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The Other Night at Quinn’s: Avram Fefer

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

“That’s what’s most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.” – Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

***

Saxophonist Avram Fefer plays a phrase, passes it to the rhythm section and momentarily steps back.  The Michaels (Bisio and Wimberly) grab it and go, a rebound turned fastbreak.  Then they pull back, work the perimeter, set up the next play—a trio in top gear from the start.  Later Fefer says he told the band to “skip the first set and get to the second and third.”

For months I’ve been telling my neighbor, Keith, about these shows.  He was able to make it tonight and couldn’t have picked a better introduction to Quinn’s.  Early on it’s evident that this will be a memorable night.  Joe McPhee and Iva Bittova sense it.  They’re among the past performers who have returned tonight as fans.  Fefer senses it, too.  He takes a moment to snap a photo when bassist Michael Bisio solos.  Then Fefer stretches, reaches to the ceiling, twists side to side, and preps for what’s to come.

***

“You say something true, but high-minded—preferably a couple of things true, but high-minded, to set up the rhythm.  Then you deflate the whole lofty mess by saying something really true…that leaves the reader with not just a laugh, but insight.”  Art Spiegelman, Introduction to Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book

***

Fefer floats on high, glides on long, sustained thoughts, as Bisio eases into a hypnotic bass line, locks in with Wimberly.  A refrain emerges.  They stay within the boundaries and it’s wonderful but it’s not to last, not in this form.  They toss aside what they’ve built, let loose a flurry, beautiful and messy, a blizzard of ideas, too many to track yet, too tantalizing to ignore.

The group changes directions once more, mixes the melodic and the manic.  The rhythm section clicks into a groove, repeats a phrase that you can latch onto, while Fefer takes off, pushes to the upper register, strains just short of piercing.  Only as he descends do I realize the extent to which my body tensed up during the ascent; I feel my shoulders drop as he releases, returns to solid ground.

***

Curses, a comic by Kevin Huizenga, revolves around the existential adventures of Glenn Ganges.  Glenn’s brother, Wayne, teaches at a seminary school.  In one story they go golfing with two of Wayne’s fellow professors.  The older professor talks about a recent visit to a bookstore.  He looks around at “all the books on display—and (thinks), Behold, the vanity of man!”

Wayne responds, “But in all those books God displays his wonders, too—through human imagination, art, history, ideas…”  Theoretically I agree with the brother, take the humanist approach.  But when I first read the comic I sided with the older professor.  There are so many books published each year, plus the articles and reviews and posts.  Why add to the heap?  Do I write to engage and connect or merely distract myself, chase the red dot on the floor?

***

Keith and I arrive early only to find the counter full.  The booths up front are occupied, too.  Yet he’s taken with the place by the time we sit down—the décor, the menu, the prospect of great music on a Monday night.  We drove up together but I haven’t asked how long he wants to stay.  I don’t want to ask.  He might have to—or want to—leave early.  A set departure time will only get stuck in my head and I’ll focus on what I might miss, rather than the experience before me.

***

Fefer and Bisio move aside, which signals a Michael Wimberly solo.  I spot an open seat.  I ask Keith if he wants to move closer.  He gives me a nod that says, I’m good right here.  By the time I walk up Wimberly has switched to mallets and they’re a blur, the white felt leaving streaks in the air.  Then he moves faster, the sticks like helicopter blades.  My eyes can only process one or two images per revolution, they can’t keep up.  It’s over too soon but I stay up front, linger with the sights I’d been missing in back—the various shades of gold on Fefer’s well-worn horns, the hairs on Bisio’s fraying bass bow, Wimberly’s fingers pushing in slow motion across the drum head of his floor tom.

***

“The very best works construct a bridge across that abyss of human loneliness.” – David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon”


***

Fefer, Bision and Wimberly build bridges early and often.  It’s evident when Fefer acknowledges his predecessors.  With humility and reverence he covers Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Volunteered Slavery.”  He talks about traveling with Archie Shepp and playing with Ornette Coleman.  And always with a sense of inclusion, big tent rather than closed circle.  It’s evident, too, when Fefer claps on the beat, invites others to join, tries to span what’s left of the performer/audience divide.  Iva Bittova moves to the front, calls out on the upbeat, bellows and beams.  It’s a well-timed response to what’s emanating from stage and quickly spreads around the room.

***

After the show Keith and I settle our tab, ready to head home.  We stop by the merch table but no one’s there.  The band is scattered around the room catching up with friends and fans.  Hundreds of dollars worth of records and CDs sit unattended.  They’re available but they’re secondary.  We find Avram Fefer and go overboard on his records.  Then we do the same with Michael Bisio.  (If Michael Wimberly had brought albums for sale we’d have completed the trifecta.)  Each of them is gracious, genuine.  The show’s over but the night’s just beginning.  Keith suggests that we stay for another drink. 

The Other Night at Quinn's - Jonas Bers, Damian Cleary, Matt Luczak

by Mike Faloon

Photos by James Keepnews

Hold tight. We're starting soon. We've been warned that the show will be loud. We've been told that the staff went to the drug store next door and stocked up on ear plugs. We've been informed that anyone with photo sensitive epilepsy should leave. Yet people continue to trickle in. Doors lock from the outside. We're in for it.

* * *

Driving into Beacon clouds cling to the hillsides, strands of cotton stuck on velcro. A storm is moving in, midnight black and ominous. Even ten miles out I can tell the clouds are hovering over Quinn's. Then the rain comes. Wipers on high. Counting on the brake lights of strangers to find my way along route 84.

* * *

I don't recall the weeks leading up to Y2K that well, the days of panic and precautions, emergency rations and "What if..?" worries. The people I trusted were calm and I followed their lead. I did wonder, though, about the government, the airlines, the banks, the institutions scrambling to reset.

* * *

The lights go down inside Quinn's. Extreme Thursdays: Opening Night: Part Two. I'm trepidatious as the sound fades up, slowly ascending, building momentum by microscopic increments. Equally eerie and peaceful, like a quiet city street at night, tension rooted in restraint. My attention is drawn to what might happen, what could occur. Drummer Matt Luczak gently rolls back and forth across the rack and floor toms. To his right and left are Jonas Bers (synths) and Damian Cleary (guitar).

The video synthesizer is the focal point. Bers drives it. All of the instruments are connected to it—Cleary's guitar, Luczak's drums and cymbals which are wired with contact mics, and Bers' gear—synthesizer, steel guitar, and Walter, the PVC cello. More on Walter coming up.

The video synthesizer yields waves in the kilohertz range, thousands of cycles per second. These are the vibrations we can hear. The synthesizer also yields waves in the megahertz range, millions of cycles per second. These are the vibrations we can see. The video synthesizer is wired to a projector which is precariously placed atop the pie case turned beer cooler. The result is mounds of head scratching sounds coupled with streams of perplexing images.

* * *

Ironic that tonight's show is so tech-centric. I've been loathing all things twenty-first century today, riding a Luddite wave a mile wide ever since my mp3 player deleted over 45 minutes of an interview I'd recently recorded. I took every precaution I could think of and the file simply disappeared without a keystroke when I attempted to upload the interview to my desktop. I took the device to an expert. All he could do was apologize. I'd come so close to using a cassette and tape recorder, yielding to my old school self. Something about being able to see wheels in motion. Being able to tinker with parts if things went awry.

* * *

Coming into the night I knew there would be heavy synthesizer action paired with guitar and drums. I was prepared for a night of acoustic instruments vs. electronic instruments. Analog vs. digital. Monkeys vs. robots. There is a mix of acoustic and electronic instruments, but the gear is all analog, nothing digital, nothing binary.

* * *

Bers built the video synthesizer. He gutted an old keyboard ("the kind ELO used to use") and rewired it. Across the lower level keys have been switched out for dials, switches and protruding screws. Across the top are more screws, a field of them, like tiny mushrooms. He makes connections among the screws with a series of alligator clamps, always running the risk of a receiving a shock. Wires sprawl this way and that. The whole thing looks primed for James Bond to diffuse it, pull the right wire with a second to spare.

* * *

There are three currents moving on stage. The sonics move in slow motion, notes lasting four or five seconds. The musicians are busy, like chefs prepping for the dinner rush. The visuals are in hyperdrive, images flashing for hundredths of a second.

Luczak moves to the snare drum, building, adding, raising. He moves forward, he hovers but never lands. Cleary colors and shades, holding his guitar armpit high, thumping the body. Then he rotates it, turns the body upside down, plants it on the stage and rotates it like a slow motion drill. Bers changes to a steel guitar repurposed from his grandfather's vaudeville days. Images pour across the backdrop. Black outlines on purple. A field of static. Colored squares moving right to left, an ancient Hebrew text unearthed. The combined effect of sights and sounds is frantic and loud, but nothing like what I'd anticipated. There's a sense of calm and control.

***

My wife and I spent that New Year's in St. Kitts, in the Caribbean, where she was going to school. We went to dinner and then found a spot up on a hillside to watch the fireworks. The sky was dark in every direction, no other island or town in sight. We could see the headlights of cars twisting and winding along the country roads that ran through the fields of sugar cane. We couldn't see or hear anyone else. We kept waiting for the fireworks or at least a burst of cheers to signify that 1/1/00 had arrived but neither came. It was several minutes past midnight before Allie checked her watch and we realized that Y2K had come and gone without so much as a blink of the lights.

***

Three dudes walk in, each with glowbox in hand. Not one of them acknowledges the music. Really? This is normal, fellas? Not enough to provoke a visible response? Even if you're deaf you'd feel the vibrations, and these are vibrations without precedent.

There's a sudden blast of feedback. Someone in back, someone far removed from the blast zone, yells, "Ow, it hurts!" He might mean that the excessive volume is causing him physical pain. He might also mean that he doesn't understand what he's witnessing.

Either way the sound guy runs to the stage, assuming that something's gone wrong. But this is by design, this is on purpose. Before the show Bers told me that sound people usually don't know how loud the band wants to be. So when the music is quiet they turn up the volume, try to compensate, lend a hand. But that only eliminates the sonic head room, leaves nowhere to go. Then the band turns up and everything "turns to mud." Doesn't seem to be a concern tonight.

The sound recedes for a moment. People clap. Maybe in appreciation. Maybe in relief. The applause elicits a grin from Luczak. It ain't over yet, folks. He goes double time on the kick drum, finds another gear. Cleary works steadily, producing ever more sound. Bers tinkers, moves alligator clamps from one screw to another. The results might seem random but one look at their faces says otherwise, intense concentration. It's like being inside the machine. Monkeys running the robot.

Meanwhile, long narrow, horizontal rectangles flash, rainbow test patterns. That it's chaotic is obvious, but there are elements of cohesion, evidence of communication, a sense of collective building. I expect them to launch what they've built, push it further out. Instead they stay, linger, move in and explore.

Then Walter enters, about four feet of PVC pipe with bass strings and pick ups. Bers takes a seat and reaches for a bow, plays Walter like a cello. Walter speakth. Walter booms, forges slabs of sound. After the show, outside the club while the band is packing up, someone approaches Bers and asks where he got the bazooka. Bers jokes about removing plutonium to disarm Walter.

Between sets a quick glance around the room reveals more bodies than before the band began. Live bodies, I should note. Not casualties. When the music resumes Bers and Cleary get to the loud sooner, Luczak pushes the pace earlier. Images continue to splatter across the room. Checkerboards, sun beams, Atari graphics circa '79, seventh generation VHS dubs, Pac Man mazes. A cinematic collage of the last fifty years. Craig Baldwin's Spectres of the Spectrum collides with Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." It's Baldwin by KO in the first.

The Other Night at Quinn’s – Charlie Rauh & Jasmine Dreame Wagner

By Mike Faloon

“Feeling loose on opening night / Steady nerves on opening night”

--The Figgs, "Opening Night"

***

So it’s Friday morning.  My son’s first day of summer vacation.  He’s in the next room, lying on the couch while I work. 

“All I can do is lie here with my head over the garbage can,” he groans. 

He gave up asking to watch TV and now his stomach hurts.  Or so he says.  He knows that being sick—actually being ill—is usually offset with some tube time.  I’ve got “teach him how to fish” on the mind.  I tell him The Boy Who Cried Wolf story.  Figure there’s a reason the thing’s been around for so long.  Not a moment that will make my parenting highlight reel.

In between his contrived coughs and “I’d feel better if I could watch Clone Wars” pleas,I’m trying to recall a highlight from last night’s show, a bit to serve as an intro, but the music was too mellow for that kind of thinking.  It’s like looking back on an afternoon of watching a stream flow by and trying to recall a single moment, a specific drop of water. 

***

Two days ago I came upon a near disaster when driving home, just after picking up the kids.  I was about to cross the train tracks near our house when the car approaching me began to screech.  It was a cherry red Celica and it sounded like the driver was slamming on the brakes.  The front tires were smoking, but the car kept moving forward.  The front wheel was almost at a right angle to the body of the car, a weird, unnatural angle, an automotive compound fracture.

When the car finally stopped two dudes, twenty-five-ish, stepped out.  They were bewildered.  I pulled up and explained what I’d seen.  That’s when I noticed Celica’s broken axle resting on the ground.  It must have snapped as he was driving along and the car ground to a halt. 

A jeep pulled up behind the broken Celica.  The driver was older, salt and pepper beard.  He was frantic and rightfully so.  The Celica had stopped on the train tracks, the back bumper directly above the closest rail.

Jeep dialed 911.  “There’s a 4:50 out of Patterson that’ll be coming right over these tracks,” he announced.  My car’s clock read 4:46.

***

Last night was opening night for a new weekly series at Quinn’s.  “Extreme Thursdays.”  Any other time and place I’d dismiss such a thing as a wannabe marking exec’s stab at a metal or punk night.  Probably sponsored by a hybrid sports drink/hot sauce start up. 

But it’s Quinn’s.  I’ve seen so many remarkable shows there in the past months.  My hopes for the series are high.  Maybe these Thursday shows will be jazz, maybe not.  When I teach or parent or write I’m trying to keep things compelling but structured, under control, ordered.  That’s why I go to shows like these—the chance to see and hear something out there, less structured, disordered. 

I missed the first six months of the Monday night jazz series.  I still hear about the shows that I missed.  But this time I’m here on day one, opening night. 

***

Chris Gethard, comedian – These aren't opening nights per se, but every single time I perform stand up for the first time at a new venue I get so nervous that I poop pretty much until the exact moment the host calls my name.  

***

I pulled ahead and parked on the side of the road.  “No, daddy, you’ll get hit by the train,” my daughter said.  She’s prone to panicking, unnecessary worrying and fretting, but this time she had a point.  Her way of saying be careful.

By the time I returned to the scene two other guys had arrived.  They’d formed a quartet with the Celica dudes and managed to push the car ahead a couple of feet.  The car was almost clear but wouldn’t roll any further given the angle of the wheel.  Jeep kept talking to 911.  “The train will certainly hit the car.  We can’t move it.  You must stop the train!” he pleaded.

The car wouldn’t move and the train couldn’t stop.  The situation was saturated with chaos, but there was order, too.  Each individual exerted a small bit of control in a situation that had the potential to tidal wave us, toss us aside like corks.

***

Charlie Rauh opens the show.  Solo guitar, all instrumentals.  Very quiet.  Very earnest.  Very much the antithesis of extreme.  And that’s fine.  I’m at a table with friends.  Before and between songs we trade movie recommendations, talk about Gary Oldman’s turn at playing celebrity nut job.  Rauh’s delicate tunes take me back through the day, walking west on Main Street, squinting in the setting sun as I cross Fishkill Avenue.  All those months of battling the cold and ice and snow, and now this, easing through days of seventy something perfection.  It feels gluttonous. 

The second song is even mellower, slower.  The fake Christmas tree on stage, the one with the undulating lights, needs to be recalibrated.  It’s way ahead of the tempo implied by Rauh’s ever so fragile sound.    

My sense of ambient music is that it’s about reigning in the disorder, pulling all elements under control, clear the way for the calm.  Ambient music doesn’t speak to me but still I wonder what Rauh hears, what are his intentions?  His music reminds me of driving home, late on a summer night, windows down, music off, totally spaced out and totally tuned in.  It’s peaceful but solitary.  I don’t know how I could bring people into such an experience.

***

Hallie Bulleit, dancer – I don’t think I have any rituals for opening nights.  I normally find my rituals later into the run of a show.  Then I get increasingly superstitious and habit-driven as time goes by.   

***

John Ross Bowie, actor – “I have had very few opening nights.  My ritual when I do Big Bang (Theory) is I have a Diet Coke and listen to Devo so as to get into my ‘angry nerd’ head.[1]  That helps.”

***

My idea was to jack up the car and push it forward another inch or three.  Then repeat the process until the Celica cleared the tracks.  The others agreed.  Then a pick up pulled up, window already down.  “What the hell’s the problem?” the driver yelled, “You’ve got to move that car!”  We explained our plan.  Pick Up ignored it.  He turned over his shoulder and yelled at the car behind him.  “Move it!  Back up!  Back up!”  The window to his cab was closed.   Pick Up yelled louder.  The car moved. 

Meanwhile Jeep was still talking to 911, the Celica’s driver and his buddy were mumbling to themselves in disbelief, my kids were waiting up the road, and somewhere a train was rolling our way.  Yet the pieces fit together, formed a functional whole, didn’t feel out of control.  I’m not sure how much of that perception is hindsight and how much is denial.

Pick Up backed up, lurched forward, and forced the Celica off the tracks.  I expected him to roll down his window, verify that all was right, at least accept some gratitude.  Not in his skill set.  He gunned it and took off. 

That’s when I saw the train coming around the bend.  The gates dropped.  We all stood back.  The train rolled past and the Celica sat unscathed.  Disaster averted.  I felt like I was on set for a Buster Keaton movie.

***

Jasmine Dreame Wagner is up next.  Solo keyboard and vocal.  Very quiet.  Very earnest.  Very much in the vein of Charlie Rauh, but her music strikes me differently.  With quiet instrumentals my thinking is fluid, my mind can drift.  Once lyrics step into the spotlight, once there’s language to consider, my field of view narrows, becomes binary.  I’m more likely to think there’s something to get, to comprehend.  Wagner’s talent and tone match Rauh’s but there’s something I can’t peg, something that anchors my thinking, prevents it from floating.  Maybe it’s the keyboard sound, which reminds me of Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, which I find inexplicably depressing.    

***

Chris Gethard – Mostly at these clubs it's like, "I hope I bring it, this could turn into a relationship where I get consistent work." Being a comedian is odd because if a club likes me, they might put me up for like 6-10 paying gigs a month. So every time you get that first shot at one, you're basically auditioning for a part time job. And then there's also that dialogue of like "I wonder how drunk the crowds get here, I'm new to this place." I also tend to have some anxiety because I don't have a background as a club comedian, I come from the alt world. So I guess for me going into comedy clubs sometimes feels like I'm an emo guy going up at a hard rock club. Like they're not used to me. Club comedians are a little harder hitting and aggressive than I like to be. So I guess the analogy would be that I sometimes feel like Elliott Smith playing at the Viper Room, and I'm just shitting and praying that it goes well and I can get them on my side.

***

I wonder to what extent Rauh and Wagner are feeling that Smith/Viper Room analogy?  They must see the irony in bringing their soothing sounds to the opening night of Extreme Thursdays, such a different take on the restraint/release divide, what to keep in and what to let out. 

***

My son flies into the room with some Lego construction.  His stomachache is gone and he’s frantically telling me the backstory for his latest construction, something about Batman flying a surfboard into Gryffindor.  His unbridled enthusiasm seems streaked with mayhem, juvenile madness, but that narrative coursing through his mind provides reassurance and propels him through the day.

---

[1] Bowie portrays Barry Kripke on Big Bang Theory.

The Other Night at Quinn's - Katherine Young's Pretty Monsters & Jessica Pavone

By Mike Faloon   

                                 

I knew I was spacey long before I missed the turn for Quinn’s.  Semi-hypnotized yet functional, aware of my surroundings but operating with a heightened sense of what to hang onto to and what to let go off.  I spent all yesterday outdoors, splashing around at a water park with my kids.  Today I kept my classroom windows open all day, lulled by the steady rain.

Needless to say I’m in the right frame of mind as Jessica Pavone warms up.  Viola pinched between chin and neck she focuses on electronics, the gear at her feet.  Echo.  Tons of echo, slowly building.  Maybe the performance has begun.  We watched Mothra vs. Godzilla over the weekend so I’m seeing monster movies as the pitches bend and shift. 

Pavone lets a minute or three pass before feeding new info to the effects box, just lets it wail with the sounds of invading alien hordes.  Usually that kind of work-to-noise ratio sends me fleeing, but Pavone knows when to pull out of the nose dive, when to switch back to the viola, push fresh sounds into the loop.  My mental narrative cuts to grainy black and white footage of flying saucers descending upon the hollows of Western Kentucky, no dialogue.

The next number loses me.  Pavone plays two beats on, two beats off.  I hesitate to say “rest” because she seems to be scheming at every moment, riding one sound or steering into the next.  The pace quickens, feedback changing tones rapidly, like flickering images in an experimental film.  But conceptually, I’m on board.  It’s the anti-solo solo.  It’s not about how many or how fast.  It’s about volume and texture, dropping huge blocks of sounds that jolt the landscape.   

***

One of my students asked me to explain the difference between a stereotype and an archetype.  I struggled for an answer.  My immediate thought was that stereotypes make me squirm.  Archetypes don’t.  I resist stereotypes.  I avoid trafficking in them, and I don’t want to personify them.  Me, the bearded, bespectacled guy taking notes at a jazz show so that I can blog about the experience, I’m the one who thinks he rises above stereotypes, the guy sitting at the counter cluttered with tulip glasses of Belgian ales and needlessly hoppy brews, and baskets of snap peas.  Who could label that?

***

Meanwhile Pavone kneels, hunches over her effects gear and slowly, gently, fades out, giving the piece a soft landing.  Before a hush can settle she’s tapping her bow on the strings, bouncing, dribbling.  Sharp piercing sounds zip across the room.  No attack, no decay, just the piercing synth-like sound of pure peak.  But it’s the rhythm that sticks, almost like Morse code.  A distress signal of sorts.  She drops the bow, slaps her palms on the strings.  The feedback wails.  But again, the rhythm sticks, keeps at bay any sense of “noise for the sake of noise.”

She closes with a simple sign off: “Thanks, I’m Jessica Pavone.  Pretty Monsters are up next.”  After kicking our collective can with immeasurable heaps of noise, stepping on our throats and swiping our wallets for good measure, it’s the most concise of endings.

***

A lot of the regulars aren’t here tonight.  But odder than who’s here and who’s absent is what’s being said.  Two stools to my left I hear this: “You hear that (meaning Pavone’s set)?  You didn’t miss anything.”  Older gent. He’s visibly, verbally displeased.  He reminds me of Walter from The Big Lebowski, looking for support with full throttle belly aching.   (“Am I wrong, Dude?”)  He notices Jessica Pavone within earshot and retreats.  “It’s not for everyone.” 

True, but that’s why I come here, to hear something I’ve never heard before and won’t hear again, something one-time and worth talking about.  Comments like Walter’s aren’t the norm here.  I assume they happen often, that every Monday night sparks at least one heavy duty “What was that?” reaction, but I’ve never heard one.

Another gent takes the seat between Walter and me.  I overheard this other guy earlier, talking about a Thelonious Monk biography.  He’s long haired and bearded.  He chats with Walter, puts Pavone’s performance in context, makes peace, plays the Dude to the cranky one’s Walter.  (“No, Walter, you’re not wrong.  You’re just an asshole.”)  This is where archetypes help.

***

I’m also a hybrid driving public school teacher and card carrying union member who’s recently cut meat and dairy out of his diet, partly because my cholesterol is running high and partly due to ethical concerns.  Stereotypes?  I’m a Star Trek box set away from completing the picture.  Or maybe Dr. Who would suffice.

***

So if I’m surrounded by Walter and the Dude where does that leave me?  Donny, always asking questions and sharing observations that fall on deaf ears?  The Stranger, wisely looking in, cool and stoic?  Maybe bits of both?  Or Smokey.

***

Walter’s fingers are knuckle deep in his ears when Katherine Young’s Pretty Monsters come to life.  (“This aggression will not stand!”)  Young bombs the room with bassoon blasts.  She’s joined by Erica Dicker on violin, Owen Stewart-Robertson on guitar, and Mike Pride on drums.

Most of the room marvels.  Walter gripes.  Then I notice the table behind me.  Twenty-somethings out for drinks, talking over the music.  Pretty common stuff at Quinn’s but the talkative types usually know to sit at the back tables.  The Dude says this group was yammering throughout Jessica Pavone’s set, too.  He’s surprised that I didn’t notice.  Young and dumb and vocal is one way to wobble through life but it does nothing to enhance my Monday night.  Bubble headed and unaware, they’re a bunch of Bunny Lebowskis.  And the Nihilists, they have some of those louts in them, too—tossing marmots into the bathtub of an otherwise satisfying experience.

Bunny and the Nihilists are soon buried by the avalanche that is Pretty Monsters.  Drums and shards of guitar, violin up high, bassoon down low.  I see sheet music on stands and watch the band’s eyes but can’t tell when they’re reading and when they’re improvising.  Like a glacier, their sound is wide and high and pushes aside anything in its way.  The other players move in and out, spokes around Young’s eerie, leviathan tones.  It’s a fascinating choice of sonic center points, moments of such startling contrast.  Yet other times when I look away the sounds blur, I can’t tell bassoon from violin from guitar.  

There’s also a lot of white space in their sound, places for single instruments, subdued passages, though not quite solos, quiet to offset the noise.  Or rather where quiet is intended.  Instead it’s filled by the yammering of the Bunny and the Nihilists who move from the periphery to the forefront.  

Later I see Jessica Pavone and apologize for the sparse, distracting crowd.  She shrugs it off, says it’s a Monday night at a bar.  True, but usually it’s more.  Quinn’s is capable of better and I’m disappointed that that’s not evident.

Walter stands and covers his ears.  He turns away, looks to the back entrance, but there’s no cavalry coming.  The band plays on, unfazed.  They’ve weathered worse.  Later Erica Dicker tells me about a festival she played, in Eastern Europe, with an all-female quartet.  The crowd had a certain set of stereotypes in mind and made it clear that Dicker's group was the wrong gender and race (maybe age, too).  "They were not expecting a bunch of white girls,” Dicker says.  The atmosphere was unsettling.  She says that show was a “nine or ten.”  Tonight rates a mere four.

Pretty Monsters play on.  They take turns in the spotlight, with tempos that are slow to mid.  I’m waiting for the band to wail full on, in conjunction, sandblast the room, clear the place. But the hick-ish portion of our response isn’t enough to alter their course.  They’re too determined.  They’re also heavy and dense and cacophonous, restrained too—hinged and methodical.

Between songs the Dude turns and grins with a look of, Whoa, this is out there!  “I wouldn’t want to live where they live mentally,” he says.

Dicker opens the next piece.  Young looks down, nods, turns her head side to side.  She can hear patterns, perceives this as an on ramp, leading purposefully to a place.  I don’t have that level of focus.  My mix still has the sounds of Bunny and the Nihilists seeping in.  I give them a look.  So does the Dude.  No use.  They have their own agenda.  (“We want the money, Lebowski!”)

Then Stewart-Robertson and Dicker change lanes, pouring out tuneful, easy to discern lines that intertwine.  Pride breaks out a xylophone, Young’s bassoon bubbles up, and before our eyes something of a pop song melts.  This flows into a piece that’s subdued and conversational.  Ironically, I think this is when Bunny and the Nihilists clear out. 

At first the next piece seems suited for a funeral or memorial, looking back and mourning.  I’m looking in the right direction but misreading the tone.  This is more celebratory—the loudmouths have vacated. It’s probably a coincidence, but I’m assigning intent, at least for now.  Pretty Monsters brought their avant chamber assault to the hinterlands and plunged their flag into the turf, fending off the naysayer and the ninnies.  I'm annoyed by the reception they received, but they're choosing to kick back with drinks at the bar.  Strikes and gutters.

 

The Other Night at Quinn’s – Michael Kadnar

by Mike Faloon

Notes on a Much Needed Perfect Night in May

* * *

The top layer of the western sky is dark blue. Beneath it are layers of white and purple. Cutting across the grain are enormous cylinders of rain, two titanic tubes of water. I top the next hill on route 84 and the scene cuts to an stunningly vivid, shield-your-eyes tangerine fireball of a sunset, so perfect it feels like we should all pull over and gaze and sketch and pen heartfelt poetry. The sort of sight that would inspire a Seth comic or three. It’s stunning, but not enough to scoop out the junk churning through my mind.

* * *

Some nights it takes a tune or three to get my bearings when I walk into Quinn’s. I have to sort through a bunch of different tones and rhythms and build my own sense of things. I prefer that. I like wading through the uncertainty. It’s an adult version of spinning round and round, making yourself dizzy, dropping to the ground and watching the world spin before slowly coming back into focus.

In The Insect King, Murtaw is pulled into attending a football game at his high school. At half time he encounters the bewildering, “What the…?” spectacle of the Gold Sequined Girl. He can’t figure her out and that’s much of her appeal—“it’s a form of not understanding that he liked.” Mondays at Quinn’s are often like that.

Tonight's different.  I’m able to dial in on the band, a quartet led by drummer Michael Kadnar, before I sit down. Kadnar is generous with the ride cymbal and light with his touch. Sean Morrison and Joe Heider are up front. Morrison works a Fender Rhodes electric piano, Heider an electric hollow body. Two of my favorite sounds, almost regardless of who’s at the helm. Add in Harry D’Agostino on upright bass (more on him coming up) and I’m thinking of the backing band on Freddie Hubbard’s Straight Life—Herbie Hancock, a young, pre-smooth George Benson, and Jack DeJohnette.

Morrison, Heider, and Kadnar are all seated and wearing tucked in black button ups. They look like the cast of Party Down[1].  Then there's  D’Agostino. He’s wearing a light shirt, untucked, standing. He’s beaming, having a great time. And so are the others. That’s the link here, the Elmer’s, that gives everything a low key practice session vibe. They’re like stand up comedians at a late night open mic, playing for and supporting each other, grinning, nodding, radiating the pure joy I’ve-got-something-that-fits-here sense of being able to contribute to a band they’d pay to see. They exude a vibe similar to the stories old school comics tell on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.

Kadnar’s an interesting guy. At first look his beard and curlicue yield a Jade Tree-meets-Clark-Kent appearance. But neither fit with his playing (light, swinging, yet load-bearing) nor with his credits (metal bands like Downfall of Gaia and Black Table). To varying degrees the same applies to the rest of the band, they conjure people from my neck of the pop culture woods (Patton Oswalt, the kid from Real Genius), but they play so well, a little blues here, R&B there, solid throughout.

And so well timed. It was a weird weekend. The roof collapsed above my wife’s business, flooding the floors, and maybe damaging equipment. Hard to say. Then, while that was pushing our household’s frustration meter into the red, I found out that James Keepnews was held up at knifepoint in Beacon, on Schenck Ave, just off Main Street, a few minutes from Quinn’s. It wasn’t shocking news—life in Brooklyn North is going to be worts and all—but it was early (eleven-ish) and so close to the main thoroughfare. And it was personal, Keepnews is the gent responsible for importing so many of the musicians who’ve played the Monday night sessions.

The mugging draws out other stories—Barney Fife parole officers bumbling through one, SWAT team precision defining another. The take away: nice town, be careful. (Does that mean hide the CDs in my car? Do CDs carry any value? How paranoid is it to ask these things? How else do you react when a friend’s been assaulted?)

There is so much of that swirling in my head—the band’s cool performance and the bad news that needed to be shoved aside—that I barely notice the other changes. First of all, Mark isn’t working the counter. Not expected, but all right, dude’s entitled to a night off. Second, the stage is much wider. It’s a work in progress, 2” x 4”s still exposed. 

A wider stage provides a wider screen, more room for the eye to roam. At first the side effects seem minimal, a couple of tables by the entrance are dumpster bound. But then, about half way through the first set, photographer Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh and his wife Holly walk past and sit in back. It’s like watching a catcher stroll past the pitcher’s mound and set up shop in center field. I’m so used to seeing them perched up front and now they’ve been uprooted, displaced. I haven’t seen him snap a single frame tonight. I hope I’ve just missed something.

I do that, get lost mentally during these shows, miss things. For awhile I tune in to Kadnar’s kick drum, listen for him to drop in some metal excess, but he steer clears. Later I focus on Heider’s fretboard thinking I can puzzle out some geometric patterns.  I also try to settle on at least one apt adjective for their playing. But everything I conjure suggests that they’re dull Sunday brunch players (which they're not) and/or I’m condescending to them (which I'm not). Whenever I write about a band that I dig I want at least one phrase they could share with friends, something that prompts the band to say, Check out this review we got.

In that regard I’m coming up short. In place of the direct, the succinct, I offer the odd. Over the course of the night I notice an older gent walking back and forth with a saxophone case slung over his back. My first assumption is that he’s come from rehearsal and he’s here, like the rest of us, to soak in the tunes. Then, between songs, I notice him engage with the band. I can’t gauge whether he’s complimenting them or goading them or coaching them. What I fail to consider is the obvious—he’s asking to sit in. Other than the sax case all I can recall are his glasses, and his name: later he’ll announce himself as Huckleberry Infinity. He talks to Sean Morrison and I notice Joe Heider make eye contact with someone in the audience. Joe gives a “What should we do?” shrug and before we know it Huck Infin is up and playing. His tone is all right, it fits. It’s not necessary—Kadnar and company were doing just fine—but it’s all right. Gives the night a Brautigan touch—a twist, a wrinkle, a scrap that I don’t know how to file, and that’s better than floodings and muggings.

---

[1] That is until I seek out a cast photo and realize they always wore white. To which I say they should’ve worn black. Yet another show that failed to heed my advice.

The Other Night at Quinn’s – The Alan “Juice” Glover Quartet

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

 

“I’m a jazz musician, but I’m allowed to think.” – Alan “Juice” Glover

* * *

The Alan “Juice” Glover Quartet is playing tonight, and it's a bittersweet occasion. I've been hearing hype about the legendary Glover for weeks, but it's also the last of the weekly Monday night jazz sessions. More on that later.

Keyboardist Lora Cohan opens the first set, wades into “Of Things Green,” warm and inviting. The rest of the band listens, heads bowed, motionless. Then, boom, they’re up and swinging, quick and sure footed, like a middleweight. 

Saxophonist Alan “Juice” Glover leads. He’s gliding along, sailing. But don’t start thinking Kenny G. or GRP “The doctor will see you” jazz. There’s an edge, a nudge, his sound is stirring, not numbing. His tone reminds me of Wayne Shorter, and there’s something in his approach that reminds me of Pharaoh Sanders.

* * *

I’ve been telling my neighbor about these Monday night sessions. He almost made it tonight but something came up.

* * *

Tonight is the final show of the weekly Monday Night Jazz Sessions at Quinn’s. The shows will continue, but at different intervals. 

I first came to Quinn’s back in January. I came to see Joe McPhee. I’d spent the previous year entranced by one of his records, Nation Time, and couldn’t believe he was playing just up the road from me. And two sets, no less. I’ve been to a couple of jazz clubs in the city. They’re expensive and prone to pretension. I’m more comfortable with t-shirts and tattoos, the bearded and the weird. I wondered to what extent a show at Quinn’s would run parallel. I didn’t know the place. Were they going to clear the club between sets, have people line up outside, treat it like two separate shows? I wondered how inviting the people and place would be.

* * *

Alan Glover has been in and around the New York jazz scene since the ‘70s. For years he hosted shows at his loft in Alphabet City. He’s a writer, filmmaker, thinker, and builder. He’s a hell of a musician, too; he makes a strong first impression on stage. I’m hooked moments into the show. I can’t believe a musician this good and this out there lives just over the hills, in Poughkeepsie, and I never heard him before now. How’d I miss someone of this magnitude? (Makes him sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi, the wise, mysterious elder living beyond the spotlight.)

* * *

Glover is a showman, too; he can hold a stage without an instrument. He quotes Hamlet. (“'To be or not to be'—scholars don’t really know what it means but I do. You’ll have to read my memoirs.”) He sells the challenges of improvising over 10/8 time, makes it sound less like an arduous task and more like deeply gratifying challenge.

I read about Glover before the show. A few sources cited Glover’s Christian faith. From my experience with Christian musicians, they tend to tell more than question, act from a position “I know and you should, too.” The term “spiritual jazz” was also bandied about. That's a more apt term for Glover, musicians who question more than tell. Disciples of A Love Supreme and the records that followed in its wake. “Here’s what I’m grappling with…” This is Glover as Coltrane.[1]  

Glover’s a big question guy, a free thinker. Sure, he’ll preach, get in his three cents on things theological. He sets up “Be Still and Know That I Am” by talking about Jesus and Luke. But like I said, he works a mic as well as he does a sax, and part of working a room is reading the crowd. He knows when to switch gears.

“I admire scientists. They have a thought. They work on it. Then they try again.” Setting up the title track from The Blue Shift, Glover wonders if there was more than one Big Bang. “He couldn’t be satisfied with a bang. It’s more like bang di di bang da bang bang.” The same joke is printed on the back of The Blue Shift CD. I love it when people reuse jokes. Glover as Rickles.

Glover explains the underlying science of The Blue Shift. Something about astronomers using red shifts to search the galaxy for new life forms. He wonders what blue shifts will reveal. The songs from this record make more sense, he says, when you listen to them in order, they build on each other, the sequence matters. It’s like he jumped into a mid-semester astronomy lecture. “I started with the sixth track on the album. That’s unfair.”[2] Glover as Sagan.

Out of context these anecdotes might seem to frame Glover as a “folksy wisdom” guy, a dude with scratch-off thinking—shallow and easy to brush aside. But check out his Musiversal Slide Rule. It’s billed as a “Circular Slide Rule.” It’s an impressive artifact for lay people, and it works for musicians, too (check out the testimonials in the Musiversal Scale Rule brochure).

Better yet talk with Glover. Let him guide you through the math of the Scale Rule. “The lower the ratio, the more harmonious, more pleasing to the ear.” He reaches for a copy of The Musiversal Visual Aid: A Visual Study of Harmonic Relationships for Students, Composers, and Improvisers. He represents different chords using shapes and colors. It’s ingenious. I think of how hard we work in schools to make concepts accessible to kids, differentiation is all the rage, and here’s someone who’s translated sound to polygons and primary colors.

With all the talk of space and spirits it’d make sense for Glover and company to play slow and contemplative, give us a chance to let everything sink in. There are elements of that. Lora Cohan keeps finding gaps to fill. Bassist William Hopson displays new levels of laid back. He breaks character only once, smiling when Glover mentions his upcoming marriage.

And while Cohan and Hopson keep things grounded Glover and drummer Michael T. A. Thompson take flight. On “The Blue Shift” Thompson keeps the beat and solos around it simultaneously. I’ve never seen so much vertical action, so much movement above the kit. His drumming is like discovering a new Romantic language—the building blocks are familiar but the shifts, changes, updates are mind scrambling.

Atop these elements, disparate yet cohesive, there’s Glover, calm and cool and providing a propulsion that belies his years. He’s about to celebrate “the 17^th anniversary of my 50^th birthday.” He has a new album of originals brewing (“Paradox On a Narrow Road, a multi-mixed metaphor including how improvisers lean on one another”) and his kids want him to record a Christmas record, too—“in your style,” they say.

* * *

The jazz series at Quinn’s isn’t over, just moving on in a different form. Still I’ll miss these going on these wild rides every week. It’s part art exhibit—the unveiling of something vital and thought provoking. And it’s part bowling league—familiar, comforting, low key and part of the weekly routine. Something for the brain, something for the soul.

* * *

I don’t know what I’ll say when my neighbor asks about tonight’s show. What good’s rubbing it in?

 

---

[1] Later, typing my notes, I flash to Rudy Gutierrez’s illustrations in Sprit Seeker, a Coltrane picture book. 

[2] Someone calls out, “It’s ok, we’re advanced around here.” Quinn’s is a smart room.

The Other Night at Quinn’s – Accortet

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

Here’s what I expect: I’ll walk in between sets, take a seat at the counter, order a drink, and find out what I’ve missed so far.

Here’s what I encounter: I step to the edge of a slo-mo mushroom afterglow moving across the room distorting time and space. Something’s gone off, and it’s still going on.

Photographer Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh is a few feet in front of me as I enter. He’s crouched low, stage right. The direction of his lens leads my eye to the stage where Accortet leader Michael Bisio is bent at the waist, feverishly bowing, digging into the deepest recess of his upright bass. His actions are large and frenzied, yet purposeful, like a battlefield surgeon operating under fire. On a dime he turns, goes careful and quiet, small deliberate movements, an archeologist gently brushing an artifact. What is Bisio looking for down there? Escape? Salvation? A certain sound just beyond his grasp? Is he finding it?

Everyone’s tuned in, waiting to see what he’ll dig up next. I take a couple of steps back, snag a seat by the door. There’s no way I’m walking through that moment.

* * *

In One Week Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely play newlyweds. They’ve just received a “build your own home” kit, but the parts are mislabeled. The house comes out all wrong. Everything’s there, but askew, acute or obtuse angles where right angles are intended to reside; the house is an abstract wonder. They may have used traditional tools and materials but they’ve built something decidedly unconventional.

* * *

Rounding out Accortet’s line up are Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Art Bailey (accordion), and Michael Wimberly (drums). That kind of instrumentation has “traditional” written all over it, in fountain pen. In particular, the accordion catches my attention. Accordions evoke Lawrence Welk or Weird Al. But these days, following weeks of Jazz at Quinn’s indoctrination, what used to be judgment has been upgraded to curiosity: I trust that Accortet can use those traditional tools to traverse non-traditional sounds, but how?

* * *

“Getting a little work done?” The guy next to me sees my notebook. I explain and he introduces himself as Ross. The band winds down a Thelonious Monk tune, “Ask Me Now,” cool and invigorating like the spring air that eases through the door. “Cozy on a Monday night,” Ross says.

That’s true. Accortet is. Or at least they can be. They can also stir it up. Case in point, originals like Bisio’s “Giant Chase.” Bisio exudes a big personality, but so do the other members of Accortet. Wimberly gives the quartet its rhythmic foundation, while Knuffke cements their disparate sounds and Bailey provides a variety of exteriors.

Ross has been buying instruments at yard sales, starting to play drums again, a little cornet, too. He’s got a place where he can play these days. He asks if I was here for the Joe McPhee show. And the Jason Kao Hwang show. And the Mike Dopazo show. What he's saying but not stating is that these Monday nights make him want to create, pick up instruments again, resume old habits, make something. 

* * *

For years I based my perception of Beacon on two local institutions: Pete Seeger and Dia: Beacon. Folk art and fine art. The shows at Quinn's draw from both. They start early and they’re affordable, perfect for those of us with day jobs. The musicians are approachable, down to earth, more like DIY punk rockers in terms of their art > commerce outlook. And the music is consistently compelling, challenging in the right ways.

I’m introduced to drummer Michael Wimberly, facetiously at first, because we share the same first name. He has that rare combination of being accomplished and humble. Anyone with P-Funk and Henry Rollins credits has reason to boast. Wimberly takes it in stride. When punk rock comes up he talks about his days with the Pony Boys in Cleveland--“the ties, the hair, the make up”; the lead singer who sailed through a liquor store window; opening for the Ramones, being booed. Through the chaos, Wimberly was making his way through school, spending his time with flashcards, “studying French or whatever.” A few minutes with Wimberly is like a tour of time, place, and genre, especially genres; the guy’s played everything. I say that I’ve always assumed that anyone who can play jazz can play anything. He takes a sip and laughs. “Nope.” 

He describes Bisio’s songs as “compositions with room.” He tends to lay back tonight, but he knows when to take advantage, especially in the closing song, crossing back and forth between the cymbals. (Keepnews: “Oh yeah, the windshield wipers. Gotta clear it away!”)

So does cornetist Knuffke. His tone can be perfectly light and airy, like when he and Bisio duet on “Living Large.” He can push up the faders, too, crank it out sharp and cutting yet always tuneful. (It’s Knuffke’s birthday. He’s serenaded and treated to a candle-in-a-rice-ball, which is the first of two Quinn’s traditions that I learn about tonight.) Knuffke holds one whole note after another, the rhythm section percolates and Bailey interjects on accordion. He grins but never smirks, keeping kitsch at arm’s length. It helps that Bailey’s look—Fu Manchu moustache, long sleeve flannel, professor glasses—reminds me of Mike Watt.

* * *

Bisio doesn’t say much from stage, but he’s funny, circuitous with his set ups. “I say stuff but I wish I didn’t. Here’s a song I wrote for Henry Grimes.[1] He’s a hero of mine. I wrote it for Henry Grimes when he was still dead. He got alive. It’s still ok to play it now. First there’ll be a drum solo. Then I’ll play a G.”

That’s one way to snare an audience. Following up with another stunning solo clinches the deal. I’ve never seen a human strike an object with greater force. I cringe watching him bash those bass strings, wondering how any callus could withstand the impact. I wait for blood to splatter across his white shirt. The outcome, the sound, seems secondary to the effort.

Glass is half full = mortality’s got nothing on this dude, not right now.

Glass is half empty = Sisyphus, the strings aren’t going anywhere, the pain’s going to come back.

I side with the former. Bisio – 1, The Void – 0.

* * *

The second Quinn’s tradition I learn about is Tubby Time. When the jazz is over and the night is winding down the sweet sounds of dub legend King Tubby waft from the PA. The contrast with Accortet says, Notice the change in music, time to leave. But the hypnotic music says, Relax, stay, work is hours away. There are drawbacks to Monday night shows.

---

[1] Grimes is a legendary bassist who vanished in the early ‘70s only to reemerge thirty-five years later and resume performing.

The Other Night at Quinn’s — Jason Kao Hwang & Satoshi Takeishi

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

Elapsed time – 0:00

James Keepnews, resident diplomat, steps to the stage and introduces the musicians, Jason Kao Hwang (violin, viola, electronics) and Satoshi Takeishi (drums, electronics).  Unlike most Monday nights at Quinn’s, which offer two sets of music, this will be a “special one-long-set night.”  This one long set will be one long song.

Takeishi wields mallets, blurring the distinction between snare drum and toms.  Hwang runs his violin through an effects box.  I look away and momentarily mistake it for a guitar.  Takeishi fades out and Hwang delves into deep slides.

Takeishi returns clicking his sticks against the rim of the kick drum, sliding them over the edges of the snare and toms.  It seems like a one-time series of motions, impossible to replicate.  But then he repeats the sequence two, three, five times.  It’s like watching milk spill in slow motion, rewind, and play again. 

* * *

Driving to the show I see the slightest sliver of a crescent moon.  It seems oddly familiar, that moon, smiling down from a bruised skyline that rests above the shadowed trees.  The excitement for tonight’s show has me assigning meaning to everything.  Feeling a bit like Neil from The Young Ones.

* * *

Elapsed time – 5:00

Takeishi reaches to the laptop on his left.  Despite a clear sight line I can’t connect his motions and his sounds—what he appears to be doing and what I’m hearing are at odds with each other.  Meanwhile Hwang is out of sight—I literally can’t see him.  I have no idea who’s producing what and yet the further they go, the more sense it makes, the more the sounds pull together.  Hwang trades a bow for plucking and Takeishi reemerges, laid back, then slowly pushing a kick/snare conversation to the forefront.

* * *             

I parked in front of the Beacon Wine Shoppe.  There’s always a spot there.  I think the “Condemned” sign posted on the front door helps.  I doubt that the “Hillybilly Carpet Cleaning” sign hurts.

There’s a group of firefighters at the corner and light spilling from the adjacent street.  It’s movie set-bright or, more likely, scene-of-a-fire bright.

“OK to park here?” I ask.

“Oh yeah, they’re tearing the building down tomorrow.  Finally letting us do some roof training.”               

* * *

I think of the moon lit sky again and realize where I’ve seen that image before: it’s the smile on the book jacket for The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

* * *

Geoff Dyer wrote that looking forward to a show is better than the actual show.  Anticipation eclipses experience.  He was writing about rock concerts.  What he said was this: “Nothing that happens subsequently can live up to those opening moments when all the power suddenly erupts, and you, emphatically, are no longer waiting for something to begin.  Pretty soon, though, you are waiting for it to end.”

* * *

Elapsed time – 10:00

Hwang is sweeping his bow wildly from side to side, violently hacking away at his instrument.  He bends this way, bops that.  He must be producing a tremendous amount of friction—how hot is the hair on that bow?—yet maintains his composure.

* * *

Dyer was writing about a Def Leppard concert, a purely commercial enterprise, a cash grab.  That’s fine.  No judgment.  (Not from someone whose E.L.O. collection is within arm’s reach.)  But it’s different.  It’s like eating at Burger King, the build up is based on the craving—the salt, the fat—and the consumption is quick, fleeting.  Then you’re left with regret or denial.

* * *

Today is Opening Day for the Mets.  My anticipation for the new season hasn’t hit fever pitch, but it’s rising.  It’ll only climb as the spring moves into summer.

First pitch is 1:10.  In between classes I check the score on-line.  The Mets put up a 3-0 lead against the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg.  By the time dismissal drags around the Mets have blown two leads and cling to a narrow 5-4 advantage with two outs in the ninth. 

The classroom empties and I follow the game pitch-by-pitch.  The Mets’ Bobby Parnell faces Denard Span.  Foul ball.  Ball.  Foul ball.  Ball.  Repeat until Span doubles in the tying run.  Minutes into the first game of the season and the roller coaster is already whipping me about. 

* * *

I’ve had experiences that match Dyer’s, events that were more enjoyable to think about than to live through.  None come to mind today.  Not the Mets game. Certainly not the madness that Hwang and Takeishi are conjuring. 

* * *

Elapsed time – 15:00 

For the first time, Hwang settles into a recognizable pattern.  It’s pleasing, though eerie.  The repetition suggests a movie, a quiet countryside shot that pulls back to reveal a car chase, demise imminent.

* * *

Leaving work I flip on the radio and scan for the Mets game.  I catch the score—Washington 9, New York 5—just before they cut to commercial.  Moments later there’s a couple arguing over whose burger has the crispier bacon.  Is this how we react in the face of tragedy?  The Mets are choking, have choked, blown their first chance of the new year and all we get are soggy pork products?  Poor form. 

* * *

Are the Mets a Burger King team?  Is following baseball a Burger King pursuit?  Different topics for a different day.

* * *

Elapsed time – 20:00

I’m lost in a strangely satisfying way; I can’t keep track of what’s transpiring.  Like a surveyor without a theodolite, I can’t monitor the vertical or horizontal planes.  I’m not sure how much orientation matters at the moment.

On the way home I listen to Hwang’s CD, Symphony of Souls.  It’s credited to a 40-piece orchestra billed as the Spontaneous River.  The name reminds me of a Mike Watt quote.  Speaking of an early Minutemen record he said, “They (the songs on The Punch Line) weren’t supposed to stand on their own.  They’re supposed to be part of this big river.”  Hwang and Takeishi sound nothing like the Minutemen.  The duo doesn’t duplicate the scale of the orchestra either, obviously, but it’s stunning how many of the dynamics they capture.

* * *

Elapsed time – 25:00

Takeishi taps away on his laptop (iPad?).  He samples and loops Hwang’s violin.  James Keepnews swoops in, excitedly sharing that this is real time sampling.  Meanwhile Takeishi picks up his sticks.  He solos, darting in and out, around the snare.  He uses his left foot to maintain a swing beat on hi-hat.  It’s a one-person dialogue: his drumming is out there, free, while his cymbal work is traditional.  A beautiful example of how complementary these styles can be.

* * *

A counter argument—one that supports Dyer’s point—is that Hwang and Takeishi’s performance is an extended, heightened sense of anticipation.  We’re stuck in a state of “What’s next?”, what’s coming up is greater than what is.  I don’t buy that, though.  This show, this piece, is so invigorating.  Every nerve ending seems open and aware.  What’s best is what’s now.

* * *

“Develop the film of your life/Right now” (“Vote for Me, Dummy”)

—Guided By Voices

* * *

Elapsed time – 30:00

Hwang returns to the wah wah sound.  Takeishi is right there every step of the way.   

A few years ago, watching the late Milwaukee band the Catholic Boys, my friend Pete said the band’s drummer played lead drums—not just rhythm, not just solos, but lead drums.  Takeishi has that.

* * *

Another counter argument: it’s a matter of tension vs. release.  The anticipation, the build up, is the tension.  The experience, the event, is the release.  Tonight’s session alters that.  The tension is in the experience, the event, and there’s no release in sight.  That’s what keeps it working.

* * *

Elapsed time – 35:00

There is a momentary nod to classical music, albeit a buzzing, swarming sound as Hwang dive bombs from the high end of his violin’s register to the low end.  After the show he says, “We generate wild mood swings.”

Even though I’m watching the clock, I’ve lost track of the passage of time.  I see the hands move on that enormous tire-size wall clock but the numbers don’t fully register.  They’re more like mile markers, numbers passing through my field of view but not carrying much meaning.

* * *

Elapsed time – 40:00

Enter the gong.  It’s a small gong, salad plate size.  Takeishi holds it while still playing with a mallet in each hand.  He bangs the gong against the other drums, drags it.  Forty minutes in and Takeishi is still pulling tricks out of his bag.

So is Hwang.  His sound rockets to eleven.  It’s piercing, too loud, ringing my ears.  It’s the first sign of excess but it works, bear trapping the audience’s attention.  There’s a burst of applause, mostly from the tables-in-back crowd.  The counter crowd is stunned, looking on but still.  Except for the guy two seats over who slowly shakes his head in disbelief.

* * *

When the music ends Keepnews takes the stage and rolls credits.  He names photographer Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh—whose work has quickly become a hallmark of these Monday night sessions—and me.  “We’re trying to make this a scene.”  It’s more declaration than plea. 

* * *

Elapsed time – 45:00

Hwang sets aside his bow and plucks again.  Takeishi runs the length of a drumstick along the edge of his ride cymbal.  It’s subtle but he manages to capture the sound with the mic mounted above his kit and sample it.  His ability to cast a narrow, targeted net is remarkable.  More like spearing, I suppose.

* * *

Elapsed time – 50:00

Takeishi switches to brushes.  Hwang to viola.  It sounds exactly like he’s playing backward.  Like an optical illusion, I can see his right hand move in one direction yet his sound moves in another, opposite direction.  I wish I’d paid attention in high school physics.

* * *

Elapsed time – 55:00

Hwang plays.  Then he pauses.  The show is nearly over.  I haven’t thought of it until now, haven’t wanted to the performance to end, but Hwang and Takeishi are clearly about to close.

* * *

Takeishi sets down his sticks and rests, watches.  Hwang finishes, slowly, quietly, with purpose, like gently closing the cover after the last page of a great novel. 

He pauses again, and it’s over.  Far better than expected.

 

The Other Night at Quinn’s – The Welf Dorr Unit

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

The centerpiece of the stage at Quinn’s is the lava lamp Christmas tree.  It’s tall and plastic and illuminated, lights slowly changing, rising and falling, undulating like a jellyfish.  The consensus is that it needs to stay up year round.  I’m not saying I want one at home, but here it belongs and there’s something about that tree that fits with the Welf Dorr unit.

Welf Dorr is part Johnny Carson, part Rick Wakeman.  He’s a jovial host, grinning beneath his pork pie hat, genuinely amused and motivated by those with whom he shares the spotlight.  He’s also fond of his effects, delay and phaser.  Watching him hold his alto sax with one hand, twiddle and modulate with the other, brings me back to my prog rock days. 

I heard something about the Welf Dorr Unit has me ready for sharp sounds, jagged sounds that jut out, get caught on anything that happens by.  I expect sounds that don’t leave an easy-to-follow path.  That will come later.  Right now Dorr and guitarist Dave Ross surf whole notes.  Ross is Dorr’s wingman.  Maybe co-pilot is more apt.  Ross has dozens of credits on his website.  He lists the numerous types of music he’s played over the years, among them punk and hardcore.  It’s a subtle distinction but it merits bonus points.  (Kind of like that line from The Blues Brothers: “We have both kinds of music, country and western.”)  Just to be clear, Ross is certainly more Doc Severinsen than Ed McMahon.  Together Dorr and Ross sustain ideas that ease against the grain of the rhythm section, awash in the sounds of those effects boxes.

Dorr breaks out a bass clarinet for the next number, “Dixie,” which increases the sonic distance between he and Ross and points the band in a different direction.  Drummer Joe Hertenstein swells on the cymbals, rising but not bursting.  Along with the traditional line up of cymbals—hi-hat, crash, ride—he’s added some unusual characters.  One is a 5” mini-cymbal mounted on his hi-hat stand.   Dangling from an unused rack tom mount is the other, the remains of a battered and torn (crash?) cymbal.  The thing looks like a chunk of shrapnel.  I don’t know how he avoids slicing himself every time his arms pass near it. 

***

I flash back to yesterday, when I took my daughter to Dia:Beacon.  It was her first museum visit.  She was amped up.  She wanted to draw everything she saw and write captions and copy down the artists’ names.  This was all her, no prodding—or even hoping, initially—on my part. 

I followed her lead most of the afternoon.  Until we came to Robert Smithson’s “Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis).”  That’s when I wanted to rush her along.  As the title implies it’s made of broken glass.  What the title leaves out is that the glass is laid out on the floor and piled high, a good foot, foot and a half, with an area of twenty by fifteen, just lying there.  It’s meticulously crafted and, no doubt, reflects ample deliberation.  But it’s still broken glass on the floor.  A trap ready to spring.  There’s no border, no barrier.  It’s you and the glass.  The late Smithson claimed “map.”  I say “menacing mound.”  It creeped me out.  Maggie maintained a level head.  She took her time, laughing and sketching.  She wrote, “Glass!  Glass!  Run away!”

I did my best not to urge her along—model patience, man, model patience!—but even when we moved on I kept looking back.  I knew the mass wasn’t going to mobilize.  I assumed that no one trip and fall.  Still, I looked back just to check.      

***

Hertenstein dodges tragedy time and again, avoids clashing with that cymbal.  He locks in with bassist Dmitry Ishenko.  I expect Dorr and Ross to follow suit, succumb to the rhythm section’s gravitational pull.  But they don’t.  I should know by now. 

“Dixie” gives way to “Sympaticus,” flows so smoothly that I’m unclear whether it’s one song or two.  If the first part of the set was “Songs That Echo,” then we’re now in the midst of “Songs That Swell.”  The rhythm section builds tension while Dorr and Ross resist, persist with their cough syrup ways.

Dorr holds for a bar here, two there.  He adjusts the effects boxes, though less often now.  Ross leans back and into the sound.  This is where he and Dorr dive in, right?  Not yet.  Instead they remain the relative calm at the center of the storm, reveling in the subtle, unresolved tension.  This could go wrong—easily, horribly.  But it’s less like a ballgame that ends in a tie and more like a short story's ambiguous ending; there’s work to do, things to sort out.  It’s a welcome process.

The next number is a different tale.  Dorr introduces it as a “free take on Mal Waldron’s ‘Left Alone.’”  Despite the tune’s keyboard origins this version belongs to Ross.  In short order he renders it a “Song That Rocks” ramping it up and sailing a sea of pyrotechnics, pulling the room together in “Holy crap!” awe.

Dorr smiles, laughs.  He looks for someone to revel with.  He turns to Ishenko but I think his eyes are closed.  Dorr scans the crowd, seeking a “Can you believe this?” connection.

Between songs Dorr introduces the band.  He lingers on Ishenko, and deservedly so; he’s a remarkable talent.  His style is easy going, from his right hand resting on the body of his bass to his eye glasses/ beard/Chaucer-thesis-brewing-in-the-back-of-the-brain appearance.  Some take life in stride.  Others, like Ishenko, do so standing still. 

“We thought he was Russian, but he’s Ukrainian.  We seriously thought of renaming the band Free Ukrainia.” 

(Too soon?  Is Dorr on pace to be the Gilbert Gottfried of the free jazz world?)

The band’s best comes last, in the second set.  (How often does that happen at Quinn’s, the first set paving the way for the second?  Onset and rhyme.  Set up and punch line.)  There are fewer effects in “Flowers for Albert,” more traction, more grit, less grease.  It’s a more conventional funk and it’s great.  Ross accents.  Hertenstein thumps a cowbell.  “Flowers” is treated to a slow, gradual landing, getting better as it downshifts, the music mixing with clinking pint glasses and laughter.

“Out Cry” offers a different kind of contrast.  Ishenko motors on.  Hertenstein swings.  They seemed headed for the conventional but Ross counters with an angular approach, launching shards of guitar Sonny Sharrock style.  The dude next to me simply says, “Wow.”

The Welf Dorr Unit brings a similar game plan to the closer, “Blood.”  Hertenstein places that menacing sword of Damocles of a cymbal on the end of a stick and spins it, twirls the damn thing.  It sounds cool, but I’m relieved when he tosses it to the floor and the band clicks into another funk tune.  Hertenstein and Ishenko outline.  Ross provides the details and Dorr finishes with the text features—title, photos, captions, etc.  Meanwhile the tree pulsates.  It’s another night at Quinn’s.

 

The Other Night at Quinn’s – Jay Rosen, Ted Daniel, Michael Marcus

By Mike Faloon | Photos by Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh / Studio MBK

Look close and you’ll notice that Ted Daniel plays his trumpet with the mouthpiece to the left, slightly off center.  (Though, ironically, this is not evident in the photo I chose above!) 

That’s exactly what I’m looking for.  That’s why I come here every chance I get: genuinely compelling off center music.

I was unusually wiped out at school today.  I could feel a haze by midday, a lack of clarity.  My next science lesson tumbleweeded.  (Bueller?  Bueller?)  I hit all the marks on my lesson plan.  The kids completed their tasks, but I was off.  I refocused during my next prep period pushed along by the promise of another show at Quinn’s. 

Having drummer Jay Rosen on the bill helped.  He plays in Trio X along with Joe McPhee and Dominic Duval.  McPhee and Duval played as a duo back in January.  After the show I overheard McPhee say, “We need to get our drummer up here.”  I can’t wait to catch Trio X at Quinn’s. 

In the meantime, the rest of tonight’s line up is intriguing, too. Daniel, on trumpet, and Michael Marcus on clarinet.  A brass and a reed.  That heightens my expectations, two lead instruments, presumably trading off ideas.  I’m hoping it’ll be like a conversation, overlapping dialogue, like Touch of Evil or Mamet.

***

I was in Easthampton, MA last weekend.  I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in ages.  He and his wife had recently moved to Boston.  Before that Detroit and Atlanta.  The biggest challenge of their nomadic travels was locating the local flavor in each town, “finding the weird,” as he put it; the people who are still exploring, reaching beyond the cineplex, who always seem to have a lead on a good read, a good slice, or a good record.

I mention Beacon.  He lights up.  He’s heard of it.  He asks if Beacon is like Northampton.  Later that night I have two similar conversations, only the comparisons are to Portland and Brooklyn.  They’ve heard of Dia:Beacon.  They’ve heard good things about the food.  I want to get music on that list.  I mention the jazz series.  Each time it elicits surprise, elevates their estimation.

***

It’s cold, again.  It’s a Monday.  It’s a diner.  Not an obvious set of factors for staging a successful music series yet here we all are.  That’s part and parcel of finding the weird, right, pushing past, through and/or around the obvious? 

Top-flight talent will do that.  Jay Rosen swings and pings while Ted Daniel and Michael Marcus exchange ideas out front.  Daniel and Marcus don’t front sell their tunes.  They don’t delve into backstories.  They dive in.  They’re in sync at the top of the tune, and then off they go.  Two compatible but divergent paths, a musical split screen.  They trade spotlight time, going back and forth between solos, but they’re at their best when playing simultaneously, polyrhythmic.  

But it’s not like a split screen, come to think of it.  It’s not two separate images that happen to be placed next to one another.  It’s one sound, along with Rosen’s contributions, densely packed with details.  It’s more like a wide angle shot, a long tracking shot like the opening to A Touch of Evil, there’s so much to take in.  We’re guided along the way, but given choices.  The pleasure is in deciding where to focus, what to tune into.

Marcus plants his feet and twists his torso.  Daniel is more about verticality, altering his angle.  One moment he’s a right angle, bent over, blasting at the stage.  The next he’s up and back, a reflex angle bursting upward.  Rosen is the kragle, pulling the proceedings together, working the snare, left hand catching each bounce, right working the rhythm. 

I luck into a great seat, arriving just as a couple vacates prime turf at the counter.  I can keep all three players in sight without moving much.  My neighbor to the left can, too, but he often chooses to look down or straight ahead.  In some ways he’s the fourth player in my sight line—(left to right) Daniel, neighbor, Rosen, Marcus.

From the side he looks like Peter Russo, Corey Stolls’ character on House of Cards.  He sees my notebook and introduces himself, brushing away my misguided guess work.  He used to be a writer.  Then “life got in the way.”  (That feels like a William Kennedy moment.)  He’s complimentary of the write-ups I’ve been posting.  Later in the conversation he adds that he disagrees with my take on Donald Fagen solo records (see Kenny Wessel, 3/4/14).  I appreciate the “nice jobs” that have been coming in, but the “here’s where you’re wrong”s lead to better conversations. 

                                                                      ***

Rosen concludes a solo flowing back and forth between the toms and snare.  He works the cymbals for a couple of bars then he seamlessly brings the band back.  It’s such a smooth transition that we, the counter crowd, forgot the applause break.  Over my shoulder I hear someone in back clap.  I assume that the people seated past the kitchen are here more for the talk than the tunes.  It’s reassuring to be set straight.

Daniel breaks out a mute for the next number.  Muted trumpet goes even better with clarinet.  Plus, there’s the sight of him manipulating that metal disc, a purely—delightfully—analog way of the whole thing.  The dam bursts on the final number.  Right out of the gates the trio is louder and faster.  It’s an abrupt change.  It’s also the shortest song of the night, and it’s all over too soon.

On my way out I’m introduced to Jay Rosen.  He’s hunched over a bowl of chili.  Even though he’s wearing the same floral print shirt from the show, seeing him now—post-gig—is like seeing a ballplayer out of uniform, in his civilians. 

“Oh hey, nice to meet you,” he says, “did you like the music?”  His curiosity seems genuine.  He’s been playing out for nearly 25 years, recorded dozens of records, played more shows than I’ll ever count and he’s still approachable.  Daniel and Marcus exude this, too.  When I ask them about a CD they’re selling, Marcus says, “Unfortunately, that one’s expensive.”  I notice it’s on a German label, which bumps up my estimate.  Twenty-five to thirty, I’m guessing.  “Fifteen,” he says. 

Later, as I’m trying to make sense of the trio’s music, I trade messages with Rosen.  I inquire about the names of the songs they play at Quinn’s.  Rosen says they were completely improvised.  He’ll know more about titles after he hears a recording, which brings new meaning to the phrase “to be named later.”

                                                                      ***

I’m awake and alert as I step onto Main Street, refueled by the weird.  Too bad my class isn’t here.  I’m ready to try that science lesson again.