Mr. Memory

In 1997, Bill Frisell released an album called Nashville, his "country" album. I took it upon myself to write words for some of the songs on the record, including the song "Mr. Memory" (click here to listen to it on Spotify):

MR. MEMORY

When you're alone with your name

what you recall is your self

Shoulders hunched up with the rain

no umbrella lost again

Mr. Memory heads for home

turns the corner and he's gone

If you forget your own name

what can you say to yourself?

The rain against the windowpane

is everything left behind

Mr. Memory waits for you

round the corner but you're gone

And you awake with no name

Bells ringing in a blue day

I just liked the expression "Mr. Memory" and let it and the melody take me places while I was writing. 

Last week, I watched Alfred Hitchock's The 39 Steps and was pleased to discover that Frisell's title might well be a reference to the character Mr. Memory, as played by Wylie Watson:

Ani DiFranco, Evolve

Ani DiFranco is so prolific that I have ended up avoiding listening to her music for a long time, because I was somehow sure I would be so into it that I'd end up wanting to be a DiFranco collector (the way I am a Greg Brown collector or a Bill Frisell collector: with completist ambitions). Now I've finally started listening to her with this CD, Evolve, from 2003, and I was right: this music makes me want more. If this were a band, I could rave about the great singer and the great songwriter and the great guitarist and the great arrangements, and I'd be praising several different people, but it's all Ani D, and it's all fantastic. The songs are built around her guitar work (mostly acoustic, mostly superb fingerpicking), with some additional instruments added for most of the tracks; the instruments provide her with the foundation for her bold singing: she has a great voice, and she takes it everywhere she can. Favorite line, from "Slide":

The pouring rain is no place for a bicycle ride;
try to hit the brakes and you slide.

I was running when I listened to the album, and I heard this line and just knew the song was called "Slide." :-)

(This was not Simfy listening, but finally giving my full attention to something someone gave me a while back.)

Whisky, by Ciaran Carson

Sometimes literature can make you thirsty. The late fifties and early sixties novels of Marguerite Duras (such as Les petits chevaux de Tarquinia) all made me want to get drunk on whatever the characters were drinking, even before I found out Duras was an alcoholic.

I don't recall ever reading something that made me want to get stoned or do other illegal counterfactuals. (Not that I was unable to find other reasons ...)

This one from Ciaran Carson's 1996 collection Opera Et Cetera made me want to drink some whisky, among other things (it also made me want to try to interpret it, but I'll leave it at typing it again to see how the lines feel under my fingers):

Whisky

Of how the life of water is distilled to liquid gold; how the water of
The Liffey becomes Guinness; how explosive cocktails take the name of Molotov;

How the wild mountain thyme blows around the blooming heather, and the perfumed smoke
Of poteen rises high into the azure sky; how turf is the conducive agent, and not coke;

How coke is crack, not heroin, nor smack; how marijuana is La Cucaracha,
Maryjane, or blow; how many States of mind there are in Appalachia;

How you turn into an insect overnight, or after-hours, from eating
Magic mushrooms; how the psilocybin got your brain and led to some 'Strange Meeting';

How the tongue gets twisted, how 'barbarian' is everyone who is not Greek;
How things are named by any other name except themselves, thereof I meant to speak.

While I was typing, the associations began to flow:

The wild mountain thyme brought to mind Penelope Houston, whose punky folk I loved so much in the early to mid nineties (shortly before I read this book for the first time, in September 96): she did a burning cover of that song.

Poteen made me think of Brian Friel's Translations, which I played a small part in and co-directed in Saarbrücken in 1994.

Turf made me thirsty for Laphroaig.

The Appalachian States of mind made me think of Brad Mehldau playing "New York State of Mind" as solo jazz piano. Far-fetched? I don't care!

Turning into an insect overnight? You know what I thought when I read that; you thought the same thing after all.

But after-hours made me think of the movie "After Hours", whose basic idea I would like to steal for my long unwritten tale "The Clerk," which started being pondered in the main Basel Post Office years ago.

For me, Strange Meeting is a tune by Bill Frisell I once began to write some words for.

barbarian is everyone who is not Greek: this idea always reminds me of Adorno's claim about lyric poetry after Auschwitz being "barbaric"—"not Greek"?

Perhaps this is all free association; perhaps this is "naming things by any other name except themselves."

List of Jazz

Here's another list to go with the other two (here and here). This time, it's jazz tunes that I love, again in alphabetical order:

1. Epistrophy, by Thelonius Monk

And many other Monk tunes, of course. Anyone who loves Monk should pick up Monk's Casino, by Alexander von Schlippenbach, the only CD I know of that contains every known surviving Monk composition! (Full disclosure: I translated the liner notes.)

2. Goodbye Pork-Pie Hat, by Charles Mingus

I'm also a total sucker for "Boogie Stop Shuffle," which is also on Mingus Ah Um.

3. Homecoming, by Dave Holland

I know three fabulous versions of this tune: on Holland's Seeds of Time (quintet) and Ones All (solo bass), and on Gateway's Homecoming (with John Abercrombie and Jack DeJohnette). I also have a soft spot for Holland's "Back-Woods Song," from the first Gateway CD from the mid-seventies.

4. It Might As Well Be Spring, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

Check out the incredible version on Songs We Know, by Fred Hersch and Bill Frisell. Three minutes and ten seconds of bliss.

5. Lonely Woman, by Ornette Coleman

I'm also partial to Ornette's "Turnaround," especially as played by Pat Metheny on 80/81.

6. Resolution, by John Coltrane

I'm only doing tunes, so I can't just say A Love Supreme. There's an overwhelming version of "Resolution" on Marc Johnson's Bass Desires CD, with John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Peter Erskine.

And I have to at least mention Coltrane's "Mr. P.C.," which always makes me happy.

7. Someday My Prince Will Come, by Larry Morey & Frank Churchill

But of course it's Miles's version that makes this a great jazz tune. There's also a great version on the above-mentioned Songs We Know.

8. Sophisticated Lady, by Duke Ellington

I'm especially blown away by the version on The World Saxophone Quartet Plays Duke Ellington, which reminds me that it has been way too long since I have heard David Murray live!

9. Timeless, by John Abercrombie

Both in the original version on Abercrombie's CD of the same name (with Jan Hammer and Jack DeJohnette) and in the solo guitar version on Ralph Towner's Solo Concert (both of which also feature Abercrombie's lovely "Ralph's Piano Waltz").

10. Witchi-Tai-To, by Jim Pepper

As played by Oregon, especially live at the Great American Music Hall in 1984, when Collin Walcott was still alive.

For Bill Frisell fans: Vic Chesnutt, "Ghetto Bells"

I just picked up Vic Chesnutt's 2005 CD "Ghetto Bells" the other day, for two reasons: I really like the album I already have by him ("About to Choke"), and Bill Frisell plays guitar on it. Probably all Vic C. fans already have the album, but maybe there are some Frisell fans reading this note who need to be told: get this album. If only for the astonishingly beautiful ballad "Forthright," in which BF's floating guitar sound achieves perfection.