Scottunder

Cosmo Jarvis, "Gay Pirates"

This is a remarkably vibrant and moving love song about, well, gay pirates. I don't know anything about Cosmo Jarvis, except he's 21 and has a lot going on.

Out of Sight

Boy, is this good. Got five minutes? An animated short by three Taiwanese filmmakers.

Patti Smith, "Just Kids"

I had no idea, really. Beyond the few songs I'd heard on the radio, I knew little about Patti Smith's work, and nothing about her life. She was one of many artists I admire from a distance because of the esteem in which others hold her. 

Just Kids isn't a substitute for listening to her songs or reading her poetry, but it is an entertaining and moving account of her life, centering on her remarkable relationship with her muse and protector, the artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe and Smith meet as starving artists in 1967 in New York City. "Artist" here makes them sound accomplished, but really, at 21, they barely had more than the urge to create and the drive to live on the edge of starvation in order to do so. Patti, well-read and voracious in her interests, carries romantic notions of Jean Genet and Arthur Rimbaud, but has trouble completing her own poetry. Less immersed in the work of others, Robert creates odd assemblages but can't realize the large-scale installations in his head. Mostly, they loved and inspire each other while they wait for lightning to strike.

Most of their early life together is squalid, and the kindness of strangers is a persistent theme. Due to luck and their personal charm, they make friends and better themselves in a slow spiral up from poverty. Patti works in bookstores and seems to support both of them. They move into the Chelsea Hotel and hang out at Max's Kansas City, mingling (and more) with everyone from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to Harry Smith and Sam Shepard to the social and artistic mavericks of Andy Warhol's Factory. Patti describes moments with friends like Todd Rundgren and William Burroughs in ways that amuse and impress without seeming boastful.

Patti and Robert each move on to other lovers and patrons without ever letting each other go fully, and her description of their bond makes it timeless and mystical. Patti writes well, remembering details of haircuts, clothes, meals, and conversations that helped to immerse me in the heady and charged New York art world of the late '60s and early '70s. (As a former used-book fiend, I especially loved her memories of finding valuable editions for cheap that she would then flip into a much-needed meal or a rent payment.)

Patti's description of her forays into acting and poetry reading make her eventual transformation into a proto-punk rocker completely inevitable, and it's hard not to see Robert's artistic growth as a kind of simultaneous ascent into purity and descent into depravity. In the end, though, this is a story about two people who have a connection like few others have ever shared, though they've long before parted as lovers. It's a beautiful thing. 

49

49 is 7 squared, and the first number in which the digits (4 and 9) are both squares. 49 squared is 2401, and 2+4+0+1=7. Whoa.

In 1849, the great wave of gold-seeking '49ers came to California and later formed a football team. California State Highway 49 meanders pleasantly through Gold Country.

American Indians have a powwow tradition referred to as a 49 -- it seems to be like a song gathering or contest, and there are "49 songs." Stories about its origins are numerous, but 1849 seems to figure into them.

For a few months in 1959, after Alaska was admitted to the union in January, the USA comprised 49 states, and flew a 49-star flag. Hawaii was admitted in August, 1959.

The great English football team Arsenal went 49 games without defeat in 2003-2004.

The 49th parallel forms a large part of the border between the US and Canada.The 49th Parallel is also the name of a beautiful WWII propaganda movie/travelogue by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger about a U-Boat crew stranded in Canada. Laurence Olivier chews the scenery as a French-Canadian trapper, but the best scenes are shot in a Hutterite community.

In 49 BC, Julius Caeser led his army across the Rubicon, defeated Pompey's army, and was appointed dictator of Rome.

Siddhartha Guatama attained enlightenment and became known as the Buddha after he meditated under the Bodhi tree for 49 days and nights.

Some forms of Buddhism have the concept of the bardo -- a period of "intermediate experience" between death and rebirth said to last 49 days at most. In some traditions, readings from the Tibetan Book of the Dead will be performed to help transition the deceased through this period.

49 days (7 weeks of 7 days) after Passover is celebrated by Jews as Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks: the day that God gave them the Torah. The same date is also observed by Christians as Pentacost or Whitsunday, the day the Holy Spirit descended on Christ's disciples after the resurrection.

Funk #49 is a fine song by the James Gang, Joe Walsh's band. 49 Bye-Byes is a fine song by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Days of '49 is a fine traditional tune arranged and recorded by Bob Dylan. Thomas Pynchon wrote a short novel called The Crying of Lot 49.

In less momentous news, I was born in Hanford, California, 49 years ago today.

Lagbaja, "Bling Bling Panda"

Courtesy Dangerous Minds: Biande Ologunde is a mask-wearing Nigerian singer and saxophonist who goes by the name Lagbaja ("anonymous" or "faceless one") and sings his Afrobeat music (at least in this song) in a Yoruba-English creole.

You can pretty much get the gist of what's he's singing about from the video, but following along with the lyrics helps decipher the words a bit. Basically: why do we have to copy American hip-hop fashion -- gold chains, tooth caps, tattoos, big cars? According to a Nigerian Pidgin dictionary I found, panda is slang for cheap, gold-plated jewelry.

Love the choreography.

Here's a taste of the lyrics:

Because of panda
Wey I no' dey wear
Them say I no' dey bling
Ordinary panda o - Eeeee Panda

Because designer
Wey I not dey wear
Them say I not dey cool
Ordinary panda o - Eeeee Panda

Steve Reich, an introduction

In early '80s, I stopped at a colleague's home for a beer. Looking through his small collection of Styx and Huey Lewis records, I saw an anomaly: a Steve Reich LP, "Octet, Music for Large Ensemble, Violin Phase." I'd never heard of him, but the sheet-music cover and ECM label made it seem promising. I put it on right then and heard a machine-like stream of sound I'd never experienced before: xylophones and marimbas and strings repeating clusters of notes, long pulses of wind instruments, and other sounds I couldn't identify. Twenty minutes later I told my friend I was taking the album home, and I never did give it back. I've been enamored with Reich since that day. 

Reich has been composing since the '60s, and he returns often to certain inspirations which find their expression in new ways. Some of his earliest pieces involved a process called phasing, using a short snippet of found speech. Two identical fragments are played in unison, then one is slowly moved out of phase, creating unusual musical and "psychoacoustic" effects. He then used this technique with written music, creating Piano Phase and Violin Phase. Clapping Music is a phasing piece he wrote for two percussionists to play with no instruments. After his study of percussive music in Ghana and gamelan in Bali, he took this idea further and wrote Drumming, a long piece for small drums, marimbas, glockenspiel, voices, and a piccolo. After this, he was less interested in using the process, though he did write Electric Guitar Phase many years later.

Though not employing phasing, the use of short, densely interconnected phrases led to more complex works with larger ensembles. The best known from this period is Music for 18 Musicians, a modern masterpiece. In this and other similar pieces, the instruments -- including hammered instruments, pianos, strings, woodwinds, and voices -- play patterned, percussive figures while other instruments hold long notes like drones. It all creates a kind of shimmering, trancelike presence that doesn't move melodically as most Western classical music does, but is still wonderfully expressive and satisfying. The work is played without a conductor, and was originally performed by Reich's ensemble without a score, with section changes marked by musical cues. 

Another shift in his music occurred with his seeming rediscovery of words, as he set spoken and sung phrases to music; this period seemed to coincide with an exploration of Jewish themes. Different Trains, another Reich masterpiece, is an especially powerful work that draws on these techniques, combining a string quartet (played by Kronos Quartet in the original), sound effects, and short phrases recorded from interviews Reich performed. In the first movement, train whistles and crossing bells mix with taped spoken fragments (each doubled by a solo instrument) of train porters and passengers remembering train travel in the US before WWII. In the second movement, set in Europe, the train whistles become air raid sirens, and the voices are from holocaust survivors describing their very different and harrowing train experiences in Europe during WWII. Reich had incorporated sung texts before this, in works like Tehillim and The Desert Music, but Different Trains added an emotional depth that the music and sounds helped to amplify.

In another emotionally rich composition, Reich and his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, collaborated on The Cave, a large-scale installation/opera that explores the story of Abraham as the father of Judaism and Christianity (through his child Isaac, by his wife Sarah) and Islam (through her maid Hagar and her child Ishmael, both of whom Sarah banishes). We hear the voices of Jews in Israel, Muslims in Palestine, and Americans (who mostly seem uninformed of the importance of the story, regardless of their religion). Typewriter sounds, sung Bible verses, sampled interview fragments, and prayers in Hebrew and Arabic feature throughout, all of which are seen in related videos. A large 3x3 structure, rather like the Hollywood Squares set, houses the live musicians and the video screens. As far as I can tell, no performance video of this work survives.

Reich again used this process of building a large piece around found samples and a central theme in City Life and Three Tales. The idea of working with samples is also found in several instrumental works for one or more musicians to play against multiple tape loops, often called "Counterpoints." One example is Electric Counterpart, commissioned and played by Pat Metheny on electric guitar (and later sampled in the Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds), and there are others written for instruments like clarinet, flute, cello, and piano. Triple Quartet (commissioned by Kronos Quartet) and the recent Double Sextet (which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize) are for larger ensembles.

At 74, Reich continues to create valuable new compositions, and I see I've fallen behind. The Daniel Variations is a vocal work written in tribute to Daniel Pearl, the reporter kidnapped and executed in Pakistan in 2002. WTC 9/11 for String Quartet and Tape is a 2010 work about which I know nothing -- maybe I should go to its New York premiere next year!

Here's a short piece called Nagoya Marimbas, and below that Part 1 of an informative documentary of Reich on the South Bank Show, with appearances by Brian Eno, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kronos, and others.

Here's a much more thorough and interesting documentary on Reich from The South Bank Show, in six parts on YouTube.

David Smith, traditional ornamental glass artist

David Smith is a man out of time, making Victorian-era glass signs in Torquay, Devon, UK, using painstaking processes that I'd have guessed were lost to time. Using gold leaf, silvering, frosting, and extraordinary hand lettering and ornamentation, Smith designs and creates beautiful signs that make me overjoyed to learn they're still being done today.

His website has lots of examples, as well as step-by-step descriptions of projects. His focus is on the arcane methods of glass embossing and decoration, but it seems he could give a master class in lettering alone. As a former calligrapher, I find his design work astonishing -- and that's well before all the precise work it takes to commit it to glass!

Below is a 14-minute film showing the artist at work. I would have preferred to see more of the craft behind the signs, especially the lettering, but the methods we do see are still quite satisfying. If I ever get to Devon, I intend to stop at the Clocktower bar in Torquay, where Smith is seen having a pint and painting one of many glass signs kept by the owner.