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JACK ROSE discography by Byron Coley (Arthur, 2013)

As published in Arthur No. 33 (Jan 2013), accompanying the Jack Rose interview…



Above: Still from Jack Rose & Glenn Jones: The Things That We Used to Do film/dvd, courtesy Jesse Sheppard and Glenn Jones.

JACK ROSE DISCOGRAPHY

by Byron Coley (with thanks for help from Mike Gangloff & Glenn Jones)

Hung Far Low, Portland Oregon (Klang CDR, 2001)
Doctor Ragtime (Tequila Sunrise CDR, 2002)
Red Horse White Mule (Eclipse ECL-012 LP, 2002)
“Red Horse II” on Wooden Guitar (Locust Music 33 CD, 2003; 2LP, 2008)
Raag Manifestos (VHF #85 CD, 2003; Eclipse ECL-039 LP, 2004)
Opium Musick (Eclipse ECL-026 LP, 2003)
“White Mule” on Golden Apples of the Sun (Bastet BAST-0001, 2004)
Kensington Blues  (VHF #92 CD; Tequila Sunrise TS-12001 LP, 2005)
“White Mule III” on Imaginational Anthem (Tompkins Square TSQ0531 CD, 2005)
“Box of Pine” on This Side Up (UK Ptolemaic Terrascope POT-35 CD, 2005)
“Sun Dogs” & “Now That I’m a Man Full Grown” on By The Fruits You Shall Know The Roots (Time-Lag/Eclipse 3LP, 2005)
“Hey Fuck You Rag” on Two Million Tongues Festival (Bastet BAST-0006 CD, 2005)
“Variations on Fleur de Lis/Be The Name of the Lord” on Dream Magazine #5 comp (SWE Dream Magazine CD, 2005)
“Untitled (Parts I & II)” (Tequila Sunrise TS-7002 7”, 2006)
“Cross the North Fork II” on Imaginational Anthem Volume Two (Tompkins Square TSQ1424 CD, 2006)
“Amp” on Less Self Is More Self (A Benefit Compilation for Tarantula Hill) (Ecstatic Peace E#107 2CD, 2006)
Jack Rose (aRCHIVE 28 CD, 2006; Tequila Sunrise TS-12006 LP, 2007)
“How Green Was My Valley/Buckdancer’s Choice” (split with Silverster Anfang) (BEL Funeral Folk ff015 7”, 2007)
“Since I’ve Been a Man Full Grown” on The Great Koonaklaster Speaks: A John Fahey Celebration (Table of the Elements TOE-CD-91 CD, 2007)
“Revolt” on Mind the Gap Volume 68 (BEL Gonzo Circus GC084, 2007)
I Do Play Rock and Roll (Three Lobed TLR-049 CD/LP, 2008)
Dr. Ragtime & His Pals (Tequila Sunrise TS-12007R, 2008)
“Mr. Rose Visits Washington DC” on Meet the Philly Eilte (BEL K-raa-k 7”, 2009)
The Black Dirt Sessions (Three Lobed TLR-066 LP, 2009)
Luck in the Valley (Thrill Jockey 229 LP, 2010)
“Moon in the Gutter” on Rough Trade Shops – Psych Folk 10 (UK Rough Trade COOPR250 CD, 2010)
Unrock Series – 12.11.2009 (GER Unsound UNR-009 CDR, 2010)

As Dr. Ragtime:
“Buckdancer’s Choice/Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” (Sacred Harp Library 7”, 2005)
“Alap/Flirting with the Undertaker” (Tequila Sunrise TSR-6, 10” 78, 2005)
(compiler) Dr. Ragtime Presents Nice and Nasty (Ecstatic Yod CDR, 2008)

Jack Rose & Jason Bill:
Via St. Louis (Drunken Fish dfr-36 CD, 1996)

Jack Rose & Glenn Jones:
“Linden Avenue Stomp” on The Wire Tapper 17 (UK Wire Magazine CD, 2007)
The Things We Used to Do DVD (Strange Attractors Audio House SAAH058 DVD, 2010)

Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers:
Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers (Klang Industries 008 LP; VHF #116 CD, 2009)
“Revolt/Soft Steel Prison” (UK Great Pop Supplement GPS28 7”, 2008)
“Shooting Creek/Rappanhannock River Rag” (UK Great Pop Supplement GPS49 7”, 2009)

Jack Rose with D. Charles Speer & Helix:
Ragged and Right (Thrill Jockey 12.42 mini-LP, 2010)

with Ugly Head:
Spoon Knife Fuck (Transparanoia 7” , 1994)
A Bowl of Fever (Transparanoia 7”, 1994)
“These Drugs Aren’t Working” & “Throttled Sleep” on Dixie Flatline (Radioactive Rat CD, 1994)
Silence Is the Mystery of the Future Age (Transparanoia CD, 1997)

with Pelt:
Brown Cyclopedia (Radioactve Rat 333 LP, 1995)
“Big Stick and Little Sweet Play ‘In the Pocket’” (possibly) on With Pure Hell Raying From Our Sacs (no label MC, 1995)
Burning / Filament / Rockets (Econogold Ego-002 CD, 1995)
Snake to Snake (Klang Industries LP, 1996)
Woove Issue Five split with Soma 77 (WUVT-FM 7”, 1996)
Max Meadows (VHF #28 CD, 1996)
Techeod (VHF #36 CD, 1997)
For Michael Hannahs (no label CDR, 1997; VHF #38 CDR, 1998)
Black Florida split with Harry Pussy (Klang Part 3 7”, 1998)
“Zinc Mine” on untitle comp (UK Ptolemaic Terrascope POT-24 7”, 1998)
“Tibetan Ass Hash” on Umlauted Roman Numeral Five (Klang Industries Fifth Anniversary) (Klang 2CDR, 1999)
Empty Bell Ringing in theSky (VHF #43 2LP, 1999)
Rob’s Choice (VHF #54 CD, 1999)
two untitled tracks on Pelt/Pengo/Andy Gilmore Live At The Vilage Gate Carbon CR33 CDR, 2000)
Keyhole (w/Keenan Lawler, Eric Clark) (Eclipse ECL-006 LP, 2000)
Ayahuasca (VHF #62 2CD, 2001)
Houston 2001 (Klang CDR, 2001)
Six of Cups (Klang CDR, 2001)
“The Signal Tower at Murraysville, Pennsylvania” on The Invisible Pyramid (Last Visible Dog 2CD, 2003)
Keyhole II (w/Keenan Lawler, Eric Clark) (Eclipse ECL-017 LP, 2003)
Pearls from the River (VHF #76 CD, 2003)
A Capsized Moment/Paris 3.5.04 (Klang CDR, 2004)
Untitled (VHF #90 CD, 2005)
Skullfuck/Bestio Tergum Degero (VHF #98 CD, 2006)
“Sunflower River Blues” on I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey (Vanguard 79789-2 CD, 2006)
Heraldic Beasts (Eclipse ECL-050 2LP, 2006)

with Pelt/Rake:
United Supreme Council/Oastem! Vibe Orchestra (Eclipse ECL-009 LP, 2001)

with Dredd Foole & the Din:
The Whys of Fire (Ecstatic Yod #49C/FYPC20 CD, 2003)

with Glenn Jones:
“Linden Avenue Stomp” (unique version) on This is the Wind That Blows It Out (Strange Attractors Audio House SAAH024 CD, 2004)

AH, MAN: A career-spanning conversation with JACK ROSE by Brian Rademaekers (Arthur, 2013)

As published in Arthur No. 33 (Jan 2013)…

Photo by Michael Chaiken

AH, MAN
A career-spanning conversation with JACK ROSE, American musician, recorded just a few months before he died in 2009
By Brian Rademaekers

When I started covering music in Philadelphia in 2007, my beat—the city’s crumbling post-industrial river wards—felt like a veritable nexus of weird folk and psychedelic experimentation. The Espers clan and their compound, Fern Knight, Fursaxa, and heavy-hitters like Bardo Pond were all there, churning out a storm of beautiful, strange music that seemed in part a product of the ancient, twisted alleyways of Fishtown and Kensington.

Here, Jack Rose was the benevolent, unassuming King—a master set apart from his peers by a massive presence and an indomitable, mystical talent that elevated him from mere musician to magician. He was a dark alchemist, transforming calloused flesh, polished wood and taut steel into the intoxicating, intricate worlds of sound that were his music. Not that Jack — Jack the giant, hulking Virginian — would ever presume to wear a crown; it was just something that he brought into the room with him, disarming all with a humble warmth offset by a blunt, caustic confidence that he wielded like a knife at just the right moments. These days, most of the musicians from that scene are gone from the neighborhood, though none as gone as Jack.

When I first heard Jack’s 2005 album Kensington Blues, I was thunderstruck, lost in awe that such a masterpiece not only existed, but that it was made in my time, by a man whose elbows polished the same bar counters as mine. Listening to Jack’s recordings was great [see sidebar for a complete discography] but best of all was seeing Jack live, spreading his gospel in church halls or little clubs or living rooms and, finally, along the banks of the Delaware River for a summer concert series shortly before he died.

Watching him amble up to his chair with guitar in hand signaled the start of near-religious experience. He would hunch over the instrument, cock his head to the side and, with closed eyes, unleash wild syncopated layers of rhythms, leaving listeners rapt in a sort of devastated trance. Here was this giant bearded man suddenly becoming seamlessly enmeshed in his guitar to create these idiosyncratic spells that were at once as delicate as flowers and as forceful as hurricanes. Seeing that miracle in the flesh, there was nothing else like it in the world. For me, it was like being a jazz freak in the ’40s and living down the street from Charlie Parker.

So began a years-long obsession. I felt compelled to document this genius quietly living in our midst. And Jack obliged. It never seemed to bother him that some reporter from a little local paper was always pestering him, asking for details about a show or politely begging for an advance copy of a record. In that way, Jack betrayed the appearance of a dominating, cocksure master and revealed a man with a very big heart.

My pretext for interviewing Jack in the summer of 2009 was his forthcoming long-player on Thrill Jockey, Luck in the Valley. Jack was elated. He and his wife, Laurie, had just bought a tidy little brick rowhouse a few blocks from the city’s blasted Port Richmond waterfront. He bragged about his new car, a Honda that he loved for its efficiency in carrying his guitars from gig to gig. He raved about a pizza joint he’d found down the street, about how quiet his block was. To him, the Thrill Jockey release was the milestone he’d been awaiting, a culmination of years of hard work and mastery that meant he could finally say he was making good bread on the merit of his music.

For three hours, he let me follow him around the house, tape recorder in tow, as he smoked and poured tea and pulled LPs from his wall of records. He was a man satisfied, a musician reveling in the feeling that his art was finally about to find the place in the world that it deserved.

When Jack died a few months later, I groped through the shock, looking for some way to respond to the ugly, gaping hole that had so suddenly appeared, and decided on transcribing the whole of our conversation from that summer day on Ontario Street. That tape is presented here, and captures Jack in a bright mood at the peak of his career, ruminating on everything from his first lessons to his labor on “Kensington Blues” to the joy of landing the Thrill Jockey deal.

* * *

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Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Bull Tongue” column from Arthur No. 30 (July 08)

BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore

from Arthur No. 30 (Oct 2008) [available from Arthur Store]

This new Little Claw 7” on the Physical Sewer label which they had on their last roadtrip doesn’t even sound like them. But what do they sound like anyway? They sounded like the greatest goddamned fucking band on the planet the time we saw ‘em. Two minimalist drummers, a guitar dude with a nice underhook rhythm rip and a girl with a badass no wave slather tongue tearing hell out of her slide guitar given half the chance. And not all hellbent rage either—some nice licorice melt drizzle crud groove too. Fuckin’ awesome. This 7” sounds amazing but like some other weirdness was at play in the living room or wherever this beautiful session went down. You’re fucking nuts not to locate this—try their myspace roost.

Although the material is clearly posed, the new Richard Kern book, Looker (Abrams), is as voyeuristic as Gerard Malanga’s classic Scopophilia and Autobiography of a Sex Thief. Kern’s volume combines a feel of chasing a subject and photographing her without her knowledge, with some purely 21st Century tropes (dig the upskirt end papers), but the feel seems to also be a tribute to the ’70s Penthouse mag vibe. The nudes and font and the introductory essay by Geoff Nicholson all combine to create a volume with a much more gentle charge than Kern’s last book, Action. On the virtual opposite end of the photographic spectrum is David B. McKay’s Yuba Seasons (Mountain Images Press), which has some of the best nature photography we’ve seen in a long time. McKay has spent 40 years photographing this Northern California river and the area around it, and he has captured something really mind-blowing about the interaction of water and light and stone. The landscapes are great, but the river shots are beautiful, mysterious, fast and deep. You can feel them as much as you see them. Really fine.

There’s been a whole ark-full of gospel comps the last few decades and Lord yes they are always welcome but just when you think the well is dryin’ up along comes this motherfucker of a manic backwoods backstreet romper Life Is A Problem (Mississippi Records, 4007 N. Mississippi Ave., Portland, OR 97227 tel.: 503-282-2990). It’s been out a while and is even in a second pressing (without the first pressing’s bonus 7”) and is compiled by Eric and Warren from the Mississippi record store and label in Portland, OR and Mike McGonigal, who also annotated. It’s a 14-song set with some really raw guitar blowouts, handclap n’ chant fever stomps and sweet as ‘Bama honey singing. Some names on here we know like the lap-steel slasher Reverend Lonnie Farris but there are some straight up surprises. Particularly “Rock & Roll Sermon” by Elder Charles Beck, where he rails against the devil’s music, all the while kicking rock n roll ass. More sanctified sounds promised from this label in the future. Before this LP they issued a comp called I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore 1927-1948 which is also sheer beauty digging into tracks released by immigrants to America delivering early Zydeco, Salsa, Hawaiian slack key, etc.

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