I Guess You Can Go Home Again...AGING AND PLAYING WITH RAS MOSHE & CO UP IN BEACON NY

I Guess You Can Go Home Again.....AGING AND PLAYING WITH RAS MOSHE & CO UP IN BEACON NY

This past weekend, the one that closed off June, took me back through one of the many stops encountered on life's journey. Three and a half years after moving back to Brooklyn from the hip Hudson Valley town of Beacon NY, I had a gig up there and it was a memorable, welcome return. Wonderfully ironic though was that the gig was with Ras Moshe---the guy that probably more than anyone else is a testament to my activities since coming back to NYC. I was very pleased when Ras asked me to be a part of this performance as I had not been to back Beacon, the place my lovely wife and partner Laurie Towers and I called home from 2005 till 2010. Its a wonderful little city at the bottom of Dutchess County, overlooking the Hudson River. Beacon can count the arts among its primary tourist attractions and in the 5 years we lived up there, we performed in many settings but due to the preponderance of folk and new acoustic music, I rarely had the chance to play in the free jazz/new music genre I had engaged in during most of my adult life.  We enjoyed ourselves up there playing in an expansive protest song duo, the Flames of Discontent, which offered up reconstructions of older songs of revolution, work, life and peace as played through Laurie's powerful, sinewy lead electric bass and I stood as front man. While I never saw myself as a lead singer, the situation brought out my best Pete Seeger/Phil Ochs vocal explorations, of course tainted with the shout of post-Punk and always inspired by the modernist harmonies and rhythmic liberation that has been my hallmark. The Flames, being a duet in this folkie town, saw me primarily playing banjo or electric banjo to accompany my singing, only getting to double on percussion at points. But the music---of Hanns Elser and Bertolt Brecht, of Phil Ochs, of Woody Guthrie, of Leadbelly, of the IWW, of the Spanish Civil War was inspiration enough to continue on. We recorded two CDs in that period, and performed our "novo protest" music in all of the cooler locales in the region. We played for several of the annual West Point Peace Rallies, played at festivals, performed "Joe Hill" and "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore", our 'hit "Viva La Quince Brigade" as well as originals live on the air on WDST-FM (Radio Woodstock), college stations and in a remote WBAI-FM broadcast from the Hudson River Revival fest. We shared the stage several times with Those were some good times.

In August 2009 I lost my day job and found out just how painful it is to be in a location like that with no prospects. Struggling for months, we decided to move back to Brooklyn just after ringing in 2010. I had missed NYC the entire time we were away, lovely as the Hudson Valley is, so this all seemed to be a part of the trip life takes us on. Very soon after I got back, I began to reach out to old contacts, get life back on track and then transferred my Dissident Arts Festival, which began in Beacon in '06, to the West Village's Brecht Forum. Playing jazz and new music came back naturally and my musical relationship and friendship with Ras Moshe developed soon after. We have played together in any number of Moshe-led trios, quartets and large ensembles and he is also a member of the Red Microphone. Working with Ras puts me at the very top of my game. Intensely challenging free improvisations guided by not only the path of the music but Ras' well planned vision of it. With hand cues and facial expressions, he shapes the sound, offering solo statements, points of duo and trio and allows the performers' natural abilities speak for themselves, while never losing sight of his arrangements. Truly, this seems to be the next logical step in new music.

ON FRIDAY JUNE 28, I TURNED 51 YEARS OLD. I always say that birthdays are bourgeois and insist on keeping it light, even when Laurie wants to make a big deal of it all. I spent most of the day preparing for the next day's gig. I found enough time in the day to take my father out for a long lunch though. As I crossed over into my second half-century, he had turned 84 (yes we share a birthday!), so I knew it was an important day for him, even more than I. I picked Dad up and we drove into his old neighborhood, what he used to call "south Brooklyn" but is actually in the northern end of the borough. He was raised on Present Street between 3rd and 4th aves. When I was a kid and we would go there to visit my paternal grands, most people thought of this section as no-man's-land. Filled with factories, empty lots, warehouses, a few stores and a collection of poor and working class people hanging on for dear life as the drug trade invaded the city. My father, a Great Depression baby, says that his block was always populated by the working poor, but I guess you can only use that description as long as there are jobs. Much of this area, for decades, was populated by poor who wished to be working. Odd that it is just off of the edge of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Park Slope. Well, somehow in the past few years, no-man's-land became "Gowanus" and the developers who re-named it created a hip community that wealthy New Yorkers are now fighting to buy condos in. The strip of 4th ave, once a dying stretch from Sunset Park to Downtown, is now filled with rows and rows of tall luxury buildings, with bistros and high-end food shops taking the place of rusted gates and tire shops. The skyscraper-like buildings seem to have been placed over the small apartment houses built up nearly a century ago over local stores....just encompassed them fully and wiped out any memory of what had been.

"My God----wow! When did this happen??". Dad asked incredulously as we drove from Bensonhurst to his old block. "SO much change; how could it be? Who could afford this?", he asked, though recognizing the changed demographic in the passersby strolling along the avenue. "Dad", I asked, "my question is: where do all the poor people go when a neighborhood becomes gentrified like this?". We sat quietly as we drove down, looking over the gleaming luxury buildings, Village-like green grocers, gourmet food shops and Euro-looking restaurants. We visited President Street. The family had sold the house in 1975 after my grandmother, by then a widow, could no longer live on her own. My father had rarely looked down his old street since then, so we were happy to see that his old house still stood there, and in very nice shape. Not replaced by a condo building--happily--but respectably kept up in view of the shining structures up on the avenue. We had lunch at a nice Americana restaurant a block over. "This used to be the college diner" he told me, "and all of the rackets guys hung out here. This was a tough neighborhood, so many of my friends got involved with them", he said, pushing his nose to the side, giving off an old silent symbol of the Mafia. "I almost had a job on the water front, a member of the Longshoreman's union. I never followed up.....", he said, looking outward, imagining earlier times and struggles.

SO ON SATURDAY THE 29TH, Laurie and I pointed the car north and took off for Beacon. Just outside of the Bronx I came to realize that I had literally replaced all of my knowledge of the Hudson Valley with NYC travel directions.  Damn---I couldn't recall the route once we got closer, and I fumbled around, almost missing the entry to the Taconic, and then once out onto the more local roads, I grew foggier still. A sign of getting older or just too much info to contain....? We checked into a lovely hotel nearby (Laurie wanted it to be perfect so this room was really a duplex suite!) and then had to get over to the gig for set-up and sound check. The performance was at the Howland Cultural Center, an amazing space, "the jewel of Beacon", where I had played many times before; this was the birthplace of the Dissident Arts Fest. I saw the other guys there and we got my vibes and bells and percussives out of the car. Kibitzing about jazz, politics and life as we set up, Laurie had the chance to get out and catch up with another dear friend, Gwen Laster (a monstrously gifted violinist) as we launched into sound check.  Ras entered just after me, waving and beaming, carrying his horn and flute and the collection of bells he likes to add to the mix. He walked in with drummer Andrew Drury, with several drum cases on his shoulders, long ponytail draped over them. At the piano already, recalling his piano bar days, was a smiling Chris Forbes. And guitarist James Keepnews, who'd set up the entire series this gig was a part of---Change of the Century---was adjusting his amp and offering up excited conversation. The Howland's main sound engineer, Thom Joyce, is also a musician and became the most enthusiastic person in the room as we dug into it. The room has amazing natural acoustics and add to that the skill of someone like Thom and you can imagine that the band sounded quite amazing. We were good to go. Laurie took me out to a birthday dinner and we had the chance to look over Beacon. Much had changed in three or so years---and there were new shops and galleries and best of all new performance spaces. Wow, we were so glad for the wonderful folks of this little city we still held near to our hearts. So glad to see that the town, after struggling through the financial downturn, had moved upward and taken its residents with it. The mix of peoples, faces, shades and hues, remained as always. A welcome return indeed.
 
THE GIG BEGAN at around 8PM, with no prior discussion on what we would be doing aside from the idea of two 45 minute sets. After being introduced to the appreciative Howland crowd, Ras turned to us and said "okay, just saxophone and drums to open up" and Andrew kicked out a roving, timeless rhythm which rolled over bar lines and time signatures, bouncing and dancing through Ras' wandering, melodious explorations. As it built up and cooked, the rest of us began to enter slowly, adding touches, sounds, chordal figures here or there, small accents, pepper, creating this piece from the ground up. Before long we were burning and the house vibrated with sound and excitement. The texture grew thick and just as the volume seemed to reach its apex, we took it down. As always, Ras offers up generous solo time for the members and also knows how to structure this in a way to feature that individual's sound. My own hands felt electrified and though I could feel my fingers getting sore at some points, I ignored the pain as the music took me well past it. I think we played two pieces in that first set,but its safe to say that this all felt like a symphonic exploration with multiple movements, even with a break in the middle.

For this performance, I focused on vibes as I usually do, tapping into the influence of Bobby Hutcherson with Dolphy whenever possible; there is a rich history of the vibraphone in new and exploratory jazz and it compels me every time. What an amazing legacy to be a part of. In addtion to my trusty Muuser vibe, I also also had orchestra bells, and two cymbal stands with additional attachments that allows me to incorporate wind chimes, Celtic bell, Alu-bell, various cymbals and metals to add shimmer as needed, as well as small percussives. The Moshe units require new and exciting uses of standard instruments and also a wide palette of sound. Ras' Coltrane-ish improvisation reach into the stratosphere when not tunefully lamenting or soaring to new heights, Chris' piano is a universe of sound and emotion (ranging from lush harmonious chording and melodic flows to absolute eruptions), James' electric guitar is often sound-painting with effects pedals that open up the spectrum, and Andrew is a one-of-a-kind drummer who has incorporated plumbing supplies, bevels, flower pots, tubes, and a large metal sheet into his kit. He uses a bow almost as skillfully as if he'd had violin training and has also discovered a technique to blow through some of the metal tubes right into the drum heads and down into the heart of the instrument. This mix brings howls and whale sounds to the various metals. But his drumming in and of itself is orchestral and driving in unique, fiery ways.

This was the first time this band had ever played together though each of us have worked together in different settings. On this night, the sonic journey was as exciting and new to us as I would hope anyone in the audience experienced it. I switched mallets several times as the volume and texture would change and moved around to the orch bells and other percussives as the music demanded it. It was cool in the house but, like the others, had worked up a major sweat that felt cleansing, as if I'd spent time contemplating life in a Native sweat lodge. The music can do that to you.

We packed up and entered into the dark Hudson Valley night, breathing deep.....

INTERVIEW: John Pietaro interviewed by "Levure Litteraire" magazine (Europe)

Levure littéraire  European arts magazine

INTERVIEW: JOHN PIETARO (USA)

by Erika Dagnino (Italia)

ED: John Pietaro is a New York activist musician. He plays vibraphone, xylophone, drumkit, frame drums, hand drums, percussion, voice. He has performed with artists including Alan Ginsberg, Karl Berger, Fred Ho, Arturo O’Farril, Salim Washington, John Zorn, Pete Seeger, Amina Baraka, Blaise Siwula, Ras Moshe, Cheryl Pyle, Elodie Lauten, Carsten Radke, Rudresh Mahanthapa, and many more. Pietaro directs the ensembles RADIO NOIR (http://www.reverbnation.com/radionoir) , THE DISSIDENT ARTS ORCHESTRA, and THE RED MICROPHONE, a quartet of revolutionary musicians. He also performs with KARL BERGERS IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA and free-lances in NYC. He is the founder of THE DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL and has spoken on arts activism at Left Forum and other venues. Pietaro writes for Z Magazine and many other progressive journals and wrote a chapter for the Harvey Pekar/Paul Buhle book SDS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY (2007 Hill and Wang). He is currently writing an extensive history of protest arts and a book about the No Wave movement, and completed a volume of contemporary proletarian fiction. 

Here we talk with Pietaro about what the Dissident  Arts Festival represents in a collective situation. We look at this in the current struggle for freedom of the individual even within the goal of building a network of progressive forces. There is the need to value one’s  individual sensibility and reality and dreams ( that of course are part of reality) in a world that seems to be going downward – and wants to keep to the people in the lowest common denominator , where the individual seems to be nonexistent and sometimes the society seems to become a system to put each one at a standard level to make the characteristic of each person banal in the name of homologation.

JP: I first conceived of the idea for the Dissident Arts Festival in 2006, after enduring years of the Bush presidency and dealing with the fallout of his right-wing policies. By day I work as a labor organizer, so I saw the effects of this conservative, anti-worker administration close-up. The National Labor Relations Board had been decimated by this regime and he and other conservatives were doing their best to defame unions whenever possible. The wealthy were getting tax breaks as the middle- and working-class were being cast aside. Bush was an incompetent, a failed businessman who openly befriended the kings of corporate America—the very force that had been greedily built up by the right-wing and were especially supported in those Bush years.  We were engaged in an unlawful war, citizens were being spied on, social service programs were being slashed, women’s rights were being threatened, the poor were vilified and there was a terrible divisiveness throughout the country. As an artist of conscience as well as a Leftist, I recognized the need to speak up through radical creativity. I reached out to a variety of musicians as well as poets and guest speakers to create that first Festival . At the time many topical singers were involved, invoking the great body of work of the folk-protest movement, but jazz musicians were also present as were rock balladeers. Over the years the scope of the Festival has gone increasingly avant garde and while there were still some sing-songwriters involved this year, most of the artists were those who hold a presence in the free jazz and new music world. The 2012 Festival was truly the best one yet and it occurred in two venues, one in Greenwich Village and one in Brooklyn. Our reach grows further and the goal is to unify more and more artists—as well as audience members—under a collective umbrella of radical music.

ED: Here it can be interesting to connect and recall one of the latest interviews, in 1975, of the Italian intellectual, writer and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini who talked about his film taken from the Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, but set during the Republic of Salò in 1944-1945.

In some points of the interview the Italian filmmaker declared that “today’s ideal is consumerism” – there he was talking about Italy  in particular – “there is an enormous group extending from Milano to Bologna, it includes Rome and spreads to the South. It is an homologating civilization that make everything the same. So it is clear that the barriers fall that small group disband….a consumer ideology, you don’t…instead of having a flag, the clothes they wear are their flag. Some of the means and some of the external phenomenal have changed but in practice, it is a depauperation of individuality which is disguised through its valorization. […] ‘Permissive’ societies permit a few things, and only those things can be done.[..] Today 1975 it is a power that manipulates the bodies in a horrible way, it has nothing to envy to of Himmler’s or Hitler’s manipulation. It manipulates them , transforming their conscience, in the worst way, establishing new values which are alienating and false. The values of consumerism, which accomplish what Marx called genocide of the living, real, previous cultures. […] ‘I lower my head in the name of God’ is already a great phrase. While now, the consumer does not even know he lowers his head, to the contrary he stupidly believes he has not lowered it and that he has won his rights.[…]”.

Can you tell us some thoughts about these themes?

 John Pietaro, frame drum, with Karl Berger’s Quartet: Karl Berger, piano, Ingrid Sertso, voice, Ken Filiano, bass. Dissident Arts Festival 2012, Brecht Forum NYC (Photo by Cheryl Pyle)

JP: Sadly, it is often the goal of any government to secure some kind of control over its citizenry. Sometimes this is done by brute, oppressive force as in fascism. Other times it is done via a bastardization of a unifying philosophy: Stalin manipulated Marxism for his own sense of glory and gain. In the USA we have seem a homogenization of the populace at various points and through various means. The dictates of the fashion industry are a seemingly benign arm of conformism but how the fashion mogul would love to have everyone in their clothing! Advertising pushes us, pulls us and can become a background drone that can be inescapable. Here in the very bowels of capitalism, it is easy to recognize the power of the wealthiest corporate leaders and their sway on the public. Sometimes we are unable to purchase products the industry machine has forcibly made unavailable, sometimes we are tricked into making the purchase the corporate powers guide us to. These factors can and do lead to a rather faceless population, one devoid of a real sense of self and a thorough course of development. But even here in a nation with an intact Bill of Rights we have seen points where the manipulation, the coercion of a power goes much further. Usually those times have been in the shadow of an outside threat that a government can opportunistically magnify in order to frighten people into a willing homogenization. The best example in the USA would have to be in the late 1940s – ‘50s Red Scare—which actually lasted into the 1970s and was actually reinvented by Ronald Reagan’s Administration in the 1980s. But in those high years of the Cold War, American citizens were investigated by agents of the government, blacklisted, terrorized and humiliated. It was an age of fear and conformity and false patriotism (which begat nationalism and xenophobia) under the guise of national security. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the Senate Sub-Committee on UnAmerican Activities (where McCarthy became the rising star) as well as smaller, local governmental committees,  tried artists, intellectuals, teachers , municipal employees and union leaders in public hearings in order to break their organizations and means of communication. This was the boldest example of in American history one could think of and the tactics of these bodies was dangerously close to the methods of the Nazis.

ED: To keep here, for these  thoughts we are talking about, the line of his declarations, “[..]I think that no artist in any society is free. Being crushed by the normality and by the mediocrity of any society in which he lives, the artist is a living contestation. He always represents the contrary of that idea that every man in every society has of himself. In my opinion, a minimum, perhaps immeasurable, margin of freedom is always there. I can’t say to what point this is , or is not freedom. But certainly , something that escapes the mathematical logic of mass culture, for the time being. [..]”.

JP: Well, Bertolt Brecht also said that the artist is the ultimate whore. We sell off pieces of ourselves in order to eat and we almost always compromise our values in doing so. And John Reed argued that without dissent, there can be no radical democratic movement. We as artists get to speak out in a manner that others cannot. Even musicians who dedicate their career to commercial music, poets who write greeting cards for a living, visual artists who spend their days painting still-lifes to be hung in hotel rooms, we cannot lose the inner artist, the force within us that has allowed us to create in the first place. Like many, I have a day job but the music is in my head at all times and every night I can go home and play music, perform for the public, compose, go to jam sessions. This is something bigger than the individual yet it is purely of the individual as a means of expression. How does the rest of the world do it? How can they go home from their jobs and watch the ball game on TV, drink a beer and go to bed? The freedom is within us and we must constantly embrace it so that our art can be whole, so that we can produce an inspired kind of creativity that can enlighten others.

ED: Recently Pietaro has been working on a new project with local professional musicians in NYC and also from other countries. Can you talk us about the name ‘Radical Arts Front’ and what a collective like ‘Radical Arts Front’ wants to be?

JP : Just to clarify, a front in Left politics is not really with reference to a war zone: think of the United Front, the gathering of Left activists in the early 30s all in opposition to fascism. This collective allowed them to tear down the walls that separated communists, socialists, Trotskyists. Later it expanded to the Popular Front which included social democrats and liberals too. My idea for the collective is just that—a gathering of experimental, free jazz, new music, avant garde musicians who have strong convictions about a people’s movement, about equality, peace, workers’ rights, ecology and other progressive issues. Yes, many of us will be socialists in general, some Marxists, some engaged in a variety of Left parties and organizations—but others will be more general activists who have varying degrees of progressive thinking. This is why we are standing as a united front, albeit one united as much by our drive toward an advanced art as advanced socio-political philosophy

The October Jazz Revolution (October 20, 2012), a concert featuring some of the most revolutionary musicians in New York now, will be the first official event under the banner of the collective. And then one week later, there is a performance of the Dissident Arts Orchestra, playing a live improvised score for the German Expressionist film ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’.

I am not building a collective that will necessarily engage in meetings or require dues of any kind, it will serve as a resource for each musician involved. A collective such as this would enable us to seek opportunities, to have a list of musicians from which to draw from for gigs, quick access to referrals for gigs that may come up (especially if they are directly tied into social justice movements), and more than anything else, a banner under which we might be able to work, a brand which will help with public relations and outreach. My plan, if we have enough interest, is to seek out not-for-profit status and use it to seek out grants for concerts under this banner—-because the goal for me has always been to be able to pay musicians for events I organize. This will not only inspire more participation but growth of the entire concept of an artist-driven organization which reaches into issues beyond art’s sake. The big difference between what I am seeking to build and earlier protest music organizations is that those (such as People’s Songs) were usually comprised of folksingers. This collective will focus only on experimental, free jazz, new music performers/improvisers/composers who hold Left philosophies and engage in activism of any degree. Some may seek only a more defined kind of revolutionary activism, others may not wish to be associated with any kind of radical organization and most will fit somewhere in between. Whichever path the collective’s members choose, it would be great to be able to engage in this together and of course in concert with existing Left artists organizations such as Scientific Soul Sessions, Occupy Music and the like. As musicians of conscience, we all have a lot to consider.

Ultimately I would love to see this collective become a means to make funding available for a series of events that seek to bridge progressive and radical politics to forward-looking music. If you see yourself as an activist in any way, particularly as it applies to your music, do you also see the strength in a unified action? Events such as my Dissident Arts Festival need to grow, but I would like this umbrella to expand and help to produce a wide variety of concerts. A familiar banner over many of our events can allow us to attract more attention and increase not only our audience as well as our radical message. The politics are not bound by a particular school or philosophy, but suffice to say that the outlook is Left: ranging from outright revolutionary to general progressive and in every case, an organization to celebrate individual expression as well as a collective sensibility. For more information please visit my website:

http://www.DissidentArts.com


 

John Pietaro, drumkit, performing at the Shrine, NYC, August 2012 (photo by Barbara Siwula)

***

For contact and further  information

www.DissidentArts.com
http://soundcloud.com/leftmus
http://TheCulturalWorker.blogspot.com


 Pietaro’s Discography

Recent Efforts:
-CD:  'The Red Microphone Speaks!' by the Red Microphone (2013)

-The songs  »L’Internationale Redux » and « Brecht Breakdown » by the Red Microphone (recorded in October 2012)
-The EP ‘The Lost Broadcast’ (2011) by Radio NOIR.
- His protest song ensemble the Flames of Discontent recorded two full CDs: ‘I Dreamed I Heard Joe Hill Last Night….A Century of IWW Songs’ (2005) and ‘Revenge of the Atom Spies’ (2007)

Pietaro’s Bibliography
-Numerous cultural articles and reviews in Z Magazine, the People’s World, Political Affairs, and other Left periodicals including pieces in the Nation, the Industrial Worker and others (1999-present).
-STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY: A GRAPHIC HISTORY  by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle (Hill & Wang, 2007): He wrote the chapter « I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore: Phil Ochs and SDS »
-NIGHT PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES OF WORKING NEW YORK (2011, short stories of contemporary proletarian fiction, unpublished)
-Current unfinished projects include the book THE CULTURAL WORKERS: a history of protest arts in the USA, 1900-Today

____________________________________________

Reporter: ERIKA DAGNINO

'In the Midst of Motion, Per Chance to Inspire' -Dedicated to Uncle Mike Contardo, 1948-2013

In the Midst of Motion, Per Chance to Inspire

Dedicated to Uncle Mike Contardo, 1948-2013

There was this house, this two-story, multi-generational house in Bensonhurst. It was one house that contained two households, two nuclear families, but inextricably interwoven, and it vibrated with the intense sights and sounds and scents of cliché working-class Italian American life. For the uninitiated amongst you that translates as LOUD.

The doors in this house were always open, between floors, among rooms, and the voices coming in and out, over and under, never ceased. Like merging traffic, they rumbled on, leaking through walls and levels, a Technicolor commentary at every dynamic level. Grandmotherly drama and grandfatherly cantankerousness, mother’s exasperation and father’s street humor; the ongoing shouts and stomps of us, the children in this house: me, my older brother James, and then a few years later, brother Joe --who was in training from the start to seek out still newer means to stretch the boundaries of volume. And somehow in the midst of all of this motion …there was Uncle Mike. 

Without even really trying, in his own learned, welcoming manner, he made the noise go away. When I was little, when Mike was still living in this family home, I would visit with him in his room often. It was a treat, like a wonderland in there with countless model airplanes and ships, expertly put together and artistically painted, right down to the features on the miniature passengers aboard. A few of the model planes were suspended from the ceiling for realism and he also had metal planes with moveable parts that were absolutely cool to me. On the shelves where many of the models stood, he also had books---books that he actually read! There was also more than one baseball under glass, signed by teams’ members that seemed like they were a hundred years old to me. Next to the baseballs were model figures of some hero players: Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra and more. I don’t think Mike was ever much for sports---he was the arts guy in our family and I felt a real connection to that. I am sure that the sporting paraphernalia were gifts, probably from my grandfather, but he had them out for all to see along with other keepsakes and novelties on display.

There were superhero comic books, Mad magazines and monster magazines hanging around; enjoyment of the fantastic, the suspenseful and the wildest of  imaginations was something else we both always enjoyed, and something else that Mike welcomed me to become a part of---he always loved a good creature feature and so do I still.

On the walls of his room were portraits of JFK, who’d been a real hero to Mike as a young man. He also had ‘60s-ish posters, and a framed original sketch or two. And I can still remember his mirror, standing over the dresser, with stickers from Kingsborough Community College exhibited, keeping watching over his metal comb and brush set (the military kind), some rosary beads and a change cup. And of course my reflection, the one I was sure lingered in there even after I’d gone back upstairs. His room also contained a cabinet with Mike’s record collection secured inside, a most prized item, the majority of which he maintained through the decades, right up until today. And that brings us to music….

Due to a couple of years of compromised health in his own young life, Mike had engaged thoroughly in the arts: drawing, painting, writing, but none of these pursuits moved him more than music. He would tell me years later that when he turned 11 he’d found an old pair of bongos in the house and listened to the latest Chubby Checker records and drummed along on them with a pair of sticks, possibly something he’d liberated from a Chinese restaurant. Playing a simple Twist rhythm across these old bongos had moved him so, driven him beyond the shy kid who’d spent some summers indoors---and also got him singing. Ultimately he began tapping along to every song that came across his record player, the radio or the family hi-fi. Everyone who knew Mike over the years can tell you that he couldn’t sit still when a good song was on in the background. His fingers were dancing with his leftie lead in a rock-n-roll beat. But he could also get that enthusiastic when nothing was on in the background—he only needed to have a song going around his head…and he usually did. Mike would drum along on table tops with fingers, or an ankle crossed over his knee, or on his thigh with a pair of drumsticks or on any surface in arm’s reach, throw his head back and offer up a bit of the phantom verse in his best rock-n-roll tenor…

Drumming was so much a part of his inner pulse that, when he was 14,  Mike got my grandparents to buy him a drumkit which he kept set up in the basement. In my earliest memories, he was proudly seated up high behind a gorgeous aquamarine sparkle set of Premier drums (English made!) with glowing Zildjian cymbals. Nothing could look more compelling to me, especially when he was down there rehearsing with his band---one that always included his dearest friend, Buddy, on bass. When the band was playing, you could feel it throughout the house and in warm weather when everyone’s windows were open, they serenaded the block. How majestic! As a child I watched and listened and decided immediately that I wanted to---needed to---become a musician. I can still recall the tightness in my abdomen and the slight breathlessness I got as he kicked out the rhythm. The community of people around him, both band-mates and friends was so welcoming. These folks were different than those in my immediate purview as a kid---they were artists, hippies, biker-types and other renegades, so many wonderful examples of that generation. Exposure to a few of these summer-of-love types fueled my own Left-wing philosophy and activism. But there was also so much laughter and fun and a real sense of commitment. Theresa was the heart of this wider group and I have fond memories of her limitless affection of us scruffy little kids running around during band practice. 

After Mike and Theresa married and moved into an apartment of their own, his old room seemed far too empty and the house somehow too roomy. The music had stopped---at least for a few years. It was in my fourteenth year that I pushed MY parents to let me get a drumkit. Mike was there to advocate for this and then accompanied me on a trip to buy some second hand drums and helped me to set them up, taught me how to tune them and offered some basic tutelage as well. My own journey would ultimately take me to formal training and I became a jazz percussionist, but Mike always offered an enthusiastic response to whatever I was doing. We never stopped talking about drums and drumming and his knowledge of music history was vast. It mattered not that he was a self-taught player, he maintained an encyclopedic knowledge of all of the great studio musicians, both here and in the UK, which cuts they’d played on and how this band or that had splintered off to form this one and how one school of rock had progressed into another, and could site the best recorded examples too!

In more recent years he’d also taken to collecting guitars---and the basement of Mike and Theresa’s house came to be akin to a trip through the Gibson warehouse. You need a flashlight and tour-guide to find your way out of the guitar forest. When he got into something, he became an authority on it. He never missed a beat. 

Mike’s hunger for knowledge never confined itself to music---he was a fountain of information about film, theatre, politics and of course the world’s history. I always gravitated to these subjects too and over the decades we had much to talk about. I am sorry I never got to see one of his lectures, but I think I get the idea. He could turn any basic description into a thesis and leapt into the role of orator at any given chance. My wife Laurie would be the first to tell you that this is not one of her favorite aspects of my personality…perhaps we can blame Mike for that too.  

My uncle was the Family Intellectual and radical. He ushered in the roots of every artistic pursuit I ever had and my drive toward dissent. Even when we didn’t get to speak for stretches, we always caught up and shared. Life moves along quickly, far too quickly, but as an adult I began to realize that Mike and I were actually quite close in age and really interacted more the way cousins would, peers, rather than uncle and nephew. But of course even with all of the depth of conversation Mike’s acerbic humor, tendency toward satire and imitations, kept it light and enjoyable. He loved riffing with jokes flying back and forth----there is no real attempt at holding court without being entertaining. And that influence stays with me too. 

These memories of Mike will carry me through these days of his immediate loss and allow me to reflect on him later, and as I move forward through my own life each time I set up my vibes or drums for a gig, every time I write an article or I doodle in the margins of a page, or attend a protest rally or tell a joke or spin a yarn, he will always be within reach. 

Because Mike just cannot give up a good audience. Because I still need to know he is there.

-John Pietaro, June 20, 2013

 John & Laurie with Mike and Theresa Contardo, Aug 2009, 'Heroes of Woodstock' concert, Bethel Woods, Bethel NY

Performance review: BERN NIX QUARTET and STEVE DALACHINSKY/CONNIE CROTHERS DUET VISION FESTIVAL

BERN NIX QUARTET and STEVE DALACHINSKY/CONNIE CROTHERS DUET

VISION FESTIVAL

ROULETTE, BROOKLYN NY, JUNE 14, 2013

Concert review by JOHN PIETARO

While the Vision Festival stands out as perhaps the preeminent vehicle for experimental, improvisation-based musics in the nation, it has also been controversial in its dogged pursuit of star-status performers that are can draw large audiences. Sad that the scheduling continues to make lesser-known performers feel closed out but one cannot deny that the organizers know how to program concerts that never fail to blow the roof off of the house. This year’s Festival was packed with brilliance but time constraints allowed me to choose but part of one evening and so, as legendary harmolodic guitarist Bern Nix has finally been called to the Vision stage, I couldn’t miss this one. Happily, the noted poet Steve Dalachinsky, a welcome mainstay of Vision from the start, had the opening set of the evening, one he performed with long-time jazz pianist Connie Crothers. This pairing of spoken word/piano and guitar-based combo appeared to be opposing forces initially but the evidence was in quickly, proclaiming that this was another Vision Festival bit of programming genius…

STEVE DALACHINSKY stepped forward and, positioning the mic around his cherub-like smile, warned the audience, “I am hungry, thirsty and nervous—so if this doesn’t work out as planned, I already have my excuse in”, but Dalachinsky never had reason to make use of this disclaimer. Embarking upon a solo statement of verse initially, he was joined by CONNIE CROTHERS’ probing, compelling piano only as the second piece developed. The musical landscape Crothers provided offered jarring 20^th century runs which almost leapt from nowhere yet made so much sense to Dalachinsky’s often surrealistic strings of logic. The poet pounced upon and danced around his own verse, seemingly davoning over the microphone, infusing stutters, repetition, vocalization and moments of Brooklynism as needed.  

The stories within Dalachinsky’s poetry are gifted with a loosening of association, at once flowing, staccato, urgent, breathless and fearless. A sense of improvisation pervaded all, no matter that the lines were being read from a page. It is HOW they were read that brought the piece into the next realm, the manner in which the words tangled and tangoed with the music being created of the moment. The overall effect was a tapestry of sound embedded in Crothers piano and the liberated harmony of the eras of the modern and post-modern. But the pianist effortlessly slipped into an expansive face of jazz just to pull us all back into it, as Dalachinsky masterfully worked a sentence, propelling it into the space above them and beyond the confines of the venue.

THE BERN NIX QUARTET came onto the stage of Roulette as the house lights were up high and the audience was stretching between acts. Before the MC had the chance to announce them, sound check blurred into performance, and the warm yet almost percussive sound of BERN NIX’s guitar permeated the room. This subtle, circling chord progression was quickly joined by FRANCOIS GRILLOT (bass) and REGGIE SYLVESTER (drumkit), now swinging, now rolling in rhythmic counter-point. MATT LAVELLE’s trumpet pierced the air pointillistically, filling the spaces of this seemingly impromptu piece, one we would later learn to be titled, appropriately, “Don’t Try So Hard”. As the lights rapidly dimmed, the band was introduced, in style, over their slowly building soundscape. The piece developed into classic harmolodics as Nix, hunched over his well-aged Gibson and almost obscured by his music stand, dug in. 

Grillot and Sylvester bring something new to the terrain carved out decades ago by Haden and Blackwell. Nix’s years with Prime Time are not lost to this rhythm section which can sound as funky as that electric ensemble, though Grillot plays upright (and with monstrous technique!). And Sylvester, while offering a perpetual motion burn, does so most often with bundle sticks in place of standard drum sticks; heftier than wire brushes, they give a rather non-direct attack. The drummer’s easy, acrobatic style made me think of the nimble flights of a barefoot tap-dancer. Lavelle’s trumpet breathed over the whole, giving off scat-like flurries and Cherry-ish half-valve slides. The band began cooking immediately but was sure to build the boil in different places and not necessarily all at the same time, causing the sense of center to keep moving about, as it should in this lexicon. 

And yet the second selection, “Under the Volcano”, had the Quartet in gut-bucket mode with Sylvester leaning into the straight 8ths and Grillot slapping the body of his bass in patterns that pushed the pulse ever forward. Lavelle, moving to alto clarinet for this number, played a composed melody line with the leader, but once tearing into his solo offered a siren wale that catapulted him outward. At times, Lavelle was reminiscent of Sonny Simmons forays into double-reeds, pulling the sound from the high end of the instrument’s range and from deep within himself. As Nix came into his own, the R and B backbeat gave way to free---affixing the vibe of the original Coleman quartet to that of the guitarist’s tenure with Prime Time. This band acts as the nexus of the two eras we have come to know in the harmolodic sphere. After the concert Nix explained:

“I always had a penchant for straight-ahead jazz guitar playing; I play that still. Before I worked with Ornette, I never thought I would be in Prime Time. But this music allows the harmony to shift, like chase chords, moving through and beyond. It is in and it is out…the ‘swing’ is always there. This music is an extension on the early jazz tradition where the sense of freedom, the improvisation, was constantly creative. Here the band’s roles are never static and are always shifting, evolving…”

The band played two more numbers including a pseudo-bossa (“Naomi”) with a trumpet melody that exposed Lavelle’s big band influences, full-bodied and sporting a vibrato that ended phrases deftly. His solo straddled the worlds of Harry James and Woody Shaw with ease, fingers flying over valves, resounding. And just as this piece seemed to approach the straight-ahead tradition, Nix’s solo brought in atonality (or was that beyond-tonality?) and an expansive view of meter. 

Bern Nix’s solos are really an extension of his comping style as he grabs at barking, snapping single notes, diads and chords up and down and then across his instrument’s neck, toying with repetitions before tossing them aside for lines in advanced tonality. Kandinsky-esque staccato phrases and linear, slippery runs alternate as the rhythm team pulsates contrapuntally behind and through. Driven on by the improvisation of the moment, the drummer and bassist fly and bounce, skimming over the surface of the groove when not tearing into it and turning it on its head. Add Lavelle’s free trumpet into the collective mix and the band appears to be working from four different centers, creating a jigsaw melody almost played heterophonically between guitar lead, trumpet and bass counter-melodies and the racing back-stroke of Sylvester’s almost 4/4 jazz time. The Bern Nix Quartet is everywhere and exactly-where and the overall effect is dizzying in the best possible way. This is the next obvious step in the harmolodic world. To the uninitiated, this visionary music can be somewhat confounding. To those who know better, this stuff is pure sustenance.

Performance Review: B.A.L.L., Bowery Electric NYC, May 25, 2013

B.A.L.L.

Bowery Electric, NYC, May 25, 2013

Concert review by John Pietaro

 Gloomy skies and chilly rain moved in on this late-May evening, and the East Village was covered by that certain grayness it was once known for. If you squinted just enough, you could almost avoid the bistros and hipster joints that now line the Bowery in place of the dive-bars, restaurant supply houses and dusty bodegas that once were. Remember when there was an artful edginess to this town, downtown? While most of the creative community has been priced out of the chromium rentals that have sprung up everywhere that cool resides, thankfully there are still pockets of inspiration hidden between the Bowery Mission and the million-dollar views. Just a block north of where CBGB once stood, post-Punk NYC commanded the stage: B.A.L.L. reunited for the first time in 25 years. And at the crossroads of Bowery and Joey Ramone Place, no less. 

The Bowery Electric contains a bit of the feel of CBs, and its basement haunt—where the live music plays—resounds with crackly amplifiers and stinging cymbals. The dungeon-like exposed brick may be missing the old LES graffiti, but as the black leather-and-jeans crowd in this tight room grew in anticipation of the music, it brought you back. The members of B.A.L.L. had been there then ---in that amazing time and place when the rebel yell of Punk Rock romanced the liberation of Free Jazz and downtown contemporary composition. Its off-spring included No Wave and a wide pastiche of alternative experimental sounds. Kramer, B.A.L.L.’s bassist and a patron saint of this radical emulsion had studied with improvisational music guru Karl Berger and listened intently to the catalog of ESP Disk in his youth. By the late 70s and early 80s he was recording and touring with the likes of Daevid Allen’s NY Gong, the Chadbournes (with Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, and David Licht), Shockabilly and the Fugs; by ’85 he was a member of the Butthole Surfers. B.A.L.L. came along shortly thereafter, as well as Bongwater (with Ann Magnuson) and collaborations with GG Allin, Jad Fair and others. Kramer would, over the next few years, bring his NoiseNewYork studio to the forefront of this musical mélange of the cerebral and the rude and his record label Shimmy-Disc would stand as quite legendary. These days, Kramer’s homebase is Florida where he runs his Second-Shimmy label, which has released work by Zorn and others as well as Kramer’s latest take on deconstructed pop, ‘The Brill Building’. He also mixes and masters the albums of many other artists including, I need to state as a disclaimer, the debut disc of this writer’s band The Red Microphone, ‘The Red Microphone Speaks!’ (2013).

B.A.L.L.’s front man, vocalist and guitarist Don Fleming also carries with him a certain pedigree. After working for years in regional new wave bands, he first came to cult prominence as the voice of the Velvet Monkeys and then joined Half-Japanese with Jad Fair. Fleming was inspired by the work of Lou Reed and the origin of the Velvet Monkeys name is found in a combination of both the Velvet Underground and, yes, the Monkees. You can hear the Reed inspiration still back there in his searing guitar work that is just as driven by bluesy R&B runs. However, for the past dozen years he has worked at the Alan Lomax Archives, these days serving as its Executive Director. 

The band has had two drummers from the start as Kramer wanted to capture the feel of double drummers that he heard at George Harrison’s ‘Concert for Bangladesh’ (there it was Ringo and the brilliant Jim Keltner). Jay Spiegel was a member of the Velvet Monkeys and Half-Japanese before joining this band, and then after the initial break-up, he left with Fleming to form the alternative rock band Gumball and also played briefly with Dinosaur Jr and did some work with Thurston Moore as well. 

Drummer/percussionist David Licht, another veteran of the downtown experience, served as the “other” through most of the original B.A.L.L. years. A founding member of the Klezmatics, Licht was also the pulse of Shockabilly and then Bongwater, but he is also noted for work with Ned Rothenberg, John Zorn and Tom Cora. Licht had worked very closely with Kramer on numerous projects so when B.A.L.L. came to be it was natural that he would be immediately engaged for it; he left the band in ’88 as things began to fall apart. It was disappointing that for this reunion show, Licht was not present. However Bob Bert of Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore fame was a fitting substitute and walloped the old numbers into a throbbing heartbeat along with Spiegel.

B.A.L.L. has always been known for its sense of parody and wicked humor. None of the old theatrical antics were present at the Bowery Electric but the musical sneer was unmistakable. The ensemble took to the stage and launched off into this material (which, as rumor has it, they’d only prepared for the night before), with a glint in the eye. The audience erupted and those down front pounded the stage. The band laughed and shouted over the rumble of double drumming and snaking guitar and bass lines. Fleming’s voice bellowed warmly whenever Kramer’s bass met his range and then improvised new counter-points. In the lives of band mates on the road, anything is possible and the hardships of the Business have withered away many a union. But there was no indication of old animosity as Fleming came to the lip of the stage, in reach of the mixed-age group dressed in Bowery black. Kramer popped up and down on as the musical heights rang through the club, pointing the neck of his vintage Hofner violin bass to the hot lights and disco ball hovering just above. Strapless, as always, he seems to at once embrace his instrument and dance around it. 

A welcome sound was B.A.L.L.’s signature guitar and bass duo leads; during points when the rhythm would break and Fleming would embark on a swirling buzzsaw guitar solo, he was joined seconds into it by fluid bass improv raked over distortion. Here’s where the band differs from most others of their generation, of any generation. The ingredients of post-Modernism will simply not go away and seemed to thrive on the feedback, primal screams and garage rock façade. Think back to Television and then to Richard Hell’s Voidoids and then to the work of its thrilling, inventive guitarist Robert Quine as he became part of the experimental tapestry beyond. At their best B.A.L.L. seemed to encapsulate all of this at once. At this reunion show there were few points of free play and I must admit I longed for more. As the tension would build in the music, the piece would come to its conclusion, even when there surely was room to take it further out. But no complaints here as the band was living in the moment and offered up “single” versions which filled the house and loomed over the shouting, waving audience like a sparkling storm cloud. There were no dull moments and from my spot on the stairwell that led into the main crowd area, the air was electric. 

Some of the old material heard included their cover of Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy”, sang by Spiegel, but as always, the B.A.L.L. version was world’s away. The lyric, there in the dark of a damp Bowery night spot in 2013 seemed to speak of the band’s journey and with it, all of us who remember the time and place. They shouted through “The Ballad of Little Richard”, with all of its jagged rhythmic obstacles carefully navigated. And then when they would lean on a groove and the bass line would tease the audience with a discofied throb, the house rocked on as if listening to a hit blaring out of the latest MP3 collection, arms flowing overhead, butts swaying, bottles of Bud aloft. 

The stage lights appeared to grow hot as Fleming left a guitar solo midstream and placed his ax down at the foot of an amplifier, He snuck away as his instrument emitted a whirling feedback, growing progressively louder. The two drummers exploded into a dual (perhaps duel) solo statement, with tom-tom accents, cymbal bursts, rim-shots and ratamacues shooting back and forth and back again. Kramer’s fuzz bass moaned over them and then was placed on the stage with the grinding feedback moaning and growling underneath, now matching and embellishing Fleming’s guitar wail, and he too ran into the “wings”. The drummers pounded on, evoking a kind of savage ‘Rich vs Roach’ vision as crash cymbals waved violently and threw the spotlights’ glare around the hall. Culminating in a series of angry sixteenth notes racing faster and faster and then a final accented boom and they too were off. The air thickened with the fading sounds of audio noise and ear drum ringing as the music claimed the night. 

And the street.