let me tell you what's going on

NEWS that comes and goes, built on the sands of time:

24sep2008:

we've added a show in toledo, ohio on saturday october 4. we might also be doing an in-store in northampton, massachusetts on sunday october 12 and playing thursday october 16 in bowling green, ohio. we'll see! check here to find out for sure, tell your friends!

we're playing a tune on this tour called the cottonwood leaf, which will be the first track on the next health&beauty record, the cottonwood leaf, fallen, likens to a rat having died. dan and i recorded it last july. i am not a believer in "first take magic;" it's never worked for me and as a recording engineer i have never seen it work for anyone else, and i don't consider this to be an instance of it because we didn't know what we were going to do when we started playing. dan and i improvised it the first time, lyrics and all, nothing was written in advance; we listened back and i was blown away; he wanted to learn it and do one more take because he was unsatisfied with something he was doing. i've forgotten what it was, but whatever it was didn't bother me. it doesn't sound improvised. it sounds like it was written to sound the way it does, and it flows freely and gorgeously and there's a lot of ROOM in the take. i did nice things with my voice that seem impossible to me now. but we learned it and did another take for the hell of it, and it was a hollow shadow of the first one. so since then we've left well-enough alone as far as the recording goes. we've performed this song live probably three times now, and it never comes out right, and i can't even sing the goddamn thing. possibly the problem is that the vibrating dildo i use now is somewhat larger, and vibrates more quickly, than the one i used initially, which actually belonged to a friend of mine who has since retrieved it. this seems plausible because the key which i implied to myself the first two times it was performed (while recording it; i don't know if it's melodic minor or what... it's a minor scale with a raised 6th, with occasional major 3rds) kind of vanishes nowadays, and i'm all screwed up with my references. trying to get this straightened out by friday, but the only song i can think of is that's how i got to memphis.

see you soon!
<3 b

17sep2008:

wow! what's going on? i'm trying to find people to play with us in pittsburgh and brooklyn, maybe book a couple more shows, otherwise this tour we're gonna take in a few weeks is pretty together. i've been a no call-no show at the worst job i've ever had for 5 days in a row now; no one has called to see if i am alive. data entry was messing with my wrists and fingers at the worst time in my life (not that there's a good one) and i just can't bring myself to go back. this might be a poor reflection on my character, but having another proposition in the works and knowing that no one is counting on me makes me feel ok about it.

finished up a couple recording sessions that had started at the chateau quite some time ago; always feels good. won $41 at poker last night and didn't think to chip in for beer. listened to julius hemphill's dogon a.d. for the first time and it's one of those tracks that instantly blew me away; never heard anything like it. the drums (philip wilson) have that phat funk sound, panned far left, and bass duties are occupied by cello (abdul wadud), making it much lighter and airier than such an otherwise deep groove would normally come off. drums holding steady, cello alternates playing along or meandering off on its own, possibly playing what i'm told is a two-minute head, though i couldn't hear it. sax does super nice.

it is possible to have direct musical ideas, musical ideas that translate directly to a series of intervallic relationships or harmonic juxtapositions. it is also possible to have indirect musical ideas that describe more an aesthetic (see above) or a general direction in which a piece will move, described dynamically or modally or in terms of tempo. both are important, and the better a grasp one can have on these two concepts (and others; their derivatives) the better.

probably the only concession i can grant to "jamming" or the "jam band" aesthetic is the freedom it gives a performer to emotionally express hisself directly during a solo. with a static background a performer can manipulate the elements which can possibly be manipulated without having to note the changing direction of the group, or respond to outside pressure, thus allowing sentiments to roll out in a potentially communicative series. one could not say that this is the case within a solo performance, as in that case the environment of ultra-freedom forces one to consider so many possibilities of action that s/he cannot adequately find a solid, unchanging intellectual foundation from which to spring a purely emotional ejaculation. in the solo performance one must mediate emotion in order to assure a satisfying architecture; otherwise one implies a swamp, like a child inarticulately crying its discomfort. of course, in the emotional solo of the "jam" performance the swamp is real, not implied, but the injunction against soloing in the same way unaccompanied is that one is failing to make use of the awesome freedom s/he is given, where in the "jam" situation it sounds "appropriate;" freedom in captivity. i'd invite the reader to consider this an example of the expression of direct musical ideas, and note that it is not inexpressive, in spite of its failures in the Big Picture of possibilities. one could also use this structure to think about the musico-politics of "jam" music, and how it stacks in light of its self-presentation.

anyway here's our tour schedule as it stands:

Sep 26 2008
Ronny’s w Wummin & Umenden
Chicago, Illinois

Oct 5 2008
Big Orbit Gallery w Tentet/Octet
Buffalo, New York

Oct 7 2008
Otto’s Shrunken Head
NYC, New York

Oct 8 2008
The Abbey Lounge w The Musical Theatre, Red Quiet & more!
Somerville, Massachusetts

Oct 9 2008
The Blackstone w MikeG&Associates, ForTheLoveOfSloane
Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Oct 10 2008
Empire w Dead End Armory
Portland, Maine

Oct 11 2008
The Charleston w Norris and TBA
Brooklyn, New York

Oct 12 & 13 2008
help! Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey?

Oct 14 2008
The Velvet Lounge w Cannot Be Stopped
Washington, DC

Oct 15 2008
The Smiling Moose w EricBoyd&HisMachines and TBA
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Oct 18 2008
Murmur
Cincinnati, Ohio

notice that the first date is in chicago on september 26. it would be great to see you there! i know this is the date of the first presidential debate. ronny's has a television, and the show won't start until after the debate is over, so you can like drink some beer or whatever while we all watch and then there'll be a pretty cool show featuring WUMMIN (anita chari & andrew royal) and umenden (kagan arik & max abelev) and health&beauty.

also, it would be great if you could inform your friends in cities along our tour about our shows there, if you think we're up their alley. this is our first time out east, and it'd be great to meet and perform for some good folks along the way!

thanks & be well,
b

08jul2008:

i think i remember the exact moment that my penis was bent, ever so slightly, to the left. i think the current bend is unnatural because of my remembrance of this incident, which happened in the second grade. in tighty-whities stonewashed jean boner shame bending over and pulling at the crotch to try to make some room. never had before felt such a thing, but have since, many times. i remember all through school taking a piss, trying to make sure the penis was facing toward the right, so maybe it would bend back if i boned up during a lesson, which almost invariably i would. this memory arises from time to time but i have never told it to anyone, not because fear shame etc. but it has just not come up. masturbation, shitting and farting and pissing and puking come up all the time, but not so much penis-bending.

health&beauty is about to do some recording. when we decided to do this recording it was mid-may, i had imagined we'd get it going as soon as dan finished his post-graduate year of schooling and it would take a couple days and then i'd set about editing and overdubbing and mixing and such. this is a recording-based band for sure, which probably extends naturally and curves slightly to the left from the fact that i live in a recording studio. somewhere between then and now i reached a point of real dissatisfaction with my guitar playing, and now i feel kind of bad because dan and nick are playing really well and i'm postponing for a few weeks so i can cobble my act together enough to do what we need to do.

they used to tell stories about a different brian, one of the first young men, regionally, of my generation to be handjobbed. the loose lips and general indiscretion of immaturity and, let's own-up, rubes all over led him to the nickname 'sidewinder.' what happens if i get a handjob?

i am a recent comer to jazz listening, which in the modern context feels almost bourgeois. played some in junior high and high school, never really learning the guitar and never listening to it. took some lessons from the local music shop guy in my hometown, more of a country music dude. sold the shop and worked full time at his church, presumably still. groups i played in were happy with the E- and A-based bar chords, sometimes throwing in a minor 7 but never a major; lent a smidge of extra weight and full to the electric fretted bass invariably in the band. why no one ever mentioned how unreal these lineups were, the historical context of the pieces we were playing, etc... never know. no one suggested that these were unreal chords i was blasting. my approach to the music was hateful, grown up on 98.9 The Bear Classic Rock Fort Wayne likes of dan fogelberg, joe walsh, eagles, steve miller, late bowie, zep, and lots of ac/dc which i never quite managed to dig, though everyone told me i was missing out. ecstatic the day i met a carnie who told me of his realization on release of stiff upper lip, "they're all the same song." there is beauty and grace in intentional minimalism, and beauty at least is retained even if distracted and reactionary; but a specific reaction spread over 30 yrs starts to smack of something else... trends come and go, nations change direction, oceanfront cottages fall into the water, men are born, their penises bent slightly to the left, they grow and change and reach their mid-late twenties having taken little notice. this to say that jazz as a genre was not on the radar, in spite of belching out watermelon man and take 5 every saturday morning.

in the 7th grade switched to boxers, thinking now my penis will grow properly and straight, as i continue to develop. this damage is undoable. the boxers did not change the direction of engorgement, though did give it more room. ran cross-country and wrestled until mononucleosis, which for me was no kissing disease. milked it desperately, missing some 45 days of school that year. baked cakes, practiced guitar, watched northern exposure, played the occasional game of road rash III on sega genesis, taught myself to type. impression of progress and growth, true inward development, less friends, and nothing would coax me out again until some high school acid and ecstasy. started doing this kind of paisley shirt pleated slacks thing too, that was kind of fun. this was what.. '95?

my aims directed carefully of late: quit a job, got a new one, waiting for it to start gives me two weeks (into the 2nd now) to pull various togethers, like the new press page, recordings for jason camacho, mermaids, ben macdonald. starting booking an east coast tour Oct 3-19. borrowing $5,000 against life insurance. working on recordings of H&B pieces tingo, jesus hits like shock & awe, & freedom of the seas / HELOTRY. for the record The Cottonwood Leaf, Fallen, Likens To a Rat Having Died, which is the one that dan and nick and i are about to finish tracking. done a rough demo of john mellencamp's jackie brown, one of the most hyperbolic songs i've heard, even for folk. this also shall grace the cottonwood leaf, albeit in different form, as the demo was a failure. possibly try to imagine bjork doing a JCM tune. considering covers of ben, michael jackson : lord i can't just keep from cryin, blind willie johnson.

the jazz/improvisation influence has been very heavy and the kinds of things i'm hearing and picking out, especially from such nuts as eric dolphy, sonny sharrock, derek bailey, albert ayler, peter brotzmann are demanding new spheres of attention. this is music of my adulthood. new challenges. not a jazz player, never be a jazz player, but i'm looking for enough of an understanding of this music that it bears on my own, inevitably and eternally inflicted by 98.9 the cub don't fall far from The Bear. embarrassment trails ignorant passion, and here lies bjs jazz love today. work is necessary, and so does not cease.

here's a current listening list:

The Complete Blind Willie Johnson
Love Cry — Albert Ayler
Piano Starts Here — Art Tatum
BIRD - The Complete Charlie Parker
Hyperion with Higgins — Charles Lloyd, Billy Higgins
Broken Mirror — Umenden
Miles Smiles — Miles Davis
Song X — Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman
Music and Dance — Derek Bailey
Dark Intervals — Keith Jarrett
Big Daddy — John Mellencamp
Inner Urge — Joe Henderson
Secular Works — Extra Life
String Quartet 2 — Morton Feldman
Carbon by Carbon — Phil Meade
Fulfillingness' First Finale — Stevie Wonder
Beasts of No Nation — Fela Kuti
We Have Come For Your Children — Dead Boys
Last Exit — Last Exit

here's a current reading list:

Angela Davis: An Autobiography — Angela Davis
Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music — Derek Bailey
Audio Post Production for Television and Film: An introduction to technology and techniques (3rd ed)— Wyatt / Amyes
American Music Is — Nat Hentoff
Mastering Audio: the art and the science (2nd ed) — Bob Katz
800 Miles to Valdez: The Building of the Alaska Pipeline — Jim Roscow
Mirrors of the Soul — Kahlil Gibran
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles — Geoff Emerick, Howard Massey, Elvis Costello
Arcana: musicians on music — John Zorn, ed.
The Ecstasy of Communication — Jean Baudrillard

ok, talk to you soon.
<3 bjs

28apr2008:

hulo again! let's start by suggesting the following ETS:

pants : subjectivity :: journalism : objectivity

thank you, claire.

plastic boner band and health&beauty returned to chicago yesterday from a weekend tryst off to bloomington, indiana and cincinnati, ohio. bloomington was a disaster and we only got to play for 10minutes before it started to pour rain on us, but cincinnati went great. isaac hand at murmur set up the show. the gluons opened out the night and the pbb set overlapped with ours through some tunes; strokeburn and the cottonwood leaf. a cool collaboration that we hope to repeat in chicago sometime this summer.

we're playing at the abbey pub in chicago on may 18, sunday. more info to come on the myspace.

you might have noticed the addition of a "pipeline" link around this site. it's to a blog, pretty similar to this one right here, about what will be the third or fourth health&beauty record. it's a record about the alaska pipeline. so maybe check it out if you have a chance.

but let's look at it like this: one man's disaster is another man's pants, which are also another man's zip-off shorts. the important thing is that nothing ever is either good or bad, it just is, like this pleasant ball of fuzz sitting in front of me. sometimes if you drink free beer, you'll get your ass wet later and sleep like a dog on a filthy floor. i heard somewhere that journalism is the epitome of objectivity, and that legendary shows only ever last for 5 minutes before the cops come and arrest you for letting your dog out without a leash. but then maybe you're an alternative rock band or whatever, so why don't you just play acoustic? what's your carbon footprint? it's a good um i mean it's just a thing to fly by the seat of your subjectivity. brother brother brother wolf and the great disrespect to crazy horse, i'm trying to make myself uncomfortable. institutionalised thinking leads to historical thinking which leads to expectations and a bad feeling about having your show moved three times and the promoter is too drunk. he said the irish carbombs were worth the $60 and then he screamed into the night, into the livingroom, into our dreams, out of the car.

08feb2008:

well this year is shaping up. we're into february now and i'm amazed at what i've gotten done since the new year. not that i am used to wasting time, but events have occurred at a staggering pace so far.

h&b is laying the groundwork for some touring this fall, as well as making some jaunts to bloomington, cincinnati (w sam henry's plastic boner band), anywhere else dan&nick&i can get a guarantee that covers fuel. we went to kalamazoo last month and it was a blast. i'm not listing shows here anymore, since myspace does such a nice job with that. when murdoch louses it up beyond comprehension or i figure out an efficient way to post notices on indiecred, we'll reevaluate.

we put up a site for the chateau, the studio that nick and i have been running together since late 2006. things have been going pretty well on that front and we're even adding some new equipment.

the record that i'd been working on since late 2004, in one way or another, is done. it's called it was almost certainly a small child and if you want a copy right now you can e.mail me and we'll work out a paypal thing. i'm selling them for $5 + s/h. in spite of my ambivalent attitude about it (it represents a different state of maturity than the one i imagine myself in) i think it is a good record. it is about monstrousness. monstrousness, not monstrosity. i'm very glad i made it. here is a picture of the cover of the record, featuring artwork by jordan paul de santo mitchell:

there is a little bit more work to be done on the second health&beauty record, largely improvised with dan siakel but featuring some additional performances etc. it is called the cottonwood leaf, fallen, likens to a rat having died. that one should be finished in the coming months and i'll let you know.

the third health&beauty record requires, in part, some field recordings in alaska. this will happen hopefully this summer, if not then next summer, depending on whether i am able to get funding on my ideal timeline. if you want to fund this, please e.mail me.

more soon,
brian/health&beauty

"In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inextricably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself, that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all."
-Kierkegaard, Either/Or

old news

02may2004:

life... it's good.

06feb2004:

hear what people are saying to my answering machine about health&beauty. [RealAudio][mp3]