I think Jason is risking turning into a rock dinosaur. The way I hurt myself is a great song without the sort of crap Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman etc were pissing us off with in the Seventies, which is why punk came along, one of Jason's influences, supposedly...
(and if Jason insists on playing those arpeggios, he needs to improve his intonation)
Last Edited by on May 11, 2009 12:50 AM
Hey Andrew: Glad you like the tune, sorry you don't like the classical stuff, It's really difficult to be a traditional AND a modern harp player, to be a less is more player and a technically engaging player all in one 10 minute youtube video...thats why I have written more than one song and have posted more than one video, but what the hell do you mean "Supposedly" Punk influences?! Here's a cover of a misfits song at the end of this vid. TAKE THAT! Thanks to Adam for posting this! and thanks to all of you for your support and props all these years see you on the road... Thanks Jason "Rock n' Roll Tyranasaurus" Ricci
"It's really difficult to be a traditional AND a modern harp player"
No truer word spoken, I'm fully aware (Adam is always talking about taking blues forward rather than keeping it stuck in the past). But it indicates to me that you should have more confidence in yourself - you just don't know how good you are. You don't need any gimmicks, Jason!
Admittedly you're talking to a person who is allergic to "fusion". My friends in the Seventies mostly latched on to the lumpiest god-awful jazz-rock fusions. OK, Adam will prove that all music is fusion music, but what I'm saying is, whereas my friends thought Spirogyra or the Enid or post Robert Wyatt Soft Machine were the greatest thing on Earth, I hated all that shit. OK, I admit I listened to Shakti (John McLaughlin), but I still prefer Classical Indian music. I mainly only listen to Miles Davis from 1957-1967. But it takes all sorts, and your fans will follow you, well, most will, and you'll pick up new ones. On the other hand, if you keep the albums straight and keep the classical ad-libbing for the gigs, that would suit me.
I said supposedly because the blues-classical fusion seemed anti-punk to me. It seemed a retro step. It reminded me of Deep Purple's Made in Japan (listen to Lazy from 8:46 to 9:10).
The circumstances of my writing this are that I've drunk a bottle of wine and I'm watching Cheech 'n' Chong's Up In Smoke and it's at the bit where they're at the punk battle of the bands, and I was about 18 when this film was made, and it looks like a million years ago (or does it feel like a million years ago?), so I'm finding it hilarious and you mustn't take me too seriously!
Last Edited by on May 11, 2009 2:14 PM
Isn't it a bit presumtuous to banish all the nice things we can learn and imitate from classical music because a few prog rock bands used them in the 70's? Sure, punk was against all of that, but I can't tell you how many irritating Punk bands I see all the time doing the same old SLC Punk thing...That was thirty years ago! Fossils!
Don't despise the classical thing on principal, despise it when it genuinely sucks. But lo, here hath it kicked a mighty ass.
Hey Mind Ape thanks Bro...I thought it kicked ass too... To Andrew Thanks for the nice words but I ain't keeping or omitting any thing to suit you or anyone else I play what I play cause I like it oddly enough thats what usually what makes other people like it. I don't give a crap if it's blues, fusion, rock, punk, classical whatever Screw it. I take everything seriously thats one reason I have succeeded to the level I'm at and I don't take part in gimmicks in my mind unless I tuely mean them I wrote that piece cause i think it's beautiful. Damn why am I even writing here....Any way here's your Cheech and Chong:
Mind Ape, Yeah, I agree that punk fossilised very quickly. I'm no expert, but the Dead Kennedys are about the only thing that were worth listening to after about 1980. Funnily enough the Specials were playing at the Brixton Academy tonight, so brixton was full of skinheads! I'm saying the use of classical music just ain't new.
But I'm forgetting one of the things I hate most - when classical musicians think they are being cool by playing jazz or blues or Astor Piazzolla with rods up their asses. I mean the Grapelli/Menuhin stuff has adherents, but I stick to Reinhardt/Grapelli.
Last Edited by on May 11, 2009 3:25 PM
Hey, Jason, I've got Done with the Devil on order. Peace, man!
And while I've got your attention (unless I've lost it already), I posted once before to say that I loved Rocket Number 9, but also I'm a Sun Ra fan and I've got at least three versions of his Rocket, but they are all fast, and I think slowing it down the way you did was genius. So can I ask the question again, have you heard a slow version, or was it your idea to slow it down?
Last Edited by on May 11, 2009 2:35 PM
Thanks. I'll keep a look out for that. Sun Ra used to record almost every rehearsal he did and release it on vinyl in really small editions. I had friend in the Seventies who had something like 50 pieces of Sun Ra vinyl. Apart from the commercially available stuff, I only had one, but it was literally split in two! When I took it back to the shop, they said, "it's really rare" and I said, "it's no good to me if I can't play it." Happy days.
I thought the classical thing was fuckin cooool!! But most of all I'm glad to see someone play high energy HARP!! I've talking shit for the way I play the harp for 22 years. I play to load, to fast, over play and Oh yeah I was once told thats pretty good, but that isn't blues. I love your fuck everybody attitude! Never make excusses for what your doing!! I really like your ideas. Keep up the good work!! I don't know if you have thought of this but some of the best heavy metal guitarist in the 80's mixed classical with rock with great success! Did you ever do the "harmonica players profile" before you started to travel a lot?
I bet you're a fan of Jimmy Page too, because that's more him that I'm finding in the first vid. Maybe because when I began playing harp, I had no model player and listened mainly to metal, so I always played on Led Zep along with Page's guitar.
By the way, I like your cover of "turned into a martian", I'm a fan of all early Misfits, Samhain and early Danzig. I'll try to get your CD, sounds great !
Thanks for posting, Jason! And for keeping it civil, even as you tangled with Andrew. I don't mind jousting at all. We're actually having a deep conversation about aesthetics, of all things.
My feelings about all this were changed by reading Robert Walser's RUNNING WITH THE DEVIL: POWER, MADNESS, AND HEAVY METAL MUSIC. He made the point that the apparent distinction between "classical" and "rock" music--as expressed, for example, in Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven"--was utterly factitious. (That's a fancy way of saying it was a made-up distinction.) He went back and looked at the cult of personality that had swept through classical music--Paganini, Chopin, etc. He argued that they were the rock stars of their day. They were associated with the Devil, chased after by hordes of women, savaged in the press for their long hair, improvisations, and so forth. Most of them had some period when, like Berklee undergrads, they hid out in the woodshed and developed prodigious technique.
Eddie Van Halen is a key figure in the book because he took classical music very serious indeed.
Anyway, false distinction.
I suspect that the distinction between, say, punk and grandiose/inflated/classical-rock fusions that Andrew is trying to uphold is shakier than it seems, too, although I'll grant one thing: as I understand it, one of the foundations of punk was a deliberate renunciation of technical competence, and that clearly distinguishes it from what Jason, and ELP and Yes, etc., are doing.
On the other hand: punk dedicated itself to the idea of "noise." And as the French theorist of pop music, Jacques Attali, discusses in his study, NOISE, "noise" is always in the ears of the beholder. It's not a real quality. One man's noise is always another man's music. Jazz was "noise." ("Jungle noise," actually.) Rock was "noise." The Beatles, for god's sake, were "mopheads making senseless noise." Bebop was "noise." The pre-blues black musicians indicted early blues--"Memphis Blues"--as "noise" that made jook people cut each other up. "An out-of-order piece," is what Lucius Smith called "The Memphis Blues." We know better now. The world catches up with each successive form of music that has been branded "noise," eventually, and makes it a part of the common inheritance.
Jason puts punk vocals together with blues vocals; he puts classical etudes together with Junior Wells. That's the postmodern touch; it's a sign of actually living in the present moment, which is what creative artists do. Punk was surely valid in its heyday, but if you make precisely the same music today that they were making in 1977, you're a nostalgia act, ready to play the Wesbury Music Fair on summer evenings, with hotdogs and 16 oz. beers emptied into paper cups by the sales people so nobody throws them and gets hurt. The old punk is no longer punk, in terms of being a vital contemporary gestural vocabulary that exerts traction and conveys believable rage against the machine.
In other words, I think Jason is doing just fine making the explorations he's making. When he adds the orchestra--well, maybe that's taking it too far. But maybe not. Ray Charles and Bird both did that.
Last Edited by on May 13, 2009 2:53 PM
Thanks Adam for that incredibly enjoyable entry. Your thorough knowledge of just about anything musical and often otherwise has always amazed, impressed and intimidated me since we first shared dinner in Portsmouth back in 97. I would however be so bold to add to your excellent post that another big part of Punk is depriving the audience of what they want/expect and/or a "screw you" attitude and I do believe putting classical music at the end of a slow blues falls under those headings in many peoples mind. In the end no matter what you do or play or how well or poorly you do it there will always be people that love and hate what you do. I think a good definition of artistic success is when there are few who feel apathy and ambivalence about your art. I often fail to remember that as well as a great Mark Twain quote passed on to me from Walter Trout: "Critics are the eunuchs at the orgy of life"
Music is subjective. Even Yoko Ono has a fan club. Some musicians are before their time (like Prince, IMO). Some are there at the perfect time (the Beatles.) One thing I do notice is that memory is also subjective. The early 70's are great in our memory, but we don't seem to remember Billy Don't Be a Hero or You Light Up My Life. The current state of music always seems lacking compared to the past. The true innovators (and Jason, I count you as one) have to contend with the historians. In the harp world, we have the historians (who I personify in the Joe Filisko's). These guys know the past masters, and revere them. They know every nuance of every note of all the Walters and Sonny's. Then you have the otehr end of the spectrum you have Adam. Adam wants to push the boundries. He loves the old masters, but wants to surpass them, and if it can't be him, he's there to cheer on the guy who will. Right now, Jason is the next hope. He might do it, but if he doesn't, the guy who does will count Jason as one of his influences. Our problem is that music is so fragmented today that a shining star can't shine for the whole world, just for his niche.
I must admit that some of Jason's music is a little beyond me. I mean, he throws show tunes into a blues solo! But his passion shows through, and his mastery of the instrument is incredible.
I'm happy to continue this discussion as long as no-one thinks it's an ongoing criticism of Jason.
"When he adds the orchestra--well, maybe that's taking it too far. But maybe not. Ray Charles and Bird both did that."
It won't surprise you to hear that orchestras are something else I'm allergic to!
Or, less obviously, string accompaniments. Bjork was fantastic when she used string ensembles live, but I've never quite gotten used to the strings in Joni Mitchell's Don Juan. And also Hong Kong Woman by Tim Buckley (from Greetings from LA) sticks in my mind.
Yes, I've got some of those Bird recordings - what sets my teeth on edge is the tuxedo'd WASP feel I get from the orchestras and the announcers. Also the strings are often really badly recorded so it sounds like a corny Hollywood spoof of Latin America in places.
"I suspect that the distinction between, say, punk and grandiose/inflated/classical-rock fusions that Andrew is trying to uphold is shakier than it seems."
I hope you don't permit your students to express unsubstantiated suspicions in essays! I suppose it depends on how we define punk. Punk became glam very quickly, I'll grant you that, but then I think I already did grant someone that. But there's a historical line going from the Velvet Underground to the Dead Kennedys to Bikini Kill which doesn't exactly bring Yes to mind.
Oh, and I love Nouvelle Vague - some crossovers work.
If Jason is writing a separate piece called Caprice, then I look forward to hearing it, but The Way I Hurt Myself already contained one classical coda, and I felt that two was just a bit too much.
Love and peace
Last Edited by on May 13, 2009 11:52 PM
Prince is an interesting one. I'm not keen on his bombastic early Eighties rock, but I like his funk. But I 100% sympathise with women who find him "icky". Scarlet Pussy is probably the worst song ever written.
Love and peace
Last Edited by on May 14, 2009 3:32 AM
Andrew:May be its different cultures around the world may be it isn't I don't quite understand your use of the tuxedo'd "WASP".
In fact that statement alone I don't understand that style of critisism. Its your opinion and that is fine.To my mind thats unhealthy. Critical reflections on the past on Bird isn't going to change anything.Critisise the present is altogether different. I know the odd thing about Bird and I think I know what it meant to him to be given that opportunity. There was a time many years ago like alot of horn players where I spent some time looking at his work.
You know something, Chan Richardson told me this her self.
BIRD never critisised anyone, other than positive things.Do you know something, Thats a RARE QUALITY in a HUMAN BEING.
Artists expression is what it is. Thats what they choose to do. You may like it or not but that is not the point.
As long as the artist is trying to place and develop his or her music in the present all influences are valid.There is no right or wrong in it.
Reference Punk Believe it or not I still live in one of the most tolerant societies in the world. The point being that when the youth rebelled against the social and economic conditions in and around 1976 it was done through AN ART FORM.
Sopwith, Adam mentioned orchestras. I could tell that he was half serious half in jest. I decided to support his sentiment, but perhaps it's harder to see where I'm jesting. I said that I didn't like the Bird recordings with orchestras. I had to say why, otherwise we get a forum with a load of unqualified statements about likes and dislikes. We'd be swapping lists. Or worse, we get a forum with nothing but unqualified hero-worship. That would bore me, if no-one else.
To me the Bird recordings sound like he was playing to a WASP Carnegie Hall audience, with every female member of the audience a dowager wearing diamonds worth more than Bird's personal fortune. That's a picture I get; it's intense; it's part of my listening experience. It may be the wrong picture. I'm happy for someone to say "wow, I don't get that picture at all" or "wow, I get the same picture" or "yes, that was the reality" or "that was just the recording quality - in reality it wasn't like that".
But you offer me "I don't like that style of criticism. In fact I don't like criticism". It wasn't criticism. It was a description of the feeling I get when I listen to the Bird recordings. It was an explanation of why I don't like to listen to them.
I know what I did wrong - I didn't write, "It won't surprise you to hear that orchestras are something else I'm allergic to, LOL!"
Serendipity: I just put my iPod on random and the first track to come up was Roll Over Beethoven by the 13th Floor Elevators.
Love and peace
Last Edited by on May 14, 2009 6:18 AM
Adam I love your comments on punk nostalgia acts. That's exactly what I feel. Like I said in another thread, I'm too tired to pogo.
I cannot entirely agree that punk was about the deliberate rejection of technical skill though. It really was broader than that - it was about knocking the 'Rock Gods' off their pedestals and declaring that music was now an egalitarian state. It really was a revolution. I guess that meant accepting that style and energy were considered as important as technical competence, but it's an injustice to some very talented musicians to say that punk was about de-skilled music.
I was only a kid during the first wave of UK punk, but I grew up with the tail end of it as it morphed into 80s new wave and Goth (the daddy of Emo)It's by no means poetry, but these lyrics sum up what punk meant to me...
"Dont wanna be nobody's hero, Don't wanna be nobody's star, Don't wann be nobody's hero, Get up, get out, be what you are" S.L.F
"It was easy, it was cheap go and do it!" The Desperate Bicycles
Kudzurunner:"On the other hand: punk dedicated itself to the idea of noise"
I don't agree or I am not sure on the other hand the point being made by the French theorist man you mention. Everyone who can hear, hears noise first and foremost. Every single sound is a form of noise. So I don't see that as any valid reason for Punk dedicating its self to noise.
To me Punk was controlled anger verging on rage. It came about because of what had happened in Britain which started in and around 1976.Mass unemployment inflation out of control. The youth with no future no direction nothing.
All influences to some degree are valid in any style of band.
Simply to attempt and rekindle punk in isolation without a movement behind it is done for obvious reasons which alot of folk initially can't see through.
Last Edited by on May 14, 2009 8:43 AM
Yeah andrew that's what I was trying to get across. I'm a fan of good music and I like creative people that do it with good taste! That is what this thread is about! I don't want to argue with anyone, because everyone has their opinion. So here's my opinion. If anyone doesn't realize that Jason was wailing and getting in to it! Then to stop and play that classical passage was very cool with excellent timing. Cool isn't something you can teach or explain! Oh and I almost forgot. He's one of the best harp players on the planet(in my opinion) so maybe you just don't get it! Like I said not trying to argue just stating my opinion! Randy Rhodes also did this to great affect. I never thought about learning classical passages before, but man that video just blows me away! I'm going to try learning it on the chromatic!! I currently do not have any of his CD's, but I just became a fan. Good work Adam and thank you agian!
Not picking sides here or making any criticisms - just that this thread made me think of a DVD I own. It is Ian Hunter live in Oslo, Norway with an orchestra. Can't say much for his harp playing (he idolizes Bob Dylan so you can imagine the style he plays), but his singing is the best I've heard him do. If anyone cares for him or the old Mott the Hoople you should give it a listen. Not all the songs are orchestrated so there is a nice mix.
