Better Redd Than Dead

Freddie Redd that is- consummate improvising keyboardist/composer whose original score on Blue Note for Jack Gelber's searing play "The Connection" reverberates eternally down the marble halls of the charm(ed) school of indelible jazz, thanks to Freddie's bewitching melodicism, nimble pianistic pyrotechnique, and the keening cry of Jacke McLean on alto (there's also a recording of Freddie's score on Felsted acquired on a Japanese cd reissue some years ago, with trumpeter Howard McGhee an extra added ingredient in the original mix, his quintet actually listed as the featured artist, Freddie ghosting his own parts under the moniker "I Ching")...

and by Dead, above, I don't mean the grateful ones, below, eagerly embracing the succor of the eternal beyond as in Isaac Bashevis Singer's fantastic novel "The Family Moskat", with its climactic headspinning notion that, for troubled souls, "Death May Be the Messiah" (indeed); rather, I refer to the Living Dead here now on earth oblivious for the most part to the many-splendoured things/hidden treasures in plain sight yet out of (mass)mind, under the radar, off the beat(en) pathway, cultural artifacts glowing like hidden jewels, flowers beneath the cloven-hoofed that far too often never get a chance to reveal themselves to more than handful of bored and curious people, obscured/shouted down by the din of competing corporate marketing strategies/incessant industrial drumbeat rolling out a steady stream of new products, new panaceas, new wars for old...neu vey...

which is to say that outside of Herbie Nichols I'd rate Freddie Redd as one of the greatest unsung ivory-huntin' heroes of jazz (and a very nice man for sure, whom Caroline donated a couch to, oh, about 25 years ago when he was still living fairly hand-to-mouth underground in the West Village before heading for sunny California-- a comfy brown korduroy couch I inherited as a gift from my late friend the brilliant unsung playwright Jon Arlow when I moved to NYC in '77, which I subsequently gave to Caroline when she was still living in Montgomery Clift's old townhouse across Perry Street)...

and thanks to Brice Rosenbloom and the folks at Merkin Concert Hall, Freddie was given a hero's welcome/deserved festschrift/tumultuous ovation by the nearly sold-out, ecstatically cheering crowd at Merkin last Monday night, a joyous whooping throng which included such luminaries as Mosaic's Michael Cuscuna, Mighty Quinn chief Jerry Roche, poet Steve Dalechinsky, Living Theater living legend actress Judith Malina (with whom I shared a bill with at the Palermo Summer Festival in Sicilia in 1998), and others...Freddie was in tremendous form with his fluid technique and improvisational genius on full display, fully undimmed over the years, and was in the excellent company of hard bop saxmen Lou Donaldson in the first set and smoking Donald Harrison in the second, which featured "The Connection" suite...one cliff-hanging moment occurred when stalwart veteran bassist Mickey Bass's hand seized up at the top of the second set, and without a moment's hesitation young Dwayne Burno came up out of the audience, jumped onstage, stepped up to the plate, picked up Mickey's acoustic bass while they guided the ailing older jazzman gingerly offstage...and without missing more than about 4 bars mit out bass proceeded to kick it up a notch, or 2, or 3--BAM!!--(as in, Bassist A Mofo...or au Go Go...life's a flow-flow)--to the bass manner born, in other words (in point of fact Dwayne as it turns out is Donald Harrison's regular bassist and had actually played most of these Redd compositions before...so it wasn't QUITE the miracle it looked to be to the crowd...still, it was pretty damn awe-inspiring, as young Dwayne literally saved the day for night)..."Theme for Sister Salvation" was never so moving...as with so many overlooked artists, you couldn't exactly call this a comeback gig for Freddie Redd (although it was billed along those lines)--as his musical gifts had never deserted him...

Freddie Redd

Freddie Redd with Jerry Weldon, Minton's, NYC

Freddie Redd with Rene McLean (Jackie's son)

photos by Michael Gwynne | Click to enlarge

Tuesday night went to an opening of my pal the painter John Bowman's new show at the Winston Wachter Gallery on East 78th Street...lovely new work, particularly outstanding was the still life horn 'o Bad 'n Plenty titled "Royal with Cheese" after John Travolta's dumbshow riff on French McDo's and don'ts in "Pulp Fiction" (or maybe it was a reference to Segolene Royal, dunno)...then it was off to the Bohemian National Home on East 73rd where my pal Czech UN Ambassador Martin Palous threw a lovely party for John, good eats as usual including huhner-schnitzel, potato salad, John's art is on permanent display in one of the large halls on the second floor there, beautiful beautiful painting with an acid-etched message just under their pretty/opulent/beguiling surfaces...

And then on Wednesday night I went to the Great Hall of Cooper Union for the W.H. Auden aubade, lovingly conceived and assembled by Alice Quinn, poetry editor for The New Yorker and my pal and neighbor...lovely Alice gave some apposite remarks up top about Auden's enduring relevance, and then introduced a procession of gifted glitterati/readers of some of Auden's most beloved and best known poems, presented chronologically--Auden, who lived for a long spell just down the block from Cooper Union on St. Mark's Place with his partner Chester Kallmann, would have been amused and tickled by the variety of folks there to bear tribute to his visionary body of work, beginning with one of my favorite poets John Ashberry, who truth be known did a Factory screen-test for Andy Warhol years ago--"your Door is white as snow", John!-- Wayne Koestenbaum gave a forceful reading of "Who's Who" from 1934, Rebecca Warren (Robert Penn Warren's daughter) evoked an elegiac loss with her reading of "Autumn Song"...I had to leave after an hour and a half or so thus missing the second momente musicale, but loved the first musical interlude, a rendition of Benjamin Britten's settings of Auden's coy possibly homo-erotic "Johnny" and "Funeral Blues" (featured in "Four Weddings and a Funeral", remember?), this number particularly stunning, a clarion wake-up call to the living delivered with eclat by pianist Scott Rednour and the way more than compelling mezzo-soprano Jessica Miller (hell, pounding her fist on the piano lid and thrusting her self fowad mid-song, she was truly hot)...

the actress Maria Tucci was outstanding interpreting "As I Walked Out One Evening", commanding writer/intellect Francine Prose and sparring pardner Glynn Maxwell did a tag-team wrestling rendition of "Lullaby". Katha Pollitt, editor of one of my favorite journals "The Nation" (and Ernie Brooks' old classmate from Radcliffe--and no slouch as a poet herself) read a beautiful "September 1, 1939" with Wayne Koestenbaum (regal and resplendent in mauve dress shirt and jacket), Michael Cunningham, Saskia Hamilton, Carl Phillips--all tread the boards with aplomb, it was quite a magical, touching evening and I was sorry I had to split (oh yes, Rosanna Warren, reading an excerpt from "Anthem for St. Cecilia's Day". made me wonder if Sandy Pearlman, lyricist/producer/svengali for the Blue Oyster Cult, derived his "Ode to St. Cecilia" lyrics from this particular Auden poem back in the BOC's earlier incarnation as the Stalk-Forrest Group--check out the excellent reissue of their never-officially released Elektra album available on Rhino Handmade) (btw, Sandy is bringing me up to McGill University in Montreal April 2nd to lecture and play my solo guitar "Bruckner Fantasia" for a graduate seminar and undergraduate course he's teaching there in conjunction with Shulich School of Music Dean Don McLean entitled "Bruckner and Heavy Metal".

Unfortunately had to cut out early to make my way up to Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway and 51st Street, to check out Vince Giordano and his fabulous Nighthawks once again--Vince leads one of the country's best swing and trad. jazz ensembles, able to bring famous and obscure tunes by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and so on to living breathing life...and he and his band did not fail to disappoint per usual, Vince moving effortlessly from acoustic bass to bass saxophone (of the Joseph Svorecky variety) to euphonium...joyful, joyous set by one of NYC's best...

and by the way, re my quiz last blog trying to determine the musical ensemble(s) heard on the "Swing Your Sinners!" Fleischer Bros. Talkartoon I linked into, Vince Giordano has come the closest so far to identifying the musicians to date--my own research on the net turned up a blogger who claimed he saw a print of this cartoon with a live action sequence at the top starring Red Nichols and his 5 Pennies-- which if true has been cut from all circulating release prints--I emailed the fellow who runs the Vitaphone Project website about this revelation, also the possibility that that blogger had mistaken Red Nichols for vibist/xylophone player Red Norvo,who actually did a duet with Betty Boop a few years later in the cartoon "The Music Goes Round and Round"--my thoughts were duly passed on by Vitaphone Project guy to Vince, who wrote back:

"To my humble ears, I think it's Joe Tarto on tuba [cop with hat/hat scene], Bob Effros [graveyard hot tpt] and Tommy Dorsey [ghost with trombone]. I can't place the hot trumpet player. His style is Bixish/Red Nichols though. Red Norvo was mentioned; he was a white xylophonist who was in Chicago at this time. I believe there's 2 groups on this, the white studio musicians and the black singing group."

Me, too, re the two groups theory--a Seinfeldian black and white cookie (monster) of a soundtrack...chalk up another blow for musical miscegenation in the melting pot of NYC!

Any other musical knowledge brothers out there care to weigh in here? (Phil Schapp? Will Friedwald?)...

See ya!

xxLove

Gary

100 Tears of Jollitude

Yup, 'tis my blogcentennial, this being epistle 100 since my inaugural blast over 3 years ago, winging its bit-torrential way to...to...well, who the heck knows who indeed is actually scanning these screeds at the hour of...come out come out whomever you are (come out to show 'dem come out to show 'dem)...

Whatever the case, upper or lower, open and shut, I hope you, Dear Readers, are busy being Entertained (or at the very least, bemused) by the dot-dash jot 'n joshing of my electronic biro brio...

Finger-picking up where we left off last time, I went to see Piers Faccini, a highly-touted transplanted UK singer/songwriter now living in France, at Joe's Pub last Wednesday night, where he made his NYC debut in the unenviable and inevitably tough 7pm opening slot...and despite a mostly indifferent drinking crowd there to see the headlining Wood Brothers (Chris Wood, from Medeski, Martin and, plus his brother, plus... had to miss 'em unfortunately), anyway Piers was pretty damn good, I was particularly taken by the guy's overall gravitas and Grace in the face of having to compress his set to 20 min. or something coupled with a crowd not really paying too close attention, preoccupied as they were with the serious business of whatever-- Piers just got on with it, soldiering on in a lovely-voiced lovely-songed set which had many fine flashes of promise, of brilliant things to come, in a more relaxed, congenial, spotlit timeslot... good also was his take on Drake, nicking the best aspects of that seriously cultured well-weathered anglo-approach and applying it to the seasonal (witch)craft of singersongwriting in his own right...a very good band appiered with him too, nicely turned-out bass and drums surrounding deft acoustic fingerstyle guitar that really caught fire during an Ali Farka Toure tribute--keep your eyes and ears on Piers Faccini, he deserves your full attention...

Friday night it was Gods and Monsters' turn at the Bowery Poetry Club--an on the edge risk-taking night for us, the guys generating real Heat onstage to warm up the chilled-out crowd (well, it was in the 20's outside!), our revamped set-list, and the debut performance of some new tunes hitherto not in our book kept us all on our toes, newies included "Hot and Cold Everything" (the way that it is--bittersweet, just like Life itself)...btw, Jerry Harrison this week laid down a beautiful keyboard part on a studio version of this new tune of mine at Sausalito Sound, where he's been producing and playing throughout on the studio followup to "Coming Clean"--as well as producing and playing on our upcoming live DVD--in fact Jerry, E.T. Thorngren, and Matt "The World's Most Patient (Jewish) Engineer" just sent me a slew of excellent mixes they worked on taken from our CMJ set last November, mixes that will appear in all their five- point- one surround sound glory on our upcoming live album...Jerry is going to join us at SXSW for our Saint Paddy's Day showcase there March 17th (me dad's birthday as well), also March 23rd at Safari Sam's in LA, and mid-May at the Tivoli in Utrecht and at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, with more European shows pending, stay tuned...

In the Bowery Poetry audience last Friday was my friend the distingue high-art photographer Mark Lyon just in from Paris with his nephew--also in attendance was artist/sculptor Gib Smith; Max Weissberg, a young hipster and heir to the Gramery Park Hotel Weissberg's; the lovely Deenah from Secret Salamander; percussionist Lee Farber from new club sensation Ultrafine; avant-gardener instrumentalist Robbie Lee, whom I saw deliver an excellent solo set at The Stone last week-- plus Leigh Lust and crew--Leigh is a very hip a&r man for Atlantic, an old friend from my late 80's days playing on WNYU FM's "New Afternoon Show" where he would often dj (I also met current musical compatriots Jason Candler and Colleen Murphy, a/k/a DJ Cosmo, down at WNYU...and then there's Hugh Foley, who I'm saving for a future blog)--also indahouse Friday night was a Canadian couple who had motored all the way down from Ottawa to come and see Gods and Monsters perform: "We heard that you were playing, and we just had to come and see you!" Yeahhhhhhh!!!

Sunday I played at one of those enchanting places New York seems overflowing with but that one never actually seems to have the time to explore until summoned by empirical fiat; namely, (this time out), The New York Buddhist Church, up on Riverside and 106th, check it out here--a very beautiful House of the Spirit presided over by the genial Toshikazu Nakagaki, the Buddhist Chaplain of Columbia University (and a fine shakuhachi player)...the occasion was a celebration of (what is this thing called) Love, entitled "Broken Open--A Pre-Valentine's Day Love Ceremony", I opened solo acoustic, quicksilver wit Zero Boy did a hilarious human beatbox spoken-word shpritz on relationships (somebody sign this guy quick, he's up there with Robin Williams, I'm not kidding), Dr. Erminia Guarneri, author of "The Heart Speaks", gave a fascinating talk on cardiological and emotional affairs of the heart, the lovely Susan D sang beautifully, there was much more, much crazy love abounding for sure improving this shining hour, my friend Adam Phillips, founder of the Breakthrough Project who sponsored this event, acted as chief celebrant throughout, making with the word and the good cheer and overall good vibe, guiding us at the end in a lovely communal singalong of Dean Martin's immortal "That's Amore" :-)

Yep, to borrow a bissel from Cindy Adams--only in New York, kids...only in New York...

I'm back up to Morningside Heights on Sunday afternoon to play on Columbia University's radio station WKCR in a tribute to the recently departed Alice Coltrane--whose transcendental mystic spirit, like that of her revered late husband, lives on in the hearts of many, many folks round the world...her harp playing and compositions have touched and moved me deeply since I was a boy...and I am honored to be able to give some of that feeling back in her memory.

Let There Be Peace--Gary Lucas and the Trans-Linear Players in the studio for WKCR Alice Coltrane Tribute 2/19/07, drawing by Jeff Schlanger

Click to enlarge

xxLove

Gary

PS. As a belated Valentine's Day gift to my collective readership, here's a link into one of those great swinging NYC Jazz Age Max Fleischer cartoons I was raving about a few blogs back, directed by his brother Dave--the 1930 Talkartoon classic, "Swing You Sinners!"

This animation is certainly one of my favorite things in the world, dealing as it does with matters eschatological--a vision most delirious, most surreal, most high!--certainly an inspiration to R. Crumb and a host of other black humorish comic artists...Bill Moseley and I used to screen this frequently at Yale as part of our very popular "Things That Go Bump in the Night" midnight movie series, and it never failed to tear the roof off the sucker (of Linsley-Chit!)... first reader to write me at gary@garylucas.com who can correctly identify the musicians and ensembles performing on the uncredited soundtrack wins a copy of my "Russian Fireworks-Gary Lucas Live in Saint Petersburg" DVD... 'Nuff said!

New York is Now!

...was the title of one of my favorite Ornette Coleman albums (or in Joycean kittyspeak--New York is Mkgnao!)--which still very much describes the general zeit and zounds, forsooth-sayers abounding and resounding in Gotham-boig last week as we inch closer and closer to the diurnal equinox, the beloved winter solstice...closer still to the fiery vortex of music, the very quintessence/the beating heart of our granite Metropolis...

Week began last Wednesday with a classical smash, an alte/neu mash-up at the Lyric Chamber Music Society of NY, an Eastern-tinged concert taking centerstage in the beautiful old wooden paneled upstairs concert hall in the Kosciuszko Foundation on East 65th Street, where the Taiwanese virtuoso violinst Cho-Liang Lin mesmerized playing music by Mendelsohn, Debussy, and Chinese new music composer Zhou Long. Accompanied by the rapier-like cello moves of lovely Hai-Ye Ni, with keyboard fireworks courtesy of radiant pianist Helen Huang, it was an evening that concentrated the mind wonderfully (right between the ears), the sonic equivalent of soulful looks and smouldering glances hurled back and forth across the East/Wide metaphysical divide...thanks to the prescient and sensitive Artistic Director of the Lyric, Yale University classical scholar Joan Thomson Kretschmer, for inviting me to this event...Joan has a very cool book out- for children of all ages-entitled "Michelangela and Debuts" (Writers Club Press)...

Thursday I had a guest shot/ pop-in at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 108 Orchard Street where I sat on a panel led by Steven Lee Beeber discussing his very controversial tome (to readers of The Wire, anyway--book's gotten thumbs up nearly everywhere else) entitled "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's--A Secret History of Jewish Punk" (Chicago Review Press), I was in the lap of some very good company indeed--including my old friend tres lovely and brilliant Vivien Goldman, an English-Jewish brainiac after mein own heart since oh I dunno I guess I first met Viv here in the early 80's but knew her pioneering jumpin' punk 'n reggae-reportage very well indeed before finally meeting her, her words fairly jumping off the pages of "Sounds" (the UK music mag) in the late 70's, where she was a star journalist...Viv went on to be a guest presenter on Channel 4 in auld Blighty, and currently teaches the history of, uh, ur, uh, Punk, at the Uni-level (NYU to be precise)...Vivien has a new book out herself all about the making of Bob Marley's seminal "Exodus" album entitled (natch) "The Book of Exodus" (Three Rivers Press)...a must-read! She was there and knows what-of she speaks (Viv also had a great 12inch single out on Ed Bahlman's late-lamented 99 Records, lived in a house in London with Geoff Travis and Mark Stewart and Adrian Sherwood once upon a...but that's another story!).

Also on the panel (Danny Fields was a no-show, feel better Danny!) was a be-yarmulk'ed Legs McNeill, the original Punk Magazine Pin-up Boy/Everyschlub turned historian as the co-author/compiler of "Please Kill Me"... Legs wore a token keepaw in solidarity with the overall subject under discussion but had to leave early... also ran into Bob Dylan amanuensis High Times scribe Larry "Ratso" Sloman there, as well as my good friend the Fabulous Fabulist Mitch Myers, who has a new book out in April that memorializes in prose his droll NPR wordjazz/anectdotal music essay oral spew, book's entitled "The Boy Who Cried Freebird" (Harper Collins)...a wonderful night yes suree, great attentive crowd, whole jewpunk symposium was being videotaped for G-d knows where, many intelligent questions emanating from the younger g-g-g-g-generation attending including neo-punkers Austin and Deenah and 'Moggie' Bloom (mrkgnao!)--dug the tenor of this whole Tenement Museum scene, hitherto unexplored by me ('tho must say I always had a soft spot for that "Tenement Symphony" sequence in The Marx Brothers' film "The Big Store"), now methinks a Tenement Museum tour would be in order sometime soon-ish, are you listening Helene Silver? Mitch and Viv and I went over to Congee Village round the block afterwards for some good 'n tasty Chinese food, ran into Steve Beeber emerging from another bar like synchronized clockwork several hours laterweaving his merry way down the Lower East Side...

Saturday night Caroline and I caught David Byrne's new song cycle "Here Lies Love" at Carnegie Hall, and were utterly captivated by its majestic lyrical arc depicting the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos (particularly the title song, whose soaring, uplifting chorus I can't get out of my head...). With deadpan Zen commmentary courtesy David between song doing the heavy-lifting of exposition effortlessly, a medley of lilting, tuneful (and occasionally stark and somber) new Byrne songs brought the mellifluous voices of singers Joan Almedilla and Ganda Suthivarakom to the fore over a percolating stew of percussion, bass, keyboards, and drums, eventually joined by strings at the end, which worked very well indeed over dance-vamps courtesy of David's collaborator British DJ Fatboy Slim...I enjoyed the whole evening mucho , the new work-- albeit a work in progress, without sets or lighting or props, just bare-faced unadorned Music, which is usually the best way to go, for me-- flowed seamlessly from ultra-creative David, who is certainly one of the most charismatic and poised performers going (and what a great voice! Honestly, I wouldn't have minded at all if there was just a wee bit more of David singing in the mix of this show). He received a deservedly jubilant ovation from the packed Carnegie Hall house...

Sitting directly next to me and Caroline in the comfy parquet of Carnegie Hall was avant-rock royalty in the form of longtime life partners Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, who were both very warm and friendly--Lou in particular absolutely made my year so far, he really made me blush by saying very complimentary things about my guitar work for Jeff Buckley...what can I say? I've obviously admired this iconic couple's work individually for decades (my first glimpse of Laurie Anderson at the Academy of Music around the time of "O Superman" turnd out to be one of the best concerts I've ever attended... 25 years later she continues to amaze). And what can you say about Lou's work--except to say that as far as longterm/ longhaul oeuvre's go, Lou's remains consistently Outstanding... I'd previously cited Lou's guitar solo on the Velvet Underground's "I Heard Her Call My Name" in the pages of the late lamented Musician magazine as probably my single favorite guitar solo of all time--suffice to say, his songs are timeless, anthemic, and stirring-- he pretty much wrote the whole punk rulebook years before the term gained any parlance...and I'm always intrigued to see where he will take his sound and vision next...

Then it was down to The Box, a really really cool new hole-in-the-wall partypad on Chrystie Street operated by Simon Hammerstein (of Oscar H & Hammerstein Ballroom fame),a plush lush little boite with a Blue Angel-ish type of theatre/cabaret atmosphere complete with miniature stage peformance area and an intime balcony overlooking the main action downstairs, superb soft-focus romantic lighting and very well-appointed accouterments/tschotschkes part od the overall design (decoupage and painted walls like some kind of psychedelic, warmoestraat-ish Wendy-house--scenes from Babar the Elephant intermingled with feline faces from Milo Manara's erotic comic strips "Click"-- yowzah!)...when Caroline and I finally arrived there after braving the frigid steppes of lower Manhattan a smiling David Byrne greeted us by the bar, Bob Hurwitz from Nonesuch was holding court at his table, I ran into Paul Miller a/k/a DJ Spooky who I hadn't seen in ages with his delightful female companion the Japanese a capella chanteuse/performance artist Mai Ueda, also bumped into avant-jazzer neuroscientist Dave Soldier on the way out around 2am, really could have stayed all night the buzz was so nice...

and then Sunday night I caught Jonathan Richman performing a really strong career-overview of a wonderful set at the Knitting Factory, Jonathan was in superlative form and fine voice (think of it-- David, Lou, Laurie and Jonathan, all in one weekend--now there's a NY minute for ya)...flamenco star Kiko Veneno opened in a duo with a another male guitarist and they did a rocking version of Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile (with the Memphis Blues Again)" in Spanish that got a large Spanish youth contingent on their feet...then Jonathan came out with wispy beard and striped tee and danced and rocked and rolled and frolicked and frei-lached acoustically doing Richman classics old and new including "That Summer Feeling", "Egyptian Reggae", "Give Paris One More Chance"-- he even went back to precise Modern Lovers style with a rendition of "Girl Fren", Ernie Brooks was supposed to have made it down but didn't show, too bad for him as he would have loved to see his old bandmate on such a night, went backstage and spoke to Jonathan who spoke not a word back to me or anyone else in the dressingroom but instead scribbled messages to us and mimed to us all to save his voice, he nodded vigorously and happily upon hearing that Gods and Monsters are covering a version of The Modern Lovers' "She Cracked" on our forthcoming live DVD/CD (yes! Jerry Harrison sang it, and is currently mixing it down to 5 point one surround sound in Sausalito--btw, Jerry produced Kenny Wayne Sheperd's new album, which is #1 on the Billboard Blues chart only 10 days out!)...I ran into Steve Paul backstage too, who has this great new website up at www.downtowntv.com,where you can see clips all about his new Puppet Music Hall project, and more cool stuff... another classic night of musical scrapple from the Apple...to paraphrase Jonathan: Give New York one more chance!

Gotta run now to catch singer/songwriter Piers Faccini at Joe's Pub (Piers is a big favorite of my old friend French music writer Gilles Tordjman, who urged me to go and check him out)...

xxLove

Gary