Yesterday there was a raven on the next street up (Marathon?) making that sound like an African gourd xylophone that I never heard them make until a few weeks ago … And in a few weeks into the future we are moving into a house which will allow more cool in, keep more hot out, and be surrounded by more in the way of vegetation which means birds, squirrels, and lots of the color green.

EDIT: The mockingbird is DEFINITELY back. I was playing along with him on the guitar yesterday.

The first was held at a place called the Echo Country Outpost, which co-owner Chris insists is “not a venue”! What it is, is, is a funky little store on Echo Park Blvd (corner of Duane, out past Chango a ways) that I couldn’t tell exactly what they sell but I am certain it is cool, whatever it is.

For the occasion (perhaps the first show held there? perhaps it will be a monthly event from here out?) a stage existed at the back of the main room, on which played first a group (in this instance a duo tho sometimes they are larger) called Verb The Adjective Noun. Originally from Boston, temporarily not living in their bus, they were very tight and propulsive, not just for a duo but all around. One of them played guitar and sang, and the other played guitar, banjo and lap steel with equal and impressive facility. Good vocal harmonies. Rootsy without spilling either too far into tradition or too far into singer-songwriter ickiness.

The headliners, Abilene of whom I believe set up the show, were called Sundays Soundtrack. They had a wonderful upright bassist and two wonderful women and they were vibey and moody and harmonistic and bouyant and I enjoyed them a lot.

We played in between.

So, a little show in a little store, but there were at least 60 people in there which made it FULL, and I don’t think I’d ever met more than a half dozen of them before. We had a rough set, new bass player (he did a fine job, but it was his first show with us) and tuning issues for me and Amanda, but the people really dug it, they laughed with us not at us and by the end we had a wonderful energy going, the best energy I’ve felt in a room yet at a Los Angeles show. Score one for Echo Country!

…

OK, and then last night we played at the Echo Curio, which is very possibly my favorite in-town venue to play at. It’s run by the awesome Grant-and-Justin dynamic duo, there’s an amazing stream of art that passes across the walls and a room full of weird records for cheap, we played at the top of a bill of ridiculously talented women (which was a new and wonderful context to hear Amanda’s music in) and once again a room full of 60 total strangers and a few good friends just dug us to death, kept us going for an extra tune or so past what Amanda had intended to play. Let me tell you, we felt GOOD. And the new bass, upright Jef Hogan (with one ‘f’), really makes it.

Also on the bill last night were Fort King (who I didn’t get to hear cos I was eating a burrito next door, but they were very nice) … Beliss, a duo of sisters (I am told) whose vocal harmonies are unusual and beautiful and who feature lush acoustic guitar voicings and electric-upright bass-playing to die for. Or at least to swoon about … and Ora Cogan, who might be a cosmic parallel to Elizabeth Cotton or Karen Dalton, who sings like no one else I’ve heard (beautifully, swoopingly, in a round and full voice) and who coaxes lovely rich tones from an electric hollowbody Gibson tuned in an array of unusual manners.

Solid week.

Tune in later for the weather!

I’m going to assume that you either haven’t picked up Valleys Of Neptune yet because, understandably, you have your doubts… Or that you HAVE picked it up and you aren’t sure how good you feel about it. I’m going to do my best to help you.

Valleys Of Neptune is not a “lost album” in the sense that First Rays Of The New Rising Sun might be called a “lost album” … Of course, no one knows quite how First Rays would really have come together in Jimi’s hands, but I think Eddie Kramer and company did a close-to-perfect job with it, and any musician who isn’t familiar with First Rays should go out right now and get themselves a copy. Don’t download it, it won’t sound as good. If you can do the vinyl, do the vinyl. It’s the record that explains, to anyone who is wondering, just why it is that Jimi Hendrix and The Meters and Funkadelic, Sun-Ra, James “Blood” Ulmer and John Coltrane and Bob Marley should all be considered separate arms of one cosmic octopus.

And just about anything important that was left out of First Rays (like the sublime and lovely “Pali-Gap”) made it onto South Saturn Delta – which is also not a lost album, but a truly astonishing and revelatory collection of outtakes and leftovers. There are tracks I would have rather heard on South Saturn than the “original mix” of “All Along The Watchtower” … like maybe that amazing synth-sounding studio overdub onslaught version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that was on the original Rainbow Bridge soundtrack record.

But South Saturn did immeasurable good for the musical universe with the release of luminous studio versions of “Power Of Soul” and “South Saturn Delta”, studio jams on “Message To Love” and “Drifter’s Escape” (which alone satisfies the Dylan quota nicely), and otherwise homeless tracks like “Midnight,” “Bleeding Heart,” “The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice” and “Lover Man” … The picture felt very complete, and I wasn’t expecting anything more.

Though, to be fair, in the meanwhile, I have encountered lo-fi live tapes, home recordings and so forth, many of which would make wonderful releases if cleaned up a bit, though clearly only me and a few other freaks would get much out of them. I guess that’s what Dagger Records is for, but they’ve only put out a couple of things that really made me jump. There is an art to the outtake-compilation, and Dagger has not got it quite sussed.

OK, so, Valleys Of Neptune. I heard the title track on a box set of a radio show called Lifelines maybe fifteen years ago and it was life-changing. I was really excited that it was finally getting a real release, sonic spiffing and all, no radio-show banter talking over it. And the other tracks, didn’t look like I’d heard any of those, so, worth the $$.

And I am not disappointed. But I had to think about it some.

The first three tracks on Valleys include Billy Cox on bass. Billy is one of my favorite bass players, period. Anything with him on it is a joy. And he’s also the only one of the Hendrix musician crew who’s still walking around and playing music above the ground, which makes him a treasure.

Those three tracks include a cosmic-groove rendition of “Stone Free” that is really exciting and different. It felt a little weird when it passed through the air, though, and that turns out to be because the vocal and lead guitar come from a session that took place one month earlier than the session that produced the rhythm track.

Likewise, the title track, “Valleys Of Neptune”, attempts to blesh a vocal and percussion track from 1969 with a band track from 1970. The results are not bad, but…

I’m sure Jimi would have used the technology if he’d had access to it, but I also think he would have finished the damn recordings if he’d had the opportunity, and although I trust Eddie Kramer, it feels a little strange the way these tracks cut through time. I’m not ready to complain…

But I can feel it and it’s odd. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t a single complete usable take otherwise, especially when there are vocal errors and similar tiny flubs or even premature fades in many of the other tracks (all 10 of which are taken complete from single recording sessions … no more digital flummery).

Anyway, the sound is great and the final product is a solid listen so I’ll leave it at ambiguous.

Track 3 is a very cool arrangement of “Bleeding Heart,” again with Billy Cox. Very nice. On to side two.

Back to the original Experience with Noel Redding on the drums. This “Hear My Train” is nice but probably not an essential listen… As opposed to either the live version on the original Rainbow Bridge album or the studio take on the Jimi Hendrix Experience box set. (There is a studio version of “Stone Free” on the box as well, but that one and this one are actually BOTH really worth hearing, as is the one on Fillmore Concerts… and all for different reasons). “Mr. Bad Luck” is mainly interesting as a preamble to the later, more fully-realized version called “Look Over Yonder” which can be found on South Saturn Delta. So, probably for obsessive collectors only. And “Sunshine Of Your Love” is mainly odd. I mean, it’s a fine performance, and they have a guest conga player which is neat, and the tones are great … it’s just odd. I’ve heard a bunch of great live versions of this and it works really well there, the crowd knows the tune but isn’t expecting to hear it from this band, it’s done as an instrumental and often as a long jam, and in some ways this tracks is more completely together than some other parts of Valleys. But it’s a weird thing to hear in the middle of a studio album home listening experience.

Which makes this, the halfway point, the point at which I started to understand the true character of this record.

One of my favorite Jimi recordings is the 1969 L.A. Forum concert which came with Lifelines. I’d love for that to get a full-on remaster in the manner in which Woodstock (correctly) and Isle Of Wight (maybe not so much) and lately even Monterey have been re-released and re-released, again and again. Each of those three is a milestone, and historic in some sense. Woodstock and Monterey are even really great concerts (though I understand there’s a bunch of stuff from Woodstock that I haven’t heard that maybe isn’t as good … whatever, that’s fine). But Isle Of Wight, for my money, just isn’t that good a show. Jimi is distracted and the energy is very weird. The music makes me see colors I don’t like. There are a few great tracks, “In From The Storm” being one I think I recall, but on the whole I don’t see that show deserving the treatment it gets.

Whereas L.A. Forum 1969 is a brilliant show by a band that is as good as it ever got. I want to say they play about seven tunes in an hour. Long, stretched-out versions of “Spanish Castle Magic” and “Tax Free,” and some great solo guitar pieces between tunes. “Sunshine Of Your Love” is there, and it really works. That “Spanish Castle” is by the way similar in feel to the studio take on the Jimi Hendrix Experience box set, but both are worth a listen as the group’s improvs flow differently.

Anyway, the band that recorded much of Valleys was mostly the band that played that L.A. Forum show. These are sessions from around that same time, right before Noel Redding left and right after Billy Cox came in, so a lot of the new material is half-formed (they’d been touring a lot, no time to write new stuff properly) and a lot of the other recordings are just whatever they’d been playing out, with whatever degree of inspiration they could pull together that day in the studio.

As a result, Valleys Of Neptune is closer in feel to, maybe, BBC Sessions than it is to First Rays. The revelation lies in the getting-to-hear-a-great-working-band-at-work, rather than in the development of new ideas about electric music and about how it relates to the recording studio and to human culture. Those themes are just beginning to be touched on in these sessions. But it is very nice to get a close and sonically awesome look at the 1969 Experience.

Bearing all of that in mind…

Side 3 includes an early version of “Lover Man” which is not presently coming to mind but which certainly does not offend; “Ships Passing Through The Night” which became the lush and groundbreaking “Nightbird Flying” on First Rays but makes for beautiful music in this early version with Noel on bass; and, strangely, a live-in-the-studio version of “Fire” which, although it is from the same session as “Train” and “Castle” on the box set, adds nothing that I can see to this collection (other than that they were doubtless playing it live nearly every night at the time … so it was probably a studio warmup?) and might be there as a draw to people who know Jimi only from the radio. Why a release like this would be catering to them is beyond me … same objection as to “Watchtower” on South Saturn.

Side 4 has a take of “Red House,” again not a tune that requires more exposure but it’s a fine, slow version which unfortunately fades before the end (in that sense not unlike the amazing “Electric Church Red House” on the Blues collection) and is representative of live versions from that time (L.A. Forum is a fine example, there are others) … and then two tracks which are among the real wonders of this collection: “Lullaby For The Summer” which definitely predates the mode of studio composition and approach to overdubs and guitar orchestration that we hear on First Rays, and “Crying Blue Rain” which is a warm breeze of a chill groove of a closer. Neither one is a definitive anything, but it’s nice to hear Jimi’s brain ticking, which it isn’t always doing much of on some of the other tracks. (Z says side 4 is her favorite.)

Along the lines of those two closing tracks, there are some jams on the box set and also a large number of bootlegs which consist of the grooves that made it into various songs on First Rays and South Saturn but in vestigial form and combined in different ways with bits that became parts of other songs. For those of you who haven’t heard those other jams and outtakes, these last two tracks (and “Ships Passing Through The Night”) will be actually, yes, a revelation, an inspiration, a conflagration of cosmic information.

Although the groove on Valleys is solid enough to dance around the house to, and the tones are crisp and thick and wonderful, the sequencing is too odd and disjointed for a smooth and flowing complete listen. So Valleys Of Neptune might best be thought of as mainly a reference material, a survey of a particular phenomenon, something like The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, whereas First Rays Of The New Rising Sun and South Saturn Delta are two of the most played discs in my collection (not just my collection of Jimi, but of MUSIC), even more so than the albums he completed during his lifetime.

1A

3

1B

For the evening of March 4 we assembled a group including Jef Hogan (electric bass), Jon Franco (drums), Jennifer Ng (percussion), Woody (acoustic guitar) and myself (acoustic wah-wah guitar).

I had one rehearsal with Jef and John (who also play bass and drums for Greg Franco’s Rough Church), one run-through with Woody, and a loose jam with Jennifer, in the few days before the show. Many of the band members had not met each other until they arrived at the venue. This is less unusual for me than might be suspected.

Viento y Agua in Long Beach is a “coffee house” with wonderful energy, constantly changing art on the walls, the occasional model skeleton, many books, and a warm and inviting stage (and sound system) which was conceived and assembled by Angie Evans. I’ve played a few shows there, by myself and also with Cricket and with Amanda, and every time I’ve felt good and played well.

This was the first time I’d played some of this material in a long time, and the first time I’d ever played some of it with a band. The two acoustic guitars kept the energy closer to the ground than usual, and the songs and improvs worked together for a change instead of fighting for space. The existence of dual percussionists also contributed to the effortless momentum of this group’s sound. We had momentum without frightful velocity.

Good show. Hope we do it again.

Which reminds me, my earlier report that spring had arrived on January 30th has borne fruit … almost a month later we have flowers blooming and birds singing (and it’s raining for the 2nd time this month) … and I ran into a Southern California native who agrees (volunteers, even) that Los Angeles has distinct weather, you just have to know where to look … she hipped me to a day to watch for in the fall, weather-wise, and I will report on that when it comes around.

It’s unusual work, for me, lately. I am proof-reading a forthcoming book release for Tarpaulin Sky. I used to do this with my own work, with that of my friends, and once with a lengthy book in the true crime genre, written by my father, which is called Stalemate. But it’s been a while since I did all that. I don’t try to publish my own writing, when there is any, and besides I would probably ask Zinnia to do the proofreading if I had any that needed to be done.

I am enjoying the work. Partly, because it is interesting work. Editing. Spotting the flaws in something and getting rid of them so it can be what it set out to be. Partly, because it is an interesting book. More on that later, when it is out and you can buy it and find out for yourself. Let’s say it this way: I am not sure that I would have read this book were I not proofreading it. But I am glad that I am reading it, and I would recommend this book to anyone that likes innovative, strange, or offbeat short fiction that is not entirely abstract or deliberately nauseating.

But I’m not going to tell you what it is. Not until it is out, and you can buy it and find out for yourself.

*

Meanwhile, I am recording an album with a band called Rough Church. Rough Church is led by Greg Franco. Greg plays the guitar, writes songs, and sings. He’s been doing this for years. We met sometime last year and he asked me to play with his band and help record their new album. I said OK. The other band members are Jef Hogan (bass) and Jon Franco (drums). Jon and Greg are cousins.

We’re recording in Echo Park, which is where I live, which is very convenient. We rehearse in Washington Heights, which is further away but not prohibitively so. Greg has a nice place with a fine view and the air up on his hill is always clear.

The engineer working on the album, in whose studio we are recording, is brilliant. He is doing amazing work. I can barely think sometimes because my ears are so finely tuned and Andrew Bush (the engineer) has ears which are even more finely tuned than my own. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s had his own studio for time which can be measured in decades (at least one-and-a-half of them, I believe) and he knows how to get great sounds out of it.

He also knows how to nudge sounds around digitally to make a better take out of a few not so good ones. This is probably a good skill to have, and he is applying it effectively with us, but I also feel that this is a good skill not to overuse. I am not saying that Andrew overuses this skill, and in fact his results so far with Rough Church have been brilliant. I have no complaints. But I am keeping an eye.

Greg thinks that Andrew made some minor digital changes in one of my guitar solos on one of our songs. I have mixed feelings about this. If I played badly but he liked the ideas and thinks he can make something good out of them, then I am all for it. But if I played something deliberately and well that just sounds a little off to finely-tuned ears (and I am wont to do such a thing as that) then I want to hear it the way I played it.

I have listened to the track where Greg says this happened, before and after versions, and I don’t hear the difference. I will ask Greg to point it out to me, and if I hear a problem I will make a note of it. But on fairly close listening I don’t hear it, myself.

*

So what Andrew appears to have done, if anything, is a bit like what I am doing: proofreading.

When a writer (or a guitar player) likes to work in a style that is not specifically normal all the time, then it is not always apparent where a comma should go, or whether or not a musical phrase is off-time.

Proofreading. A word which sounds to me increasingly like a stifled sneeze. I have to get familiar enough with the writer’s style to know when she meant to do things a certain way and when she just got excited and distracted by what she was writing and overlooked a few details.

With any luck, Andrew is doing the same thing with my guitar solos. And with any luck, he and I are both good enough at our jobs to know how to leave it alone when it should be left alone and also to make the correct changes when necessary to bring out the purest possible flowering of the artist’s original intent.

I am not used to having my guitar solos proofread. I would think that a writer would be more comfortable with this, as it goes with the territory pretty much from day one. Then again, even as a writer I have had my issues with proofreaders. I often feel that they do not understand me or my intentions. I don’t think there’s a good or bad to it, but regardless of whether I am writing or playing the guitar, I think one of my aims would have to be to do it well enough in the first place that proofreading is unnecessary.

It was a spring rain. It was a subtle difference. It had less of a density to it, not so much in the way of sodden snowpants and slightly more along the line of still-wearing-those-wet-clothes-are-you?

Then it got clear, like it does. Best air here is right after a rain. I go outside just to breathe.

It got hot. I had heard it was going to, and then it happened, in the middle of the night. I could tell cos I woke up sweaty and had to take some clothes off. Sure sign of a heat wave.

And the next two days of February in southern California were as hot as Vermont ever gets in July (maybe a couple of hotter days in August). The heat was nice – got my first light sunburn of the year, it passed quickly when I applied Aloe, or Arnica, or Something – but also a reminder that it ONLY GETS HOTTER FROM HERE, HA HAAAAA!!!

Then two days that could be described as relatively cool (even bordering on chilly on at least one evening) and now it is raining again.

A return to the One.

http://soundcloud.com/boondockpissoir/sets

You can dig the Pissoir’s homeblog here:

http://boondockpissoir.blogspot.com/

enjoy,

5

More information about this track (including Album Cover Art) can be experienced at

www.marccantlin.com

specifically at the February 13 2010 entry

… lyrics available here