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T.N.D., July 22 & 23, 2023: Zone IV, Peter Brötzmann Quartet, Naked Lunch
July 22, 2023
I had been invited to an RPG party hosted by $6M-Man. There were six of us. The game involved an intelligent porpoise acting as “Charlie” to we six “Angels”—in 1920!! “Charlie” gave us supposedly beneficial missions, but we began to suspect he was perhaps not as benevolent or as humanitarian as he seemed. Needless to say, with all of us in various states of stoned-ness—stone-acity? stone-ation? stone-hood? stone-ment?—things got pretty wild, and a good time was had by all. I marveled at some of the dialogues the other participants improvised. One in particular really missed his calling as an actor, methinks. Ultimately, we decided yes, the porpoise was a bad guy, and two of the “Angels” murdered him.Riding home, I dictated this into my phone:
| i'm on the bus at night a red interior light barely lights the inside it seems like a refuge for the hopeless a homeless man a woman with all her possessions in a shopping cart an old couple in front of me, sleeping or praying |
July 23, 2023
The Benny Hill Show, dir. John Robins, 1970Episode: “The Sound of Frankenstein”. I marveled at the segment where The Ladybirds sang “This Girl’s in Love With You”. The segment was shot in a somewhat disheveled studio: the band and conductor, several monitors, the studio lights, random pieces of furniture, and what appears to be a sound engineer, are all visible as the camera tracks around the singers. An interesting bit of breaking the fourth wall.
Matthew Shipp / William Parker Duo at 24th Vision Festival, Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn; June 14th, 2019
Vegetables, Zone IV, 1989
I was completely surprised when listening to this second Zone IV album, not having heard it probably since it was initially recorded. It was one of the best recordings, period, that any of us, in any combination, had done. My guitarist brother Kain (with whom I recorded several albums as The Weird Brothers) replaced Duane's brother in the line-up. It was more like Dynamicaracket featuring Kain than Weird Brothers featuring Duane. The album begins with “Orange Velvet”, a tongue-in-cheek pop parody. Side 1 ends with “Horror Garden”, which I think is the epitome of all the music that Dynamicaracket, the Weird Brothers, or Zone IV ever did. Finally, the album ends with “Where’s the Fuckin’ Aspirin”, where drums, guitar, keyboards, and vocals were all fed through distortion and overdriven. So much so that, after the first lyric, the song turned into a speed/death/thrash metal squall of rhythmic white noise. Elsewhere on the album, Kain’s free jazz guitar noodlings were a perfect counterpoint to Dynamicaracket’s moody atmospheres. Wow.
Peter Brötzmann Quartet, Jazz Jamboree October 1974, Warsaw
I know I keep describing jazz performances in superlatives, but this was the most amazing thing I’d seen since The Sea Trio performance. Much of the credit goes to bassist Peter Kowald, who all but steals the show from Peter Brötzmann. Besides looking like a hunky but sexually pent-up fireman with massive arms, he plays the bass with the same mojo that Otomo Yoshihide plays guitar. With his right hand holding the bow, he'd edge the strings to the brink of orgasm then back off, never letting the strings cum. His left hand would climb up and down, sometimes with startling speed, like a spider pouncing on its prey. Brötzmann had a clarinet which he later disassembled and played the individual components. Drummer Paul Lovens littered his drum kit with random objects which he struck and made bounce around, and Alexander von Schlippenbach's frenzied piano playing surely equals that of Yōsuke Yamashita.
Yōsuke Yamashita and Bennie Wallace in concert, 1989
Watch on YouTube; opens in new window.
Catalina Capers (MST3K version), dir. Lee Sholem, 1967
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs, 1959
This was an audio book, read by Burroughs himself. I had already listened to a good chunk of it, then decided to listen to the rest (beginning with “Interzone”) while stoned. It must've been a real challenge to record this. Burroughs sounded quite drunk in some passages, more coherent in others. I'm sure a lot of editing went on, but I don't recall one sentence where he stumbled or hesitated partway through. I find Burroughs’ voice just fascinating to listen to. They must've mic'ed him very closely, for you can hear each breath, sigh, swallow, and the syrupy sound of spit dancing between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. It was as if he were whispering right into my ear. Between that and Kowald's performance earlier, it made the evening an almost erotic experience. Listen to Naked Lunch here.