Takoma's one-offs and obscurities

if yr still on ilm that is

cool, glad you're digging the cromarty.
root blog put it up over here http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=7596 along with his kids album (which is ehhhh) http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=7614

also: steve gunn is the best
he really is! i've really been listening to him a lot this year.

Oh my god, Craig Leon "Nommos" rules, what a strange and beautiful record this is

This is really the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD5KRsRdFYA

This is the latest dispatch from my buddy John W., with intriguing links re Fahey and raga. Start from the top or scroll down:

For decades, Don Cherry's "Malkauns" was a favorite track of mine before I learned that the title is taken from a well-known and widely performed Indian raga; and therefore the entire piece is essentially a performance of the raga just the way any other track called "Raga Malkauns" by an Indian classical musician is. But now that I now this, I don't like the piece any less.

samples here:
http://www.amazon.com/Malkauns/dp/B001NU6EVK
and here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Don+Cherry/_/Malkauns
You're on your own as to locating and downloading an mp3 that has the whole thing.

So today I went over to the fabulous multimedia lending library to try to locate versions of the raga as done by Indian musicians -- ideally, to try to find one that sounds like what might have inspired Don Cherry and Charlie Haden so that I could hear the connection, how they got from A to B and came up with what they did.

As you can see at this link to the library's online catalogue, they have many recordings of the raga, but most of them are in the archive/storage and weren't available out in the bins:
http://www.lamediatheque.be/med/rech_n.php?intervenant=&morceau=&titre=malkauns&ref=

I did however find 4 recordings of Raga Malkauns on the premises (one of them included in the apparently encyclopedic "The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustanis Ragas", a book accompanied by 4 CDs). To my Occidental ear, none of the versions seem to bear any relation to each other or to the Don Cherry track -- except of course that they happen to use the same scale.

There's one exception however: the version by Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and his brother Zia Fariduddin Dagar, which lasts SIXTY-NINE MINUTES and is available on YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_AYI0n_Kg

If you listen to this all the way through, by the time you get to the end you can hypothesize that the drone that one of them often uses in the lowest register might have provided the original impetus for what Charlie Haden does on the bass on the Don Cherry version. And also by the end, the notes of the scale are ingrained enough in your brain that you also have a sense of how Don Cherry came up with the trumpet part. For instance, if you play the notes of the scale in your brain, and imagine them played on trumpet, you can produce an inferior but similar version of Don Cherry's improvising.

btw, my discovering Z.M. Dagar is something of a revelation -- this is seriously trippy stuff. When he's playing both with his brother and with other people, he's not accompanied by any percussion, and each of his CDs includes a performance of only one raga. 70 minutes' worth of the same raga, the same drone. And therefore, often the first 40 minutes (the opening "Alap" section) is nothing but drone with ornamentation, and then finally he introduces a pulse (in the concluding Jor and Jhala sections) -- except that the pulse is conveyed only via string instruments (the vina and accompanying tamburas).

I'm sorry to say this, but once you hear Z.M. Dagar's stuff, you hear how avant-garde minimalist guys like Phill Niblock and Glenn Branca have a long way to go, and Jim O'Rourke and Loren Mazzacane Connors should just pack it in altogether. On the other hand, the stuff that John Fahey was doing at the end of his career really is as good as Z.M. Dagar (e.g. check out the samples of the first four tracks of this:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/sea-changes-and-coelacanths-a-young-persons-guide-to-john-fahey-mw0000566552

If I understand the Indian musical system correctly, a raga is a scale (not necessarily the same notes ascending as those descending), the musician improvises on the scale, and then the resulting "piece" is simply given the title of the raga. So that in the end, any pieces called "Raga Yaman" might not sound any more similar to each other than, among Western composers, any two pieces called "String Quartet in C major" do.

But still, this seems very strange to me when I read liner notes of Indian music CDs and then attempt a cultural transposition and come up with examples like these:

1. "Beethoven's 5th Symphony is surely the most compelling and insistent performance of C minor in recorded musical history."

2. "John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' stands as what is likely the most moving rendition of the Dorian mode, especially in D."

3. "Charlie Parker's compositions 'Constellation' and 'Anthropology' belong to the harmonic system known as 'Rhythm Changes', whose pieces are traditionally performed in the milieu of urban clubs late at night, between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m."

snagged an original pressing of
peter lang - the thing at the nursery room window
last nite! :) :)

(it's the one pictured upthread with the amazing sphinx art!!! love it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du7O8pF5ddU

Jesus, when oh WHEN will someone reissue this fucking album?? It's one of the greatest folk albums ever made, and one of about five records I can think of that I'd easily drop $100 on without even thinking about it. Grrrr.

I'm desperate to find a copy as well. That particular song sounds kind of Leonard Cohen-y to me btw.

http://ghostcapital.org/phil-yost-fog-hat-ramble-takoma-1968/

i need a copy of fog hat ramble.. i have the other two yost records and love them.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/clt/3892820791.html

that's a bit spendy!

interested in this:

IN SEARCH OF BLIND JOE DEATH: THE SAGA OF FAHEY . . ..A Documentary by James Cullingham

tangentially related: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0985302801/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_asp_wTEmF.1DXF9ZB

I know this guy was pretty involved in the 'Your Past...' box set, dunno if it's a retread of some of that or like an expanded Fahey Files kinda thing, sorta curious, but tight on $ right now, so I'm not about to find out.

I mean like:
"Each record is presented with all its known issues and variations."

sounds too much for even me. 476 pages! and that's just volume 1. ah, who am I kidding, I'll buy it eventually.

i bought it.

Taking one for the team. Interested to hear how that is btw.

Craig Leon's Nommos appears to be about to be properly reissued. I'm delighted by this after just discovering it upthread.

http://www.superiorviaduct.com/products/craig-leon-nommos

fahey book sounds great. too bad it looks like this! come on, design a cover, dudes!
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51xDUHh2siL._SY300_.jpg

also kind of amazing that the list price is $57 and amazon is selling it for $13? guess i should buy it quick.

Yeah, it's ugly. And the supposed inflated price is exactly why I snapped it up when I did! I 'll report back on what it exactly is once it comes...

i ordered it too! BOOK CLUB!

Ordered. Looks great. Can't beat the price, either. Let's meet back here in two weeks and discuss!

for those interested -- my friend who is working on the Homegas reissue has been in touch with all the surviving members, has gotten some awesome rare photos, and is going to continue working towards getting it reissued. This is the same dude who did the F.J. McMahon record so you know it'll be high quality.

(also just ordered that book, lol saving money.)

Now I will quit bumming out that I lost a bid on a clean copy of that Homegas LP last week (went for over $150). One up now that looks OK - cover's trashed but the vinyl looks fine - already over $50. Can't swing it, not with this ridiculous free jazz list up right now. Err, perhaps I've said too much.

Ian, please keep me posted re: this reissue. Holy grail record for me, one of three or four LPs I'd drop $100 on if I saw it

yeah what's the label?

circadian press. small one man operation.

Welp, my "Fahey handbook" came, it appears to be a combination of truly useless arcanum (a family tree of Fahey's great grandfather?, truly obsessive levels of categorizing of each and every pressing of every single Fonotone issue and reissue) combined with quite interesting-seeming biographical and songwriting details I haven't seen yet scattered throughout. Glad I bought it, but glad i didn't drop 50 bucks on it also. I suppose the maniacal level of detail is useful for collectors and whatnot, but I don't know if this is a book you can exactly 'read' per se

how the hell did the Sir Douglas Quintet's "Best Of" LP come out on this label?? at first I thought it had the wrong inner sleeve. such a non sequitur.

Prob contract filler after SDQ's Border Wave, also on Takoma (and Takoma-Crysalis), in 1981. Here's my fave track---a Kinks kover, but fits their sound perfectly, which was the orig premise of the deal (Hey Kids! Yall like that skinny tie, skinny organ New Wave sound---here's Border Wave! Of course the original Sir Douglas premise, w "She's About A Mover" etc. was also re Southwestern influences on Brit Invasion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WcinP-YgyM#t=24

I haven't seen any mention of this record which is nice 12 string with xylophone
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8454/7994234850_fa6aa6a34e_z.jpg

test imbed (Fahey live, full show)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlCOQr7o8A4

Maybe it'll show a frame if I spell it rite?
test embed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlCOQr7o8A4

fug---one more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlCOQr7o8A4

[url] doesn't help either.

really loving this!

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20080506/270235271611.jpg

one side has just two long a cappella songs. trance-inducing.

dow - to embed you need to delete the s in https

that J.B. Smith is great.

Similar vibe to Bukka White's "Sky Songs."

Can anyone speak about sq differences between the Rvng, Intl reissue of Craig Leon's Nommos and the Superior Viaduct reissue? I've heard that the Rvng, along with adding Visiting and using entirely different cover art, is a noisy pressing, but I also recall reading a piece in The Wire in which Leon himself disapproved of the Superior Viaduct edition for whatever reason. Providing one is unable to procure an og Takoma pressing, which reissue is preferable?

Also, is it weird that this was reissued by two different labels less than a year apart?

I'm so excited to finally have found a copy of Homegas, and the disc itself looks near mint.