the high valley, invisible whales of appetite and velocity, continents of hungry lung, inhaling blocks and blocks at a time and leaving trees holding up nothing but the glaring banner of a blank season come too quick. It only took us one half Saturday to disappear the billows of branch-borne lacework that had sugared the transition from ground to sky, and replace them with woody skeletons reaching in want, suddenly naked, their snapping joints and thorned knuckles now snagging every eye's rise, tangling all vision. You should have seen it: the leaves quivering and compassing in advance of our reaving, practically leaping toward their sublimation into nothing. All gone.b, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21- What you know about this heat?b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21Can you tell meb, 21how to ever find the timeb, 21to tell the onesb, 21who bring you loveb, 21that they're always on your mind?b, 21To take the ones who have scattered and sayb, 21"Hey, I hope that you're doing fine"?b, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21makes my heart...b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21b, 21...beatsss a lil' fasterb, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21- Still...still!b, 21b, 21b, 21- Ohio Players' "Pride & Vanity"--I could listen to this for days.b, 21b, 21b, 21- Fuck all this shit, though--I need to develop a pill habit or something. Whole mouthfuls of oblivion in little paradise-colored tablets. I can see the appeal.b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21"What I want to know is," he said, "is you got the dog?"b, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21- A new genus I keep running into: Dudes At The Record Store Trying To Talk To Me About Lee Moses. Like, three times in the last two months, three different, apparently unrelated dudes. Is there a convention in town or something?b, 21b, 21b, 21- Dancehall dudes, help me out: A while back I heard some thing with Red Rat (and maybe a second dude) chatting over "8th Wonder"/"Daisy Lady." The only lyrics I remember are "All my ladies, sexy babies." Does anyone know what this is?b, 21b, 21b, 21- "Love, peace, and happiness / in an endless twirl"--doesn't that sound lovely.b, 21b, 21b, 21- I'm ecstatic that Obama won, but I nonetheless remain salty over the fact that I now have to show ID to Secret Service dudes three times a week just because my daughter attends preschool directly across the street from his house. I mean, I understand, but it's still wack.b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21Thine enemy will come, sweeping old ties togetherb, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21- Rosemary, I pray you get better. My mind is crowded, but still I think of you all the time.b, 21b, 21b, 21- This is that old weather, soulstrut.b, 21b, 21b, 21Quote:h, 21b, 21Ah! Will the holidays last indefinitely and those games in the country where I am the boss?b, 21b, 21h, 21
b, 21b, 21b, 21- A little while ago ("Was it back in September?") I was talking to my man (and yours) Dave about my other man, Charles Stepney. The exchange made me go back and re-listen to a lot of Stepney-related material, and I was struck again by how obvious all his stuff is. Well, maybe "obvious" isn't the right word, but it seems like everything he touched has an emotional directness that's impossible to miss. Which was interesting, as everything I've read about (and from) Stepney presents him as pretty rigorously anti-populist: a difficult master who felt constrained by the tastes of The People, a perfectionist who found vocalists overrated and considered them just another color on the producer/arranger's palette (and a lesser color, at that). The kind of angular dude who felt that the only important Beatle was George Martin.b, 21b, 21I don't believe that's true, though; even with his own claims to the contrary, I don't believe that's reallyQuote:h, 21b, 21Love is all I bring.b, 21b, 21h, 21
the way he felt. I read something about Marcel Duchamp that said although he spent his career laughing at the idea of "art history," at the same time, he made damn sure that his art ended up in museums. I think Stepney was the same. I think he had a deep devotion to his own complicated vision, but also a deep need to convey that vision, and a deep understanding that to do so he would, above all else, need to connect. He recognized that his vision was difficult, and knew that without that essentially human connection, that completed circuit between the music and the listener, he'd end up "plying [his] seductions in the mirror." b, 21b, 21And in lesser hands this kind of thing goes so so poorly: lofty but ill-conceived notions of bridging the avant-garde and the popular that instead end up insulting both. So consistently, though, Stepney's is the sound of truly complex personal ideas getting put across fully and warmly, in every shade of plain humanity. The hard math beneath Earth Wind & Fire's radiant optimism; the dark brain behind Electric Mud's stiff dick; the Taj Mahal through which flits and flutters the Dells' do-you-like-me?-check-box-yes-or-no; the spiral staircase building itself faster than thought to rise and meet and elevate Minnie Riperton's every heavenly breath. Omnivorous and focused, Stepney's sound is the all-overness you feel expressed with the clarity you want, prickly in the conception, but warm in the transmission--deep-seated, but reaching forth. b, 21b, 21And in this season, when our bodies, our minds, our hearts--our sparks--start to begin to get layered under, to withdraw, who can't feel the hope in such a sound?b, 21b, 21....b, 21b, 21Anyway, I know y'all got some shit out there, too. What's really going on?
Comments