This / not this: grunge

What can I say, I'm feeling nostalgic. This 1994 video of Portland band Iommi Stubbs playing at The Satyricon is pretty much the epitome of grunge every respect— from the horrible recording, to the lack of audience, to the band that never went anywhere. It's great. The Satyricon was a legendary club for Pacific Northwest “alternative” music— before that word came to mean “the heirs of Korn.” But like most of those places, it was a shithole, and richly deserved its demise ten years too late in 2010.





Contrast with Hollywood-style grunge, from the movie Singles:

A lot of hard sight-reading

No entry for getting lost,
panicking, and soiling oneself.

An interesting day yesterday- I played two sessions in which we played through a bunch of really challenging reading. It's an interesting dynamic when a group of excellent musicians is on the raggedy edge of losing it- not what you would expect.

First, my man David Valdez had a stack of a dozen tunes by pianist George Colligan, who recently moved to Portland from New York. Colligan is a true heavy cat- he's currently in Jack Dejohnette's band, and has recorded with Bill Stewart, Lenny White, Billy Hart, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Al Foster, and... practically everyone else. He's also the author of the Jazz Truth blog- here, you're going to want to read his post on jam session etiquette if you're going to be a jazz drummer.

So, unpredictable would one of the first words that come to mind in reading through Colligan's tunes- they're generally defiant to any kind of comfortable, clichéd approach, with very few familiar turns. The melodies were very elusive of the type of support I'm used to giving, and I found myself latching onto the harmonic rhythm for dear life. Many delightful "oh, haha, that was the top of the form- I guess we're in bar three now" and "oops, I think that intro in 9/4 was supposed to be part of the solo form" moments were had. By the time we got to the head out I would be beginning to feel not horribly uncomfortable; I'm definitely looking forward to a second or third reading.

The second thing was a sextet project by keyboardist Andrew Durkin, who moved to Portland from LA a couple of years ago. Durkin is a self-taught (I think) composer and also an occasional blogger- he's the author of Jazz, the music of unemployment. His material is tough for a different reason- in addition to the rampant meter changes and unusual moves, his chart-writing style is a little bit naive, with a complete drum part sketched out note for note, with no indication of whether something is part of the time feel, part of an arranged passage, or an optional fill, making it very difficult to think of anything but the six inches in front of your face. It does encourage you to make a straightforward treatment that is actually very agreeable, once you give up needing to make a big personal statement out of it.

Dick Berk interview on the Jake Feinberg Show

Another great interview from the Jake Feinberg show, this time with Dick Berk of the prodigious ride cymbal. Dick was Billie Holliday's last drummer (after Jo Jones left the group), in a band that also featured Mal Waldron- I think my parents must have seen him with her at the time- and has played with just about everybody- particularly on the west coast- since then. He's also an actor, and had small parts in Raging Bull and New York, New York, and- somewhat strangely- was cast for the role of Sgt. Schulz' son in the canceled final season of Hogan's Heroes. He has been in Portland for years (minus some time in Vegas in the early '00's), and has been one of the anchoring cats for the city.

Esplanade!

My apologies for the lack of posts recently. Blogger has been flaky in the extreme and not letting me log in. Ennyways, here are a couple of things I shot on Portland's glorius esplanade a couple of weeks ago. Ilford Pan F with the Nikon.

Under a bridge.

Saxophonist Bob Mover at Mississippi Studios. Got this with the Lomo. This is an old favorite shot of mine, but I'll probably cut it from the portfolio.