CLUSTER: One Hour CD (GYROSCOPE)
This is an odd one. Something about this CD gives me a really off-kilter feeling. It was recorded in the 80s, and appropriately features a numbing array of gooey MIDI-style synth patches, fake violins, tones from straight-to-video cheeseball off-Hollywood Z-movie films about sand volleyball...it's WEIRD. To make it weirder, it's all improvised (four hours of jams edited down to, natch, one hour), and none of the lo-key electro drum machine rhythms that always gave Cluster their blissout style are here to anchor things. So you get all this unrepentant cheese, but it's floating freely in some strange ether, like a weird colorful balloon-like alien floating just out of the reach of those sand volleyball players, disrupting their game. The chaps also have this amazing technique where they improvise a really Hallmark card-worthy melody, but then suddenly stop it and let space sit there (maybe filling it with a quirky tone or two, maybe not), and then, just when you think your stereo might be broken, they reprise the Hallmark card thing just as unctuously as last time, only to stop it again suddenly and REALLY make you think your stereo is broken. Gives me the same feeling as the accompanying music in the 'interview' sequence of Godard's Weekend. An ironically sick, eerie bunch of music, when it's all said and done. Quietly attaining some sort of 'classic' status with the anti-anti-anti set.

KHOURY/SHEARER/HALL CD-R (PUBLIC EYESORE)
As is often the case with Public Eyesore, I don't know who these guys are or where they come from. Well, I do know they come from Detroit, which should really be enough. It makes sense that Detroit would have some cookin' free jazz going on, and this definitely fits the bill. In fact, this is the first free jazz group I've heard to specifically remind me of Test, in that head/solo/solo/
solo/head is not the order of the day, rather a free-floating nebulous thing where everyone seems to be spontaneously composing and chattering and weaving all at once, so instead of head then solo then solo then solo then head it's more like SOHEADLO. You know what I mean? And, I don't mean that they're derivative of Test, I just think that when it comes to subtle tectonic shifts in the surface of current jazz music, Khoury/Shearer/Hall and Test are on the same fault line, a small fissure which extends from New York City to Detroit (and then all the way to Christchurch, New Zealand due to rumblings from the CM Ensemble) and isn't really occupied by anyone else. Besides, Khoury/Shearer/Hall have a lineup different than Test, with Mike Khoury on violin, Jason Shearer on saxophone, clarinet, and flute, and Ben Hall on percussion (and piano on one track, barely audible but worth it). The violin is a sort of rarely used free jazz instrument, and Khoury ends up being the best I've heard on the instrument since Leroy Jenkins. (I've never really heard Billy Bang.) This album is sort of a compilation of/introduction to the group, a mixture of live and studio tracks. I especially like track three, which starts slow/introspective and exquisitely gets faster/extrospective over the course of ten minutes. (For this piece they become a quartet, joined by one Maury Coles on saxophone.) And P.S., in a rather neat coincidence, I just realized that Jason Shearer of this trio also got mentioned on the very previous page, as a sideman on the Sound Signature CD. Crazy...

OPPROBRIUM ON-LINE
In a review in Muckraker, Patrick Marley called Opprobrium the most worthy follower to the Forced Exposure crown. I agree that it was, for five impressive issues, after which editor/publisher Nick Cain has -- understandably -- eliminated that nasty printing issue and scaled things down to an online-only operation. Understandable, but I do miss being able to just pick up the magazine a couple times a day and flip through the pages and read ten or so reviews at random and then be done with it. However, even if I can no longer read Opprobrium on the toilet, Cain has really taken no shorts on the online version; there's still an eons-wide grip of reviews and a long interviews, including one with Derek Bailey in the debut online issue. Still plenty of opinion and information to click through here, more than enough to justify the painstaking mouse-clicking necessary to get through it all.
        However, I next have to ask myself: how many more reviews by Nick Cain do I feel like reading? Don't get me wrong, I've gleaned a lot of info from his work over the years, but it seems more than ever before that every review is more an 'exercise' than it is an actual critical consideration. From the first sentence, it's always clear where he is going, and the only involvement for the reader is what 'acrobatic' sentence he uses to get 'there' this time. He only goes three places, as far as I can tell: 1. "This is a drone/freenoise type record made by a friend of mine, so I'm going to floridly praise it," 2. "This is a drone/freenoise record made by someone who isn't in my clique, so I'm going to floridly pan it, and perhaps even use the word 'dickhead' while I'm at it," and 3. "This is a free jazz record, so I might praise it or pan it, but either way, I'll be sure to write about three pages worth of discographical esoterica about it."
       The latter approach still has some merit, again from a strictly information-supplying standpoint...I'm still reeling from the introduction to Kaoru Abe that Cain gave me in a past issue (print issue #4, I believe). The first and second approaches are getting more and more tiresome. While Cain's virulent anti-'drone' bias is commendably balancing in a Drone-On world, he might as well come out and say "I hate drone unless it's being performed by someone from, or friendly with, my local scene." Just because they are examples of very good drone music doesn't make Surface of the Earth's oeuvre and, say, Bruce Russell's Maximalist Mantra Music NOT drone music. Another thing that bugs me a bit is that Cain has always written off the Campbell Kneale/Birchville Cat Motel/Celebrate Psi Phenomeon axis -- what, are they 'more' drone than Surface of the Earth and therefore not as worthy? Now that Birchville Cat Motel is slated for a Corpus Hermeticum release, we might just get an about-face. Until then, we can entertain ourselves by taking a Maxell dub of any Birchville recording, writing "by Bruce Russell" on the spine, giving it to Nick Cain, sitting back, and watching him praise it.
         But, you know, hey. Ultimately, however tirelessly 'opprobrious' he may be, you've got to hand it to Cain, for the sheer dedicated work he performs more ably than most. Even if you don't agree with him, you have to admit that he gives new meaning to the word "voluminous." And as an editor, Cain curates some pretty good writing, such as the overview of Las Rellizes Denudes by Paul Collett, or how about the out-of-nowhere art historical/pomo-critical Mayahoshi Urabe review by some guy called Michel Henritzi, which features stuff like this: "Urabe claims he's removed from the jazz idiom, maybe only influenced by Lou Reed, Billie Holiday and Georges Brassens, the soft rattling of the language that you can hear in the catatonic screams of his alto, while Hasegawa is screaming as if he was being skinned alive. You have to read Artaud and Céline again to understand what's happening here. They are like those tortured people Artaud was talking about, still sending messages while they are burning alive." Yow! On top of stuff like that, he's got Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller writing actual poems for his reviews...not only is the review section infinitely more readable than The Wire's, it's also basically as good of a poetry book as the Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal!
       The rest of the staff remains quite solid. Cain could take a few lessons from Alan Cummings, who weaves criticism into his reviews with comments that are relaxingly offhand while no less perceptive and challenging. The aforementioned Bruce Russell seems to have a most unopprobrious "no-pans" policy, tending to stick with records that turn him on and that he wants to bring wider recognition to. Marc Masters continues to go to over-the-top lengths to say "I really like this free jazz record" over and over again, though I do love his Assif Tsahar-as-Archie Manning free jazz-as-the-
NFL metaphor. (Of course, with its being on a page with a url like http://www.info.net.nz/opprobrium/html/online/1/reviews/e1_reviewsT2.html, only geeks like me/you are ever gonna see it.) Mike Trouchon, like Russell, tends to stick with records he's excited about, and certainly can share his enthusiasm with his creative and oft-soulful metaphors and similes. Jon Bywater composes oblique quasi-poetic summaries with a tone that vacillates between odd praise and vaguely Cain-ish smarm. Cain has also signed up James Lindbloom, another writer whose specialty is free jazz...who knows, in a few issue's time Opprobrium might actually become Cadence Magazine! NZ/Japan music expert Paul Collett is another new and prized addition to the staff -- if you haven't seen his website, check it out.
          Anyway, yeah, I'll keep reading Opprobrium, especially now that I got a couple of the things that were bothering me off of my chest. In fact, the website says that the second on-line issue was scheduled for June 2001. It hasn't been published yet, but don't be too hard on Mr. Cain. I have a hard enough time putting together 9-12 pages of music opinion and information myself every two months, and at the pace Cain has set with his first issue, he's doing about five times that much. You can't knock him for not putting in the work...

SYD STRAW: Surprise LP (VIRGIN)
Musician list reads like a gol-dinged 1980s 'Downtown' Cheese Circus of Avant Beatnik Stars: (in chronological order, starting with side one track one) Peter Holsapple, Marshall Crenshaw, Tony Levin, Jody Harris, Anthony Moore, Peter Blegvad, Pino Palladino (the bass player for Paul Young???), Richard Thompson, Don Was, Marc Ribot, Benmont Tench, Dave Alvin, Bernie Worrell, John Doe, Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, and Van Dyke Parks himself. And that's just side one, with the first track on side two featuring none other than Michael Stipe himself. And get this, tracks were recorded in only Woodstock, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Austin, AND "Brian Eno's House". What's going on here?!
      Apparently, some kind of crazy 1980s rich-hippie whim on the part of Richard Branson called "Let's spend as much money as possible on hip underground just once this decade!" And sure enough, the whole project has the same cocaine whiff of any of the 1970's most egregious big-money rock supersession trifles: a hell of a lot of fun for you lucky talented muso partiers, but not necessarily any AOR slop worth releasing. Syd does have a nice voice (a lotta folks do), and she looks good (a lotta folks would) on the front/back/inner sleeve trio of Herb Ritts-ish B&W photos (lovely laughing Syd/anxiety-ridden Syd/leaning enigmatically Syd). This album design, combined with an MTV News spot I saw in my freshman dorm room, and the egregious amount of money that was obviously spent making this thing, are what gave Straw her 15 minutes, at least for me.
        But I misuse Warhol, because I've spent more than 15 minutes listening to this album. Maybe even....say....80. Thing is, that's spread out over the last eleven or twelve years. I kinda sorta liked it when I first got it. After seeing said MTV News bit in my University of Nebraska dorm-room, I checked-out a vinyl copy of it from the Lincoln Public Library and made a cassette dub before returning it. I was 18 years old, fresh out of hick Iowa high school, living four doors down from another Frank Zappa enthusiast, this even older (20), and from 'the big city' (Omaha), and I felt like I had a chance to be a real intellectual, or at least a respectable iconoclast. At the time, I really did think avant-muso tendencies were a totally legit way around popular music's vast sandtrap mediocrity. (Now I think that blast/hush and "true soul" tendencies are the most legit way around, but that's obviously a different essay than this one.) I was fresh out of high-school concert band, raised on Zappa and The Police, so this particular well-played rock music for smart people went down sorta like honey. It was all elevator music to me, like noise music is now.
          Plus, there were two good hooks on side one that I could sometimes sing to myself: "You wish too hard...wishes will come true...I wouldn't wish that on you..." and "It's his turn to cry...his turn to cry..." And, I could pat myself on the back for recognizing all the avant-hip luminaries like Ry Cooder and Peter Holsapple and Richard Thompson, even if I never could get a sense of what any of them were actually playing in the gloopy overcrowded-but-flatlined session atmosphere.
          I listened to the first half maybe four separate times but don't ever recall making it all the way through side two, and before too long I put it away for good. Taped over my dub after awhile, and then six or so years later I bought the exact same vinyl copy for 25 cents at the annual library sale, I think more just because of the Herb Ritts-ish photos of Syd (not actually taken by Herb) and because 25 cents is a pretty cheap price for sentimental value. Haven't even made it through side one once with the LP version -- hell, I'm not even sure I've ever even played it -- but for some reason I've kept it for 4-6 years, or however long it's been. Why? Because Marc Ribot is on it? Once a muso, always a muso, but at least I'm starting to learn that NYC underground-rock jetset supersession indulgences are just as mediocre as LA superstar-rock jetset session indulgences.
           (Where is she now? Well, I literally don't think I've heard or seen mention of her once outside of MTV News and the sleeve of my (and previously the Lincoln Public Library's) very own copy of her record, but type in www.sydstraw.com on the internet, and sure enough, there she is.)