Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-03-15 - 10:48 p.m.

Briiliant interview with Bono on the real global priorities - read it in the News section at www.kwase-kwaza.org .

Beautiful day � in most people�s opinion although maybe not Jake�s as he went to have a haircut which includes nailcut and bath. To make matters worse afterwards he and I went to the Farncombe music shop where I tried a mid 70s SG and a rather affordable Martin Backpacker � I looked at the prices on the net later and its quite reasonable even by dollar standards. They had a quite funky flute for under �175. I ought to be sensible and get the flute but I tell myself I need to check over the French made ones in Leamington.

I have out a link up to David Beardsley�s microtonal guitar website on www.kwase-kwaza.org. Also new on the site are Brian Eno�s polite suggestions for the USA and the Department of Defense number if you want to pitch for the contract to put out the oil well fires. Doesn�t give you the number you have to ring to make any donations to the Republican Party but maybe that comes up later in the procurement process.

Yvonne has gone to East Kent with her friend Keverne who works in a film museum in South London � he is the link through to Tacita Dean. Vita is coming back from Freiburg tomorrow morning. James is in Venice � if the weather is like this that must be brilliant. I said he had to see at least one thing by Palladio.

I did something on the 2nd of the post NYC tracks which is intended to be of the moment. I will include this material on the CD for Gilbert � I suppose that Joanna Macregor track on Neural is having an impact.

I read Andrew�s very generous comments on Scott Appel. He didn�t mention that I still have one of his Scott CDs which was also generous plus a Jackson C Frank one. It is worth saying that Scott set a pretty serious HARE running on the ND list a few years back which still has never been sent to ground. There is one line of enquiry flowing from it that I will one day get round to following up through the Horn network. Its funny how one can live without the absolute truth on some issues. By coincidence I disinterred my Pink Moon essay when I was going through the library thinking about an issue which Andrew raised. I wondered whether I might re-write it.

Here�s a pretty hot paragraph from Paul Wood�s guide to Conceptual Art:

�The Minimal object, literal thing in real space, shorn of composition and handicraft, the endgame of the modernist pre-occupation with form, went through the looking glass and in no time at all gave rise to Anti-Form � the work of art as anything � bits of waste felt undifferentiated stuff and even �no� things at all but actions and ideas. Once again, as at the beginning of abstraction, it is as if the parameters of the field were mapped in a moment. That extended moment from the beginning of the decade until the mid 1960s when modernism gave on to Minimalism which in turn gave on to Anti-Form may be regarded as the gestation period of a full-blown Conceptual art.�

Pretty good summary I�d say. Couldn�t open the file of �Luckyono� � Paul�s new novel � which I think is dead set there. Its because its an Apple file I imagine. In the Conceptual Art book there is a still of Yoko having her clothes cut � the artwork is called �Cut Piece�. I put up a story on KK news about Yoko buying advertising in key titles in the USA � the text of the adverts invites the reader to Imagine.

Going back to Wood�s sequencing � AbsEx Minimalism Anti Form Conceptual � where does Free Jazz fit? I used to think it was at the start but now I can see how it might be Antiform. If we equate AbsEx with bebop � after all it was what Pollock listened to - then Young goes from AbsEx into Minimalism then Conceptual and then (maybe) AntiForm as he picks up on the Coltrane 4tet around 63. Patti Smith was definitely AntiForm and Conceptual � linking Gloria between the Them Song and the Mass has to be Conceptual and as I said a couple of days back I am sure her move to an �abstract noise� orientation reflects her exposure to Pollock around 1967 � well sure is too strong - I rather suspect that that is what it was.

I did some more planning in the light of the advice from Charlie Alexander at Jazzwise on how to find a platform on which to stage a Gilbert recital of the ND material.

I havce just bought a couple of Hall and Oates tapes. I started with Ooh Yeah which is late 80s � without especially high hopes. First time through the first side I am very impressed and into google to find out more. They were born in 46 and 48 and students in Philly � well that explains a lot. Ooh Yeah has an incredible set of references. It comes from the same synth world as the great 80s Miles recordings produced by Marcus Miller eg Tutu and Amandla � I suppose that�s the DX7? - and like those records it combines live instrumentation with virtual rhythm and harmonic surrounds. Prince is clearly an influence and what is especially fun is the way that stuff is now heard back though Prince�s mid 90s Philly inspired work. The big question in my mind is why if they were this good this late into their career � ie when they are hitting 40 � why the 90s �comeback� album is so uninspiring?

Hmmm � the site reveals that this album was produced by Bone Walk from their 70s band. It gave them a US No 3 single hit and meant that they performed a series of concerts with the Grateful Dead and Suzanne Vega in NYC. The plot thickens. At the concerts they performed �Whats Going On� with the Dead � well that must have been really something!

A Japanese site tells me that they performed in New Jersey last year with Tod Rungren. Sounds like I really missed something a fortnight ago in NYC. They are now on their own label and I expect the concerts are a sales promotion mechanism.

Tom �T �Bone� Walk � there is a punning reference here off T-Bone Walker. See http://www.artistdirect.com/music/artist/appears/0,,511274,00.html for the zillion artists he seems to have worked with and also the dozen or so instruments he plays. How many people have worked with both Bette Midler and Laurie Anderson? Maybe the Marcus Miller comparison is right as he is primarily the bass player with H&O.

I was expecting the earlier H20 to be the better album. This Rolling Stone on that one:

"With only a few exceptions, the more austere elements of their music are unleavened by wit or generosity of spirit, and the result is a competent but off-putting album whose icy virtuosity makes Kraftwerk sound as down-home as a bluegrass band."

This is the RS review of Bigger than Both of Us (1976)

"Hall and Oates have come a long way toward making experimental rock that is also accessible. An ambivalent view of technology and of pop music informs their work, and their lyrics (especially Hall's) evoke media overload and the hyperstimulation of city life. Is this the pop music future Hall and Oates want? Or is it a cautionary vision?

Hall and Oates learned a hard lesson in the difference between experimental and accessible rock when War Babies, their third Atlantic album, produced by Todd Rundgren, bombed commercially and critically. In that album, they translated their literal impressions of technological advance into music that was correspondingly unlistenable. The failure forced a retreat to the melodic, light R&B style of Abandoned Luncheonette (their second Atlantic album). In last year's splendid. RCA debut, Daryl Hall & John Oates, they used the metallic paintbrush only to apply delicate shading.

Delicate but telling. On cursory listening, much of those latter two albums sounds are like a pastiche of Philadelphia and Motown soul. But soul is only the starting point for a more sophisticated, less emotionally direct musical style that frequently uses more open song structures and unusual chiming instrumentation. Unlike even the blue-eyed soul of Boz Scaggs and AWB, this music isn't strikingly danceable or powerfully erotic. Rather, it's an elegantly stylized R&B variation, distinguished by a preoccupation with the relation between theme and texture.

They express alienation by being simultaneously tantalizing and noncommittal. While the first side of Bigger than Both of Us treats the relation between theme and texture as one of subtle emotional disconnection, the second aligns them by equating dense texture with extreme alienation. Here producer/synthesist/guitarist Christopher Bond shows himself a much more adept maestro of mechanization than Todd Rundgren.

Though these productions show much more careful plotting and dynamic discretion than War Babies, the textures are still too florid to avoid oversen-sationalizing the themes. Hall and Oates are such intelligent writers and experienced musicians that they don't need to strain so hard. Their best songs have a freshness and simplicity of feeling that make their sophistication seem natural and easy. The best songs on Bigger�"Back Together," "London Luck and Love" and "Do What You Want"�do the same; "Kerry" and "Crazy Eyes" are almost as fine. No other rock artists stand a better chance of creating an ideal fusion between R&B's melodious humanism and rock's wizardly avant-gardism."

Looks like we have a major research programme here - the place of alienation in white Philly derived soul . Compare and contrast the studio perfectionism of H&O with Steely Dan. Start with a couple of quotes:

"Everything we do is Philadelphia. Listen to the rhythms and the changes and you'll hear the O'Jays and the Stylistics and the Delfonics."

"We're like the R&B version of the Grateful Dead," Oates says. "We have 50 songs we can play. On any given night we end up doing about 18."

Despite all of this I managed to get 5 tracks to a CD for Gilbert � two basic songs � 2 and 3 versions.

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