(2005)
I know it’s pain getting there from anywhere east of Beverly Hills, but Tinariwen are playing the Santa Monica Pier this Thursday. They are from Mali, but are actually Taureg and share that cool kind bluesy Malian sound that’s been stirring up the music scene in a lot of places (if not the American rock scene…) You can hear an example of them on that incredible “Festival in the Desert” album, which is a live recording from the same named event held in the sands a day’s drive from Timbuktu. That album is the most exciting live concert recording I have heard in many years, and I can’t see how some of it’s amazing, bluesy, funky, windy Afro-Saharan vibe won’t be emanating from the stage this Thursday at the Pier. Funny thing about this desert sound is it’s eerie similarity to American blues…there’s a real John Lee Hooker loping groove and grit to it. Like the best roots reggae in a way. Well worth your checking out, even if you are not as addicted to African sounds as some of us are.
Besides, it’s free.
(2010–Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)
And there’s a couple great events from other continents on Saturday. We’ve been digging Mali’s Tinariwen quite a while, with their mix of Sahel feeling and melodies set to a very gritty instrumentation. It’s very bluesy, like so much Malian music, and it strikes a deep chord with many of us, but the rhythms are often wonderfully alien, loping chunkachunk swaying stuff, and it’s absolutely irresistible. It’s rock’n’roll hard too, so that 2007’s Iman Aman was almost a Saharan Exile on Main Street. Their latest Imidiwan is a touch lighter and less gritty but just as good. The men in this band did a brief stint long ago as Taureg guerillas, a romantic story that pop journalists still mooning over Che Guevara just love. But military service is just an interruption in many a young musician’s career, and Tinariwen are and always have been musicians first and foremost, turning ancient music traditions into a formidable new style that certainly blows our mind.
Ya gotta wonder about the art on the guitar, in that eye, that eagle, maybe a setting sun? A rising moon? Ancient stuff. Christianity purged most of the ancient signs from western culture, protestantism left nothing but the true cross. A whole universe of magic symbols reduced to one. Rationalism dispensed with that one and left us with nothing magical at all. For everything there is a logical explanation. Everything. For me there’s no longer any magic, no miracles. I see a guitar like this covered in ancient magic and I feel envy for a second or two. That’s all, just a second or two. I listen to Tinariwen and hear one of greatest bands in the world and all makes perfect musicological sense.
And while I’m at it, here’s another great 3 am party tune….picked up No New York in the Village in ’77 or ’78. Still got it…and it still sounds great at a party at 3 a.m.
(2010–Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)
On Monday the Theo Saunders Quartet is at Charlie O’s on Monday. We imagine they’re doing Monk again but to be honest club gigs are where jazz really happens, and always has, and always will. Three or four sets, a loose vibe, good booze, good food, and a parking lot or alley to smoke funny cigarettes, that’s the way it ought to be. That’s the way it always has been. Forget the whole America’s classical music thing. That implies something beautiful and way old that’s been preserved a long time. That’s a concert hall thing, which is OK but not us, not at all. Galleries and museums and “performance spaces” are nice, but smack a bit of salons…too many rich people and intellectuals and like that. The jazz thing is something we need to hear and watch and feel for real. We dig the jazz bars. Minton’s was a bar. That’s all you need to know. Google “Minton’s” and dig.
(seven inch single sleeve , c. 1988)
Busting up a brawl at the Anti-club in the 80’s. The kid on the left there had gotten his buddies to pull the soundman down on the floor and were wailing on him. No reason. I was about to nail one dude who’d taken a swing at me when I realized I could kill him, so I bitchslapped the little fuck. That ended it. My buddy Don Butler was right there with a camera and got this notorious shot, which wound up on my brother Jon’s band 7” cover. The days of vinyl. Claw Hammer (named after a tune off of Trout Mask Replica) was one of the truly great bands of the ’80’s underground. But don’t even ask about the tune…it’s some strange tale of childhood. People still call me Brother Brick. There was a band in Australia called Brother Brick (I never heard them.) I’m just glad it was a great tune. Imagine having some crap song with your name on it…..
(2008–Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)
There is a lot of jazz this week, but if we have to pick a fave it’ll have to be Jesse Sharps’ Gathering at the Jazz Bakery this Sunday. Jesse—a key player in the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra—released The Gathering a couple years back, an excellent slice of Leimert Park jazz featuring a couple dozen of the neighborhood’s finest all blowing like mad on some great compositions and nice arrangements. He’s gathered them up again for this show, and besides his own sax playing, there’s reedmen Charles Owens and Kamasi Washington, each capable of extraordinary fireworks (this is Eric Dolphy’s hometown, after all), trombonist Phil Ranelin and the incredible vocalist Dwight Trible. So good to see the great tradition of Leimert Park jazz alive and kicking.
Bit of a shame, though, it has to do its lively kicking out in Culver City, a long way from Degnan Avenue. Or that Jesse Sharps has to come all the way from Germany to get the ball rolling. Leimert Park is probably this town’s last living jazz neighborhood. Central Avenue is but a memory brought brilliantly to life once a year at its jazz festival, and downtown and Little Tokyo exist only in fond memories and some books; the older days are utterly gone. No memory, no history, no names, nothing. But Leimert Park is still here, charming and lovely and full of life. You can tell that jazz was once everywhere….but it’s often hard to hear any now. Now the music of Horace Tapscott echoes over at the Bakery while the spirit of Billy Higgins inhabits a too often empty World Stage. So sad. Perhaps some of our local politicians whose election posters still grace the walls around there will deign to take notice. Or perhaps not. Jazz is a hard luck story, no matter who wins elections. But we digress….
I’ve been so busy doing this blog I forgot all about Facebook. So I wrote this in Facebook. Then decided I could pretend I blogged it here. Posting or blogging…what’s the difference? Anyway, tomorrow is double nickles for Brick, btw. Finally. There was a time when double nickles meant double pennies, once for each eye. A hundred years ago that’s what that meant. Now people live forever. Weird. I party with guys over 80. And they do party. Everything but chase girls. Though my friend Virg lets them sit on his lap. All night long at our party, women in his lap. A friend a generation younger watched him jealously. What’s his secret? he hissed. How come they all sit on his lap? He was mad. I said I dunno. Maybe they just like him. Which just made him madder. I told him to have another bowl and not worry about it. He did and stopped. Later’s he’s goofing with the guy. Weed does have its uses. That was my birthday party. Last year or the year before, I can’t remember. They tend to blur together in an endless stream of anecdotes followed by hours of cleaning. Not having one this year. Too expensive. We’ll try later. Now we’re just gonna go to the Foundry on Melrose tomorrow. Love that joint. OK, I’m at work and not working. Many of you are also at work and not working. You’re reading this blog or on your Facebook page posting inane shit to people who write inane comments back. Like this. I mean this is inane. Way inane. Textbook inanity. Of course many of you are not working and can’t believe that I’d sit here at work and not work. I know. I feel shame. And that’s America to me. That and those women sitting in Virg’s lap.
It’s so strange how movie stars seem free of time, and people who were born generations before us are young and vital and alive forever, and we can develop terrific and utterly ludicrous crushes on them. For me it’s Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich , and Miriam Hopkins. I have adored Miriam Hopkins ever since I saw her in the 1930’s Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. That’s the best version of the story, Frederic March is brilliant and terrifying and Miriam Hopkins is sensational as the dance hall girl, in bed and nude and gloriously Pre-Code. You could get away with that in 1931. She seemed designed for those times, she was gorgeous and sexy, hot tempered and stubborn, she was willful and intellectual and independent. She loathed the Hollywood scene and instead hung out in high level literary circles with the likes of Tennessee Williams, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and William Saroyan among many, bedding several.. Nuts about writers, she was. And they her. Who could resist her brains and beauty and languid South Carolina drawl? Who could resist a movie star who didn’t like movie star? A southerner who broke all the rules of the old South, down to bedding who she liked and actively loathing segregation? Her’s was a long career doing apparently what she wanted to do and not worrying much about the competition. Perhaps she didn’t give a damn what people thought, period. She certainly swung that naked leg with willful abandon in Dr. Jeckyl and Mr Hyde. Funny how a shapely gam back then could be a feminist statement. Nobody could tell Miriam Hopkins how to behave. 
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Monophytism? It’s either the doctrine that Christ had a single, divine nature, or else it’s a venereal disease, I can never remember which.
I think the icon thing was settled when they decided it was OK to venerate icons as long as they did were not worshipped as being divine unto themselves. Of course, then Islam came in and rendered that moot. Aside from the fact that the Koran is venerated.
There are always complications…..
And then there are relics. Relics of the saints are one thing, but what if the relics are of jesus himself? What happens if you have an urn containing, say, the cock of Jesus. Doubtless there were many of these. Now, how would one venerate the cock of jesus? Is it the Lord itself/himself? In that case you worship it. Or is is a relic of the Lord. In which case you venerate it? Or is it something you leave on the mantle and talk about at parties?
Me, I ‘m an atheist so how the hell would I know. I’m just asking.
(2011)
I am so wasted right now. My allergies kicked in insanely so I asked my devoted wife to bring me a couple allergy pills. She complied. I gulped them down and immediately forgot. Later I just had to smoke this cigar I’ve had staring at me for a week or so, and then I decided I needed whiskey, went out onto our splendid sundeck, lit up that nice stogie and sipped a double whiskey on the rocks. It was a beautiful night, and everything turned a beautiful two dimensions and I sat out there in the silence, watching everything and out of my mind high on antihistamine and nicotine and a little booze. Loved every second of it. I rarely drink whiskey at home or smoke cigars or take double allergy pills and just loved it. Thank god I am too wasted to type. But life is so beautiful.
(a couple days later….)
Wow…this is crazy beautiful. I forgot I sent this. I was really effed up…i had forgotten I had taken the double allergy pills and was watching the old Preston Sturgis flick The Lady Eve and everyone in it was drinking whiskey and smoking cigars so I had to join in. After a few puffs and a couple swigs I got incredibly buzzed . I remember sitting out there, the night was perfect, and all was instantaneously two dimensional and inutterably gorgeous…that is the one part of being epileptic I absolutely love, those sudden changes in depth perception. You guys can’t appreciate how lovely it is. The same effect happens on acid, so anyone who’s tripped has gotten a tinge of it. In any case I sat out there and had the urge to write and laughed wondering who the poor soul was gonna be that got a deranged email, but felt better figuring I’d be too effed up to type. But these damn fingers…they tried. Out came that email. That first paragraph is a vivid and perfect description…I had forgotten all about that until I read this again.
Brick Wahl 