Blues!

A month ago, after Ornette Coleman became the first jazz musician in this Top 100 list, I asked myself who the first blues musician would be. That there has to be blues in the Top 100 is a given, there has not been a Top 100 without it. The answer came to me after a night of playing records with some friends, selecting some highlights from my collection. Blue as a Man Can Be by Robert Pete Williams is certainly one of those highlights, and the key track, Grown So Ugly, a classic. Fans of Captain Beefheart, who covered the song, certainly will appreciate the original by Robert Pete Williams. Williams is not that well known a blues singer but points for Grown So Ugly as well as Prisoner's Talking Blues, a most desperate song in the blues idiom, catapulted him into the top 50 of musicians over 28 years of counting, and as blues goes, second to only John Lee Hooker. In another list kept over 28 years, Prisoner's Talking Blues entered the top 50 of songs, and as blues goes, second only to R.L. Burnside's Going Down South. The painting, unlike my recent laboring with the oils, got done in just a bit over half an hour. It's from an image in Blue's Who's Who, that I also used when I first started illustrating the Top 100 back in 1989.

Robert Pete Williams
7.5" x 7.5"
oil on wood, 2010

Niela Miller

 Niela Miller
16" x 12.5"
oil on wood, 2005

Last week I had just mentioned my song Hungary in the post with the same name. The song didn't cross my mind in 25 years but now it did, not just once but twice. I bought a record this week with recordings by Niela Miller and the last song of the album Jenny Gal begins with the same dissonant guitar chord as my Hungary. Miller's then weaves into song while mine drones into oblivion. Of course similarities between songs is not so uncommon even when the sources are as disparate as they could be. It's in the nature of music. Even if I incessantly search for new and different tunes I delight in that moment of recognition. In When I Was in Colon by Valerie Colon I hear My Bonnie is Over the Ocean, in a 1950s recording of Cantonese opera (The Moon/Two Green Lotus Bitterly Imprisoned, also in this Top 100—post and painting will follow soon) I hear the iconic organ opening of Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, and so on and so forth. Sometimes the similarities are pure coincidence, sometimes willingly plagiarism. Back to Niela Miller's album Songs for Leaving it's easy to hear Hey Joe in her Baby Don't Go to Town. There's no 'Joe' in the song neither do we have Jimi's majestic guitar solo, but there is no coincidence in the similarities. As history will have it Niela Miller had a boyfriend named Billy Roberts, indeed the Roberts found as the song's authorship credit for the Jimi Hendrix monster hit. Before Hendrix in 1967 it was already a hit for Love (whose Arthur Lee was a friend of Hendrix'), Tim Rose, and for the Leaves in 1963. Apparently Roberts had started playing it in 1961 fusing Miller's song with Carl Smith's country hit Hey Joe! Niela Miller's Baby Don't Go to Town is few years older than Billy Roberts' Hey Joe. I'm sure Niela Miller had her sources too. Hey Joe has 'traditional' written all over it.

Hungary

Michael Hurley
10" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

There's only a handful of dreams in one's life of which the memory stays with you forever . One of those dreams for me occurred more than twenty years ago. In the dream my father, on a train in Hungary, morphed into me. The dream was given with so much detail that I ended up researching those details' (political) history. Little did I find, even a coin, of which I could read its inscription, didn't give any real context. At the time I believed it was a reincarnation dream,  but now I don't believe in that anymore. A little later, during a few months when I had the ambition to become a singer songwriter, I wrote a song about that dream called Hungary. It was recorded on the roof of the building I was living in at the time with the sounds of the city in the background. God knows what happened to the tape. My friend Oebele, who recorded it, may have it, I don't know. It was quite a pathetic song (in retrospect) so it's probably a good thing it's lost (I will never attempt a do-over). Apart from the dream I have very little affinity with Hungary or Hungarians. I have one friend, Bela Koe-Krompecher, an American with Hungarian roots, who, as fate will have it, married a Dutch woman, (Merijn van der Heijden, who is one of the few people around my home town of Columbus I can talk Dutch to -and still be understood). The Top 100 also has very little affinity with the country; once a Hungarian Gypsy combo led by Pali Gesztros had a song in it and Bela Bartok has been in the list a few times but that's all I recall.  Stat maniac as I am, I noticed this very blog spot hasn't had one single hit out of Hungary yet. This of course needs to change. So I go to the library, go to the world section, go to European section, go to the letter H (split only with Herzegovina), pull out the cd Hongrie: Musiques Populaires, and it's awesome! This year's Top 100 will have music from Hungary! Here's my top 10 from the cd:

1. Mihaly Barsoni and Rokus Papp - Tiszaujfalui tekeromuzika
2. Imre Jankovics - Harnas tancdal
3. Zither Band of Sandorfalva - Kek szivarvany koszoruzza az eget
4. Andras Szim - Bura termett ido
5. Sandor Czako's wife - Szoloorzo dalok
6. Imre Jankovics - Rab vagyok, rab vagyok
7. Erno Kukucska - Aki dudas akar lenni
8. Menyhert Vegh's wife - Harom kivandorlo dal
9. Pal Tendl - Regi dunantuli lakodalmas csardas
10. Mrs. Istvan Nagy - Ne futyoressz, ne csicseressz

Now you're asking: what has the painting of Michael Hurley to do with all this? The answer: I don't have Mihaly Barsoni (the first from the cd to enter the list) painted yet (I probably won't be able to find his picture anywhay), and Michael Hurley's is the newest I finished (while playing the Hongarie cd over and over again). Michael Hurley was in the Top 100 2009 three times, I wrote a lot about him, I met him, and did hang out a with him a little. The real link though is that both Michael Hurley and Hungary are both filed alphabetically under HU: they are next to each other in my archive. My pathetic little song had a refrain that went hu-hu-hu-hu.
Lastly here I want to affirm to my Polish friends (more than 20 visits to this site from that country) that I'm not forgetting about their country. I'm also looking into the first Polish Top 100 entry in ten years (which was an anonymous 'kobza' player'). With Poland I have a little more more affinity than with Hungary as I have met several Poles (one I was French kissing about the same time I had that Hungary dream, I forgot her name –it was a difficult name to spell let alone pronounce). In my record collection I have way more Polish records than Hungarian ones, lots of polka of course, but the first Polish record I ever got was by the singer Ursula Sipinska, a beautiful blonde who's best song on the record is a Polish rendition of Bob Dylan's Be My Baby Tonight.

Facebook

99 fiends I have gathered now, on my Face Book account. It would be nice if Jessica Lea Mayfield could be number100. I met her last year, she was 19 years old then, I was 45. I approached her as a fan, asking her autograph, and acting all fan-like. She, on the other hand, seemed very mature, joking with me and treating me like one of the good old boys. She signed a drawing I did of hers in concert, and in return I gave her one too. The concert was awesome. That she returns in this new Top 100 is because of Face Book; Elizabeth Gerdeman (one of the 99) posted her song Kiss Me Again on her page. Face Book has become a brand new source to pull music from for the Top 100. Now that I'm so close to have my 100th friend I just must take a moment here and celebrate this new source of music. What better format could I use than to compile a top 10 of music my friends have posted on their page in this still running year of 2010.

1. White Noise - Love Without Sound (per Roberto Carlos Lange)
2. Jessica Lea Mayfield - Kiss Me Again (per Elizabeth Gerdeman)
3. Singing Japanese train attendant (per Ennie van Leeuwen)
4. Extreme Animal - Live at the MOMA lobby (per John Also Bennett)
5. impLOG - Holland Tunnel Dive (per Roberto Carlos Lange)
6. Parliament - The Goose (per Roberto Carlos Lange)
7. Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End (per Elizabeth Gerdeman)
8. 3XD (Three Times Dope) - Funky Dividents (not sure, I think it was Bela)
9. Jolie Holland - I Want to Die (per Laura Bidwa)
10. Tee Set - Ma Belle Amie (per Maria van Boekel)

Jessica Lea Mayfield
16" x 10"
oil on wood, 2010

I have so much to say about this painting shown here of Jessica Lea Mayfield but I'll keep it short. I've worked on it for a long time (weeks!), just couldn't get it right. Started over three times. Everything about it was a challenge. For  one the striped T-shirt: it represented both Vermeer's tile floor and the clothing worn by inmates on a chain gang. The hardest part was the likeness. I'm almost there but there is still a touch missing. I'll figure it out. Last year the same song was on the list and the drawing of her in concert I used as representation. I had a hard time then too. Even though the drawing was made in only five minutes, I spent long hours retouching it (mostly through practice runs on copies from the original), trying to capture her likeness.

Jessica Lea Mayfield
11" x 8.5"
pen on paper, 2009
signed by Jessica Lea Mayfield

Morning Star

 Ornette Coleman - Body Meta
Painting by Chief Z.K Oloruntoba
12" x 12", 1978

Ornette Coleman
16" x 11.5"
oil on wood, 2010

"Free Jazz!" I exclaimed a few weeks ago. Now with Voice Poetry there's a second Ornette Coleman track in the Top 100 and a new painting is already made. Voice Poetry comes from the LP Body Meta, it's not free jazz but with a prize tag of only a dollar it was pretty cheap. I saw an asking prize of $60 on line but that of course is for a mint condition copy. Mine is not—not many of my records are—I hardly buy anything new, and I hardly ever pay more than $5 for a copy. The art work on the cover of the 1978 LP on the Artistshouse label by Nigerian artist Chief Z.K. Oloruntoba is psychedelic in an curious way. It reminds me of the recent work by Cincinnati painter Mark Harris, co-exhibitor in the soon ending show of our work at Country Club Projects in Cincinnati. I'll send him a copy of it, soon. It's the last week of his show called Morning Star. Go check it out before it closes; or if it's too far away:
http://www.countryclubprojects.com/exhibitions/mark-harris-morning-star/index.html
The above painting of Ornette Coleman isn't anything like it. It reminds me of the work by Columbus' painter Curtis Goldstein, not in subject matter but in painting technique. Similar too is the use of polarized (or enhanced otherwise) source material. The difference here is that Goldstein takes his own photographs and enhances them too whereas I take an image from elsewhere (from the Volkskrant in this case) and without much ado paint what's seen in the original (which is a Getty image of Coleman in concert in 2009). In this painting I used wider brushes than I usually do and worked wet in wet. I cannot make myself stick to certain techniques, I just get bored with it. I don't even have a preference to a certain technique, I use whatever I fancy. Every painting contains a few technical inventions that, of course, I can never remember, let alone repeat.

Re: Blasphemy

Nag (Jan-Erik Romøren) of Tsjuder
8.75" x 9"
oil on wood, 2010

The upside down cross is the most recognized emblem used by black metal musicians. The meaning of it is simply an inversion of the Latin cross, it signifies Satan in stead of Jesus. A simple Wikipedia search learns that the historical meaning, a symbol of St. Peter signifying humility, is quite different but that's not to the point.  The point is that when Nag would raise his arm to make the sign of the devil with his hand he would inadvertently invert the inverted cross again, making it read as the Latin cross once more. Kidding aside I do truly get into this music. When I play it loud enough it gets an escapist function for me, similar as what alcohol does. The thing is that every time I write about the music it seems like I need to joke about it as to undermine the seriousness of it and to play down my own involvement. In my third year as a black metal fan I have to come to terms with it and accept that I like an unpopular -inferior in the eyes of the connoisseur- style. The song Blasphemy by the Norwegian black metal band Tsjuder is listed for the third straight year. I'd announced in April (see Blasphemy entry)  that I would use the very same iconic picture I used in 2008 and 2009 but I went a different route with this painting of Nag sporting the inverted cross. The finished painting features about ten more of those inverted crosses coming down from the sky as in an famous image of a Christian revelation in which it rains crosses.

The statistics

Townes Van Zandt
25.5" x 19"
oil on wood, 2010

    The painting, fairly big, a little awkward, is of Townes Van Zandt, the newest entry in this year's 100. Townes Van Zandt has been in a Top 100 multiple times so I'm not going to write a whole lot about him other than to mention that the documentary film by Margaret Brown Be Here to Love Me is really worth seeing... And that the song in the Top 100 will be Waiting Around to Die, one of his classics, with unforgettable lyrics from the category, in his own words: "The songs are not so much sad, they're kinda like hopeless".
    What I do want to write about is in line with the last one (Games, Games, Games) as I make the obvious jump from games to their statistics.Just a few days ago I found out that maintaining a blog comes with a whole set of statistics that the publisher, blogspot.com, automatically updates with every new visit. Now that's something that as list keeper is right up my alley. Now that there are 40 songs somewhat certain of inclusion in the list I deem it due time to forward the statistics. I would love to use the same beautiful graphs and pie charts as blogspot.com uses, but I don't know how. Anyway, the first statistic is of the countries from which the 40 songs originate. There are no less than 16 different countries and it won't surprise anyone that the majority of recordings come from the United States: 18 (three of which are from 'ethnic' groups, sung in different languages than English). Next is Norway (black metal) with 4, 3 from England, two from Australia and India, and Spain, France, Sweden, Barbados, Nigeria, Mali, South Africa, Mexico, and Vietnam all have 1 each. 22 from North America but none from South America, 10 from Europe, three from Africa and Asia, and two from Australia. Next up is the format of the music, the format of how it originally came to m: Vinyl, 19 (15 LPs, 4 singles); digital, 13 (6 from YouTube, 5 from Last FM, 2 from other sites); 8 recordings come from the CD format of which 4 were tucked into a book as an illustration to the text). I should mention here that the numbers 1, 2, and 3 from the list all come from the last category, and coincidentally all originate from England. Next up is the division of the music into genres. In doing so I first make the division between commercial (recorded with the intention to profit) and field (recorded with the intention to document), the ratio is 33 to 7. It changes a little bit when shifting the categories from Western as opposed to World Music, here the ratio is 25 to 15. Dividing up the 25 commercial western tracks gives the following result: Metal-7, Folk (singer-songwriter)-7, Popular (general, singers/performers, for lack of a better term)-5, Jazz-3, Alternative-3. Several genres that are usually represented are missing: Blues, Classical, and Hip-Hop/Rap. Last statistic is the division between recording dates, by decades: 1890s-1; 1910s-1; 1950s-4; 1960s-9; 1970s-7; 1980s-5; 1990s-4; 2000s-9.
   People call my tastes/interests eclectic but I don't like the term, it implies such a serious attitude (like the word connaisseur) when I'm really just a musical tourist. I am interested in all of it, all genres, all instruments (I still have a hard time with the vuvuzela), all cultures, all ages. Obviously I like one recording at one time better than an other (that's the premise of the Top 100).

Games, Games, Games

Antoñita Romero
12" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

Jason Misik, bass player in the band Mother of Fire, commented on the odd relationship between the Top 100, the ranking and thus competitive nature of it, and the music that it represents. Indeed, the musical activity of a band like Mother of Fire, is not based on a competitive nature. Mother of Fire is what we could call a Utopian band, they represent an ideal for community, music, and what you have not. I have enormous respect for people, musicians, that have ideals and strong enough dedication and will power to live by it. In a piece called Music and Sports (April 2010) I've already looked into the competitive nature of some sorts of musical practice and with this text I intend to dwell on the competitive nature –not of the musicians but of their audience, and myself as an example of this audience. As a child music, like sports, was presented to me in the context of games, in which winning was the highest priority. Big events in our family room were the Eurovisie Songfestival contests, and the annual Top 100 (played on the radio on New Year's eve) of a given year. Everything I engaged in was molded into the form of games; when I played with miniature cars, I raced them against each other, in school it was about scoring As, and when music came along as my major interest it was no different. I started early on making lists, playing one song against another to see which one would end up as winner. In 1983 I started making Top 10s that culminated every year in this Top 100. But there were other games too, sometimes based on random chance. I played music by bands all starting with the letter A one night, the next day with the letter B. When I was a disc-jockey in the 90s I had a show that linked music thematically. Anything would go, from songs about eating, to songs which organization criteria would simply be their duration, or if somebody would cough in it. Every week had a new theme, no problem. Together with friends we would also play music games –how many songs could one note down in say 15 minutes, whose title would start with the word "You" for example– that were often played during  music listening marathons. Other games were photo-quizzes, or as the one below, a drawing quiz that I made a few years ago. If you feel like playing just click on the image to see the full scope of it and send me the answers, and yes, you can win a prize. The newest top 10 I made was also game related; out of every ten 45s I own in the international category I picked one I felt like playing. I have about 200 of such singles so I ended up playing twenty songs. From these I compiled a top 10. Number one ended up being a Spanish Flamenco tune called Bereberito by the singer Antoñita Romero. It will be in the Top 100 2010 (hence the painting above).

To Darjeeling!

Ustad Vilayat Khan
8" x 10"
oil on wood, 2010

Every painting’s a little different, this one’s a bit more. I was thinking about van Gogh when I was making it… Of course I wasn’t, —painters just say that, but what they’re really thinking about is how famous this new painting is gonna make them, or more likely: they’re just think about sex* — I was actually not thinking as much about van Gogh but more about van Gils. Bas van Gils that is, a fellow painter, my good friend during our college years. We lost contact for more than a decade but now suddenly, through Facebook (what else), we connected again. There are several reasons why I was thinking about him when I was making this painting, and why this painting is a little different from some of the others:
1.    The song illustrated in question comes from the film The Darjeeling Limited. Like the three heroes in the film, I happened to be on a train heading towards Darjeeling, and Mr. van Gils was sitting next to me. This was in 1991.
2.    In college I considered Bas to be my mentor. When I think he will review the painting I’m working on, I’m trying extra hard.
3.    He is the one that introduced me to all this fantastic music being made everywhere in the whole wide world. Not the least: India.

No, this painting isn’t anything like van Gogh. The swirvy, curly brushmarks may remind one to those of van Gogh but it’s all trickery. Most marks aren’t even made with a brush but with a Q-tip!
After offering my own critique, I like to offer my own defense as well:
1.    Even though a lot of the surface quality is achieved through techniques, it was the first time I experimented with said techniques. The whole process is a new one, new to me at least.
2.    As always I refrained from any mechanical reproduction techniques. Everything’s freehand.
3.    Who cares what techniques are used when the dude looks just like Ustad Vilayat Khan; the serenity as well as joyfulness radiates from his face.

  *A German, an American, and a Dutchman were standing in front of the Niagara Falls. They asked each other what they were thinking about and the German first replied: “I think about how powerful a human can be. Looking at these falls mekes me feel like I can do anything.” Then the American: “I’m humbled by the experience. One realizes that in the magnitude of creation we are just a tiny little particle. It makes me respect nature and God.” The Dutchman then said: “I think about sex”. “Why?” the others asked in unison. “I always think about sex!”

September!

Edward Kamau Brathwaite
11.5" x 7.75"
oil on wood, 2010

September has come around and that means the Top 100 season is getting serious now. Less than six months to get all hundred paintings done. They'll be coming fast and furious now as I have to average one painting every two or three days in order to get it done. My time in the studio will have much more of a decisive character, no more fiddling (diddling, doodling, fidgeting) around. Still, no painting is officially done until the Top 100 2010 comes around. There were several older paintings that I picked up and worked on again this weekend as a matter of fact. All these paintings, scrolling through this blog, may not exist anymore in the form you see them in. I've changed the Cat Power painting, the Joseph Spence, the second Beth Orton, and the second Nina Simone (I may have to remove the original from this site as I decided to cover up a fair amount of skin.) But I can only paint as many paintings as there are songs guaranteed to be in the Top 100. With this Edward Kamau Brathwaite painting I've pretty much painted every one in the list so far. The painting I started immediately after the Coleman painting (see previous). I painted the background first, a copy of the design I used behind Ornette Coleman. In the Coleman painting this design were random colors and lines breaking up the picture plane and (random) black shapes to animate the edges of it. I repeated these in the new painting but now the colors, lines, and shapes are conscious in stead of random. Edward Kamau Brathwaite is a poet born in Barbados. The recording in the Top 100 is Wings of a Dove, a poem performed by Brathwaite. The recording can be found on a cd tucked in the book Sound States - Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technolgies, edited by Adelaide Morris.

Free Jazz!

Ornette Coleman
14.25" x 8"
oil on wood, 2010

I don't really consider Nina Simone a Jazz musician. It's the style she's most associated with but I file her under Popular, the broadest category in my wall of vinyl. No, Ornette Coleman is the first Jazz musician in the Top 100 2010. Coleman was the featured artist in residence at this year's North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands. I didn't go to it, but my best friend did, he goes every year, he's the one that turned me on to John Zorn last year, he's Wim. John Zorn was artist in residence at North Sea Jazz last year, three of his recordings were in the Top 100 2009, so how fitting is it to pay some extra attention to Ornette Coleman this year? I have six of his records/cds but not Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. I really ought to get that some day. On vinyl with the original cover featuring a Jackson Pollock. The record gave a name to a whole new style of Jazz: Free Jazz. The record has only one track, it's called Free Jazz. I have Free Jazz–part 1, a quarter of the original LP, on a nice box set called Jazz: Opus Musicum, that contains many other Free Jazz greats, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, Cecil Taylor, among others. So, with Jazz finally entering the list the question arises who will be the first Blues musician this year? More than half way into the year but not a sign of any Blues yet. What's going on? I don't consider Joseph Spence a Blues musician. I have him filed in yet another broad category that was given the nice acronym of ANABEL (Artists Not of American, British, or [Western] European Linage) by Ross Simonini of The Believer. Ornette Coleman was one of the first Western musicians to work together with ANABEL; he recorded with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. For one of Coleman's 2010 North Sea Jazz concerts he once again played with the Jajouka musicians, nearly forty years after the original collaboration in Morocco.

Klezmer!

In 1983, when I started the Top 100, I had just moved from the small town I grew up in, to go to art school in the big city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch. With it came a shift in my musical interests as I clearly sought to distance myself from the narrow mindedness of my teenage years. My broadening of music interests coincided with a general shift towards an eclectic taste, towards globalization. (Twenty years into the post-modernist era—some of its characteristics caught on to a broader audience. Ironically many musicians then, especially those with a different cultural background than the dominant white European male, started to reference their specific cultural heritage.) I started to look into the vanguard of modern music. In the mid-eighties this consisted of the modern classical, especially minimalist practices, art-rock by bands like Sonic Youth, and Free Jazz. I didn’t get into the Free Jazz until much later but the former two dominated the first Top 100. Tehillim by minimalist Steve Reich was in 1983 my first number one. Tehillim for me represented my foray into eclectic taste. I did not consciously know back then that Tehillim was for Steve Reich his first exploration of his own Jewish heritage. Maybe I did know it, but I ignored it. Maybe, beside a break from the narrow minded small town teenager, it also hinted to my intention to break from the lingering bigotry (there was a latent antisemitism among some of my friends). There certainly have been many Jewish performers in the Top 100 since—Bob Dylan, to mention one, has been the most listed musician in the top 100’s history—but it took another 26 years before the issue of a Jewish music was tackled again. Last year the overtly Jewish Piram by John Zorn with his ensemble Masada, was ranked high in the Top 100. In my research for the commentaries for Zorn’s music I came across his belief that the popular music as we know it today has strong Jewish roots. When I read it I dismissed it immediately as Judo-centric nonsense because I strongly believed that the roots of our popular music came with the slaves brought into America from Africa. I dismissed the possibility of a Jewish colored history too easily I realize now. Many of the earliest 20th Century songwriters as well as performers had strong traditional Jewish roots. With reading Henry Sapoznik’s book Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World I now embrace this possibility and get excited by it. And when the Klezmer tune Doina by Joseph Moskovitz claims its inclusion in the Top 100, I realize to my own consternation I never had Klezmer music in a Top 100. The process of breaking down the barriers in order to be able to appreciate all music is thirty years later still continuing and, I suspect, will continue for years to come. I get excited when a whole new vantage point makes itself available and sheds new light on issues I thought were set in stone.

Joseph Moskovitz
6" x 4.5"
ink on paper, 2010