WAYNE KRAMER REPORT 3.22.05

From time to time I am blessed with what I call peak moments. These are times when the truth of a particular instant registers with me clearly. When there is no confusion or ambiguity whatsoever. When all distractions are stripped away and the moment merges with the feeling. They are the times when I know it just doesn’t get any better than it is right now.

Last month at London’s Royal Festival Hall I had one of those peak moments.

The music and socio/spiritual/educational/political philosophies of Sun Ra have been a pillar of my thinking for almost four decades. I first was introduced to them in the late sixties by my friend John Sinclair. I had moved out of my mother’s house on Detroit’s northwest side and into an apartment down in the Cass Corridor around Wayne State University. Sinclair and I had become friends and he became a mentor for me. He was older, better educated and possessed a worldview that intrigued me. Sinclair had a way of seeing things that made a lot more sense to me than what I was able to put together myself up to that point. We discussed everything from God to the blues and all points in-between. He was particularly well informed about music and musicians and the problems that go along with this kind of life. These were subjects that I was drawn to in an almost obsessive way.

We talked about what music means to people and what role it plays in our lives. We discussed how the music we gravitate to informs our lives and reflects them at the same time. I questioned what the connection between the musician and the listener is and how does it work beyond just the surface level. We talked a great deal and he turned me on to some music that changed everything for me. Some of this music was Sun Ra’s.

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra on ESP Disc was the record that opened the door to a whole new life for me. It’s peculiar that sometimes folks tell me a piece of music I made changed their life. I find it hard to believe, but this is exactly what happened to me. Time and time again.

Sun Ra was just what I was looking for. I have always been drawn to the next thing. The current thing only holds my interest for a short while. No matter what it is, could be trains or cooking shows. I think I’m a little better at staying in one place and enjoying the moment today but I am still inexplicably drawn to moving ahead.

Sun Ra was–and still is–way ahead of me. He has been another mentor of mine. He was also way ahead of most of the leading edge musicians of the day. These were not slackers either. In the day of Monk, Mingus and Coltrane, saxophonist John Gilmore chose Sun Ra’s band as the most “stretched-out” of the lot. Gilmore had offers to join the others’ bands and chose the Arkestra. This tells me, in effect, that Sun Ra was able to advance the entire context of western music into a larger more resonate expression. Personally, I place him in the pantheon of most important artists with da Vinci, Bach, Mozart, Picasso or Pollack.

I took dozens of acid trips with Sun Ra’s music. I suppose one could say this undermines my credibility, but I don’t care. I got deep, deep into what he and his fellows were doing. I heard what it was he was telling me. Us. That music can be limitless, that its expression is only limited by our own limited human thoughts and if we can get beyond self, then we can find a land “Where the sun shines eternally.” That the message is to make it your message.

Sun Ra died in May of 1993 and a few of the center core players like the aforementioned tenor giant Gilmore and baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick, vocalist and dancer June Tyson have also died, but the band has carried on bravely under the able leadership of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen. Who, at 70, is blowing like a teenager from Mars, which I suspect he actually is.

When we first started DKT-MC5 it was with the understanding that the band was an experiment and would have to be considered a “work-in-progress” concept. Any old ideas of what our band was or how our band might operate would have to be jettisoned in favor of a more flexible and adventurous platform to work on‚Ķif it was going to work at all. I actually wasn’t sure it could. It had been a long time since I played with Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis and a lot of water had passed under those bridges.

After the pleasant discovery that we could not only improve our ability to play together and even tour together quite successfully, I reached the conclusion: So what? Why are we doing this? To carry the message of the music of the MC5 to a new generation of fans? Sure, but the answer is ultimately bigger than that. It’s because we need to continue to do something creative. Doing things that push the boundaries of what a band is, and what the art of performing music might become given a little encouragement, DKT/MC5 is just that kind of vehicle.

The concert at Royal Festival Hall was the realization of just such a plan. It doesn’t come without a great deal of work by a lot of people. Once the idea had been hatched we were able to tie together some unfulfilled commitments from last summer’s 66-city world tour.

I assembled a new line-up of the band featuring our old friend Handsome Dick Manitoba, guitar hero Gilby Clarke and the incomparable Lisa Kekaula. We set up a short European tour to bracket the event. We had five shows across Spain and France to get ourselves together for the London concert. Being in a band is not a destination, it’s a process. The process takes a few runs-through to tune itself up for the performances. Five was a good number and by the time we hit London everyone felt pretty secure in their roles.

We were joined in London by my friend David Thomas. David and I put in some extra time in the dressing room working out the timing on the countdown section of “Starship.” It is a complicated bit of vocalizing, and it took some effort to master.

The sound checks went down fine and we were all running around from task to task like chickens with their heads cut off. There was a considerable press commitment for the day and I kept up my end by sitting for two filmings and a handful of print interviews. One film, incidentally, is a new documentary film by Don Letts on Sun Ra.

The Arkestra’s performance was a joy to my ears. The wonderful cacophony of multiple horns, bass, drums and electric guitar were fresh and sparkling. The Arkesta looked great too. The Sun Ra Arkestra doesn’t often get credit for their contribution to the art of performance in dance and theater, which is considerable. I’m not sure who influenced whom, but back in the 60s when we were first playing with them in Detroit they wore afro/dashiki types of clothes. We had just begun to experiment with sequins and gold lame and other metallic types of materials, so I am going out on a limb here to say that Sun Ra saw these bright flashy clothes on these crazy boys in Detroit and incorporated them into his presentation. Did we get it from him? Did he get it from us? Doesn’t matter. We all got it and tonight the Arkestra was shimmering and shining forth beautifully. The stage lighting really helped amplify the bright reds and blues of the sequins and bangles. The dancing was superb. Free and joyous.

We took the stage at our appointed time and played a focused set of straight down the center rock material from the MC5 book. We were closing in on the moment. As it approached, I started to feel a real excitement about what we were about to get into. All through the planning stages I kept calm and only allowed myself to be excited in an intellectual sense, as in, this a good idea among many other good ideas. But now it was real. It was palatable. I could feel it. I was giddy.

I said a few words to the audience about what Sun Ra meant to me and the band. I introduced Marshall Allen and the fellows. I introduced David Thomas and Dr. Charles Moore and we began playing “Starship.” I had a simple outline for the performance which was to start easy and free. Start small and build gradually into the actual song portion of the performance and then let’s just see what happens. What happened exceeded my wildest expectations. Each little sound I made with my guitar in the intro, someone in the Arkestra answered. I got a great exchange going with trumpeter Michael Ray.

When Dennis would lay down a rhythmic feel on drums, everybody joined in with him. The music was totally free and totally controlled at the same time. This is the lesson of freedom, its not free. For each freedom there is a responsibility, in music and in everything else. We explored theme after theme in a glorious and joyous fashion. I only wish we could have stayed with one rhythmic feel longer to see what’s over the next hill. Across the next valley. Over in the next galaxy.

I realized that, because of the stage volume, David Thomas couldn’t discern the timing on the opening chords, so I jumped in to sing the opening lines with him. “Starship‚ĶStarship take me‚Ķ” All Aboard.

The Arkestra joined in with a spontaneous counterpoint to the rock chord changes and we rounded the corner to the countdown section. The thing that makes this part so difficult is that it is absolutely set and cannot be changed. It comes at an accelerated velocity and has a lot of rhythmical words to get out at a really fast clip.

“Ten. For the gravity. Checkpoint! Nine for polarity. Checkpoint! ‚Ķ”

Made it! We’re leaving the power of earth’s gravitational pull and heading into zero G.

“Out there amongst the planets‚Ķ”

Here the Arkestra were in familiar territory. After all, space is their place. We cruised the galaxies and generally enjoyed the view for a while.

Earlier I had discussed with Marshall the possibilities of us all singing, “We travel the spaceways‚Ķ” or, “If you find Earth boring, it’s the same old same thing, come on sign up with Outerspaceways Incorporated” together, and he was all for it.

We all sang together and I never felt so at home as I did in that moment. I have been singing variations of this tune for 30 years and right there in that moment it just all seemed to fit perfectly. Right there in that instant, it was all there. From way back then with John Sinclair in the kitchen of his apartment on Warren Ave. in Detroit to right now here in London England, in an instant, time was suspended. The peak moment.

We all danced outrageous party dances from space ballet to the funky chicken. It was a full body/spirit/mind celebration. Just then, David Thomas began his Tuvian cum Venusian throat singing. We soared and roared and clicked and clacked, binked and bonked our way through the night finally ending in a drone of feedback that segued into a funky New Orleans second line march from the stage for all the voyagers. Naturally, these moments do not last.

You can’t hold on to joy. You just grab a kiss as it passes by.

I‚Äôm pretty sure the crowd went nuts but I was overwhelmed myself at the fun we just had. It wasn’t the music or the lights or the crowd, it was the experience of being alive. The backstage scene was pandemonium with good friends old and new showing up to check in.

Blissful, we left London at four in the morning en route to Italy and the remainder of the tour.

Oh yea, we filmed and recorded it too. Can’t wait to see what we got along with the hundreds of hours of footage from last year’s tour. Who knows? More will be revealed.

But the best news is we will do it again soon.

“We came from nowhere here. Why can‚Äôt we go somewhere there?” — Sun Ra

I couldn’t agree more.

Best, w

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!

‘Maybe I’ll be a feminist in my old age’

She quit London for New York after being hounded by the press. Five years later, Bjork has a new relationship and a new baby. But, she confesses, she’s still homesick for the British sense of humour

Liz Hoggard
Sunday March 13, 2005
The Observer

It’s impossible to be neutral about Bjork. Her critics certainly have plenty of ammunition. She eats roast puffin. She has a bonkers fashion sense and speaks in a mix of Nordic and Mockney. Spitting Image made a puppet of her. She had a very public fight at Bangkok airport with a photographer who got too close to her son (images of Bj??rk banging the woman’s head on the floor went round the world). Director Lars Von Trier even claimed she tried to eat her dress during filming of Dancer in the Dark .

But for many people, her arrival on the late-Eighties British music scene (as part of the Icelandic punk band, the Sugarcubes; then as a solo artist) was a breath of fresh air. We’d not seen such an exotic, counterculture figure – one who wore plaits for heaven’s sake – since the days of Lene Lovich. Broadly speaking, women in rock are ‘babes’ or ‘troubled’, but the image of Bj??rk sprinting down the street in Spike Jonze’s 1995 video, It’s So Quiet (performing dance steps from a 1940s MGM musical) made it clear she has no time for sexual stereotypes. Neither model-thin, nor conventionally gorgeous, her stage charm rests on her sheer vitality.

Her only ‘weak’ spot seemed to be her relationships with men. Her marriage to Sugarcubes bassist Thor Eldon ended when their son was only a baby (she was a single mother at 22). There were broken engagements to bad boys, Goldie and Tricky, but no one seemed to match her intellectually. Then, four years ago, she met the American multi-media artist Matthew Barney (best known for his surreal Cremaster Cycle of films). Today, they live in Noel Coward’s old house across the Hudson from Manhattan, with their baby daughter, Isadora. It seems a marriage of true eccentrics. Barney is a master provocateur (in 2003, he filled New York’s Guggenheim with tapioca, petroleum jelly and beeswax) and he has worked as an athlete, model and medic – so one senses conversation is never dull.

The couple guard their privacy fiercely, but for the first time they are working together. Bj??rk is writing a soundtrack for Barney’s new film, Drawing Restraint 9, to be premiered in June in Japan. ‘It’s really liberating to do a project that’s not just about me,’ she enthuses. ‘I mean I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer.’

When I arrive for the interview, she is sprawled on the sofa, shoes off, eating tuna salad (no puffin today). She has flown in unexpectedly to talk about two new projects close to her heart. First she is releasing a DVD of videos filmed for her latest album, Medulla, widely regarded as a return to form. It’s full of images of Bj??rk dressed in a 50kg Alexander McQueen dress covered in tiny bells, and also as a hay bale (don’t ask). Best of all is a spoof documentary following the making of Jonze’s video for her single, Triumph of a Heart, an everyday tale of a woman and her commitment-phobic lover (played by a tabby cat called Nietzsche). The action winds up in a mad Icelandic bar with Bj??rk’s artist friends downing vodka and yodelling. It’s the equivalent of a pub crawl with Bj??rk.

Of course she was working with Jonze and Michel Gondry long before they became Hollywood stars. We talk about the success of Gondry’s film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. ‘Michel did a great work there. He gave Kate [Winslet] who’s obviously such a huge spirit, such a vivacious lady, so much space. Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy. But she could be at her full volume without restrictions.’ A contrast, one senses with von Trier, who loves brutalising his actresses.

A true fashion radical, Bj??rk champions designers like Rei Kawakubo and Sophia Kokosalaki (who made the ‘curtain’ she wore to the 2004 Olympics). She would never wear jeans and a T-shirt, she says, because they are ‘a symbol of white American imperialism, like drinking Coca-Cola’. Her most famous fashion faux pas was wearing a swan outfit to the 2000 Oscars (she claims it was a conceptual joke). Does she ever tire of being eccentric? ‘It’s like music. So long as it’s a form of self-expression, I’m quite into it, but not when it becomes about power status. I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.’

Today she is wearing a vintage yellow garment that is very nearly a dress, accessorised with an orange tracksuit top, silver shoes and gold handbag. A dusting of blue eyeshadow highlights her feathery eyebrows and wonderful flat cheekbones. She looks lovely. But she is also endearingly fidgety: scratching like a small child, twisting in her chair and trying to keep her dress this side of modest.

And yet one senses a new seriousness. Bj??rk’s other project is a charity album, with all proceeds going to Unicef. It is a collection of cover versions and mixes of her 1995 song, Army of Me (the most covered Bj??rk track ever). She posted a message on her website giving fans a week to submit tracks, then whittled 600 down to 20. With its defiant lyrics (‘And if you complain once more, you’ll meet an army of me’), the song is classic Bj??rk: brutal yet tender. And it has inspired an extraordinary mix of interpretations – from Canadian extreme metal to country.

She says it humbled her: ‘I was on the 12th floor in Manhattan listening to all the versions, and I could see into all these windows. I suddenly realised that in all the bedrooms all around the world, there are people so busy doing so many things. After that, I stopped walking past houses thinking, “Oh this is just a place where people are couch potatoes and lead mundane lives”.’

She’d been planning the charity album for several years, but the devastation of the tsunami in South East Asia proved the catalyst. Why does she think we responded so strongly when other humanitarian disasters are ignored? ‘I think because it happened just a month after the Bush election, it made people think they really had a say in rebuilding things, that they could make a difference. For the first time since the Vietnam War there seems a universal feeling among common people that they don’t agree with the people who are ruling the world.’

A self-confessed ‘punk anarchist’, she found herself politicised by the Iraq war. ‘People like me who don’t follow the news that much, suddenly I was looking online every day, just to see what was going on. I don’t know about you, but whatever I was doing, having dinner with music people or plumbers (a lot of my family are electricians and carpenters), everyone was talking about the war and how they disagreed with it – or agreed with it, but everyone had a position. So although it has been destructive and disastrous, the good thing is that people actually want to have a say.

‘A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character. So for once I was interested in something everyone else was interested in. I’m not going to talk like I know about politics, because I’m a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren’t normally interested in politics.’

Her last album Medulla was certainly her most political – but in a unique way. She came up with an a capella album featuring only human voices: yodelling, beatbox, Icelandic choral music. It was, she says, a way to counter ‘stupid American racism and patriotism’ after 9/11. ‘I was saying, “What about the human soul? What happened before we got involved in problematic things like civilisation and religion and nationhood?”‘

The other major influence on Medulla (Latin for ‘marrow’) was Bj??rk’s pregnancy with Isadora: the album is full of touching, visceral songs about birth. ‘I became really aware of my muscles and bones. Your body just takes over and does incredible things.’ Now 39, Bj??rk is an example of a modern gap mother, with a three-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son (Sindri now lives with his father in Reykjavik, where Bj??rk also spends part of the year).

‘It’s interesting for me to bring up a girl. You go to the toy store and the female characters there – Cinderella, the lady in Beauty and the Beast – their major task is to find Prince Charming. And I’m like, wait a minute – it’s 2005! We’ve fought so hard to have a say, and not just live through our partners, and yet you’re still seeing two-year-old girls with this message pushed at them that the only important thing is to find this amazing dress so that the guy will want you. It’s something my mum pointed out to me when I was little – so much that I almost threw up – but she’s right.’

She’s open about the problems of balancing family and work. ‘It’s incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves.’ Slightly to her astonishment she is becoming interested in women’s rights. Because of her mother’s own militancy – ‘she wouldn’t enter the kitchen, I mean come on’ – she reacted the other way, adoring housework, knitting and sewing.

But recently, ‘I have been noticing how much harder it is for me and my girlfriends to juggle things than it is for men. In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism: we thought we’d finally sorted out equal rights for men and women … and then suddenly it just crashed. I think this is my first time in all the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, that I’ve actually jumped on the feminist bandwagon. In the past I always wanted to change the subject. But I think now it’s time to bring up all these issues. I wish it wasn’t, but I’ll do it, I’m up for doing the dirty work!’

Will it inspire new songs? ‘It’s definitely brewing inside me. Maybe if Medulla was my personal, idiosyncratic statement about politics, whatever I do next is going to be my eccentric view of feminism. It’s like any major upheaval, whether it’s the revolution in France or punk for me in the 1970s, you break up all the corruption and fuck up all the bad things, so you can start really fresh. But it’s the law of nature that it all settles again, so you have to keep checking yourself. You can’t ever say, “OK, we sorted out corruption and everyone is equal.” So I might become a feminist in my old age!’

Born Bj??rk Gudmundsdottir in Reykjavik in 1965, she grew up in a hippy commune with her mother and stepfather, a blues musician. ‘I was brought up feeling that my mother had sacrificed herself for me. Fortunately she’s now got a little business doing homeopathy from home, but she’s almost 60. I’m still desperate to get over that sense of guilt. I don’t want my baby to feel that.’

An infant prodigy, she released her first album aged 11 and was touring the world by 18, when the Sugarcubes’ first single Birthday went global. She spent years living in London, but decamped to New York in 2000, driven out by British tabloids and a terrible incident where a 21-year-old ‘fan’ videotaped his own suicide after mailing an acid bomb to her record company.

Like fellow emigr?© David Bowie, she prefers the anonymity of New York, ‘where they only have one tabloid, not four all competing against each other’. She says that she resolutely avoids celebrity parties but one day might like to run a music school for children. ‘Part of me is probably more conservative than people realise. I like my old string quartets, I don’t like music that’s trippy for trippy’s sake.’ I say she seems slightly wistful about being back in London. Does she miss us? ‘I love England. It’s no coincidence it’s the first place I moved to for a more cosmopolitan life, which is the only thing Iceland lacks. You can be a very critical, unforgiving people, you knock people down when you should be cheering. But criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy. I saw a poll this week of top BBC moments, and the first five were all from comedies like The Office and Monty Python. You are very good at skimming corruption off the top and revealing the integrity inside. In Britain things have to be pure,’ she grins, ‘You just don’t get away with bullshitting.’

¬? Medulla: DVD and Army of Me are released in May on One Little Indian Records.

from somewhere:

Ghostface Killah’s next album may as well be titled Ghostface Meets Metal Face, as he’s teaming up with iron-mask-loving hip-hop veteran MF Doom.

“I’m into old hip-hop, and the music that he makes is right up my alley,” Ghostface said. “His beats are real underground. He’s got the sound RZA had back in the day.”

The Wu-Tang rapper and the former KMD member have collaborated on six songs thus far, and while the project will probably be released on Doom’s indie label, Nature Sounds, his manager claims Def Jam is also interested.

Meanwhile, Ghost is digging up tracks for his next solo album, tentatively titled Rapper’s Delight, and Doom may have some tracks on that project as well. “I’m working my album around his beats and whatever I add from other producers,” Ghost said. “I would love to do a whole thing with him. He’s a cool guy.”

And while some Wu fans might’ve been disappointed that Raekwon wasn’t on last year’s The Pretty Toney Album, Ghost promised the Chef would be featured on at least four or five songs on the new disc.

“Fans are always asking why you didn’t do this or that, but they have to understand that people are working and busy themselves,” Ghostface said.

Schedules aside, the two are also in the early stages of piecing together a second duet album, following up Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.

“We sort of Batman’d and Robin’d that first album,” Ghost recalled. “I told him to send me some beats that he wants to use so I could catch some lines on it when I could. I’m really trying to focus on my thing, but I like to focus on two things at the same time.”

A lot has changed since their 1995 album, Ghostface said, especially the state of hip-hop. Referring to 50 Cent and the Game’s highly publicized saga earlier this month, he declared, “The game is like wrestling right now. … I don’t see any originality in it no more. Everything is a gimmick. It’s not based upon good music. It’s just based on hype now. You have to shoot somebody in order to sell some records. I put out good albums, but my albums never really sold nothing.”

He’s hoping Jay-Z can reverse that trend, now that Jay’s got a corner office at Def Jam.

“Jay knows I’m fresh, and [about] the work I’ve been putting in on the streets. It’s great for somebody to understand me,” Ghost said. “I’m glad that Hov is the president because I’d rather talk to him than anyone that’s over 50 years old. I just wanna get my talent out to the world within these next two or three years. And maybe two albums after that I might call it a wrap.

“My goal was just to do 10 albums. But if God spares my life and gives me the frame of mind, then I’m gonna keep going until he tells me to stop,” Ghost continued. “I’m going to go straight into film. I’ve been writing movies. I want to produce and direct if I could and just get my movie career up, ’cause I think I could get real busy on the acting tip. If they caught me in Hollywood, it’s gonna be some sh–. I want to do a little real estate and help poor people. I want to be that dude on the TV like, ‘For five cents a day you could feed this kid right here.’ That’s what I want to do. It’s payback for what God gave me.”

MF Doom’s manager said he expects Ghostface and MF Doom’s album to drop this fall. Ghost said his solo album and his reunion with Raekwon will likely drop later this year as well.

COURTESY JOSHUA BABCOCK!.

EMMA PEEL: Hampstead Penthouse

Up until late 1966 Emma lived in a sleek, modern penthouse atop a high-rise in Hampstead, guarded by the “cyclops,” which Steed eyes warily (top).

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of this unique dwelling is that there are no right angles, and the only conventional door is the main entrance, far left; all the rest are sliding doors. The kitchen entrance is to the right of the high-tech entertainment center/bar behind the right-side sofa–on which, you’ll note, are Steed’s bowler and brolly. The living area, enlarged below, features a free-standing fireplace surrounded by a wrap-around sofa, and sliding doors leading to the bathroom, darkroom and storage.

From within the kitchen, if the kitchen door was enlarged, one would see the panorama above, which reveals the area directly behind the fireplace. To the far left in this image is the bedroom door, through which the bed is visible. To the right of the bedroom is access to the balcony, which wraps around the living room.

The compact, modern kitchen with its built-in appliances is shown in the detail view, above left. Seems either Emma just had a party, or she is not particularly diligent about washing her dishes.

Next are two exterior views of the building; note the name visible in the second. The actual location is Highpoint 2 in Highgate. Tony McKay reports that the statues by the entrance are a result of the architect being told that Highpoint 1 was too “modern.”

The architect was Tecton, a distinguished firm of British architects, established by Bernhold Lubetkin. Denys Lasdun was at one time a partner. They designed the Penguin Pool and Gorilla House at London Zoo; two blocks at Highpoint and North Hill flats at Highgate; Finsbury Health Centre; and flats in Roseberry Avenue.

COURTESY RICHARD PLEUGER!

COURTESY ROZ PAYNE!