Roy Harper - 'Born in Captivity' (Awareness)

And we finally reach the end of the Roy Harper gauntlet. It's been a fun ride, no? Born in Captivity was released in 1984, so we've skipped ahead a few years, right over 1982's Work of Heart of which this record is supposedly the demo tapes of. Not being familiar with that record, I can only go by this which is mostly 'stripped-down' in the sense that it's Harper and an electric guitar, except for the more fleshed out cuts like 'Drawn to the Flames' and 'I Am a Child'. Harper in the 80s takes on the aesthetic that seduced many at the time - 'Child' has a mid tempo backing band and crippled guitar tones, sounding a bit like Hall & Oates or whatever was floating around at the time. This sound isn't so poo-poo'd any longer though it still sounds to me like the music I grew up rebelling against in some way. But unaccompanied, or barely accompanied, it sounds like 70s Harper, for the most part. Both sides start with songs named after people. 'Elizabeth' appears in full form on Whatever Happened to Jugula? but here is a confident slow-burner, a touching and intimate hymn for hope. 'Stan' is a song (I think) about football legend Stanley Matthews and thus I sorta like it for that reason, as it elevates him to some sort of mythic figure. Hey, I like nostalgia, especially nostalgia for a British life I never led. And then there's 'Work of Heart' , the six part song suite that fills out side two. It's hard to click with this, as perhaps I've just heard too many really long Roy Harper songs in the last few days. Or maybe the lack of full instrumentation drags this down, as all of the others (even 'McGoohan's Blues') featured a backing band. The first and last parts are called 'No One Ever Gets Out Alive', and those are catchy enough melodies, but all the stuff in the middle is hard to focus on. There are some swirling, descending guitar riffs here that sound exactly like the Page-guesting on 'The Same Old Rock', and I wonder if it's supposed to be a quote or just a struggling artist returning to one of his greatest triumphs. This isn't a terrible record by any means, and I always like when artists release the demos of something. Going through all of these Roy Harper albums, a careful reader will notice that I'm not super fair to Mr. Harper. I celebrate him for his audacity, but then prefer the straight ahead folk songs; I commend his visceral lyrics about religion and society, but then chide him for his misogyny. But that's really what it comes down to with Harper - he's a complex, fucked-up contradiction of an artist, and that's what makes him resonate so much with me still. I'm sure there's great material throughout his 80s and 90s output, and I'd love someone to make me a mix of the best of that era.

Curlew (Landslide)

The first Curlew album is really ugly to look at but has some great sounds inside.  I always though of Davey Williams as an integral member of Curlew, but here, he's absent - the guitar duties are handled by Nicky Skopelitis and they're quite understated, particularly on the more composed pieces.  Now, how much you enjoy this record is probably directly related to how much you enjoy the electric bass stylings of Bill Laswell.  I'm OK with Laswell -- someone one described him to me as a "lottery ticket", meaning you either hit it big (Massacre Killing Time) or you lose completely.  That's a bit harsh, sure, and I don't think we should really fault the guy for playing bass a bit differently.  Remember, this was years before Seinfeld destroyed the slap-bass sound forever.  And to be honest, Laswell is really exploratory, particularly on the Cartwright-composed tunes that dominate the record.  But my love is for Tom Cora, who sounds absolutely great here, getting jiggy with Cartwright on 'Bitter Thumbs' and offering his own meandering composition 'Rudders', which has the playful edge of great Dutch free jazz.  The Cartwright compositions are good too, though - there's enough openness and irregularity to disrupt any tendencies toward fusion-rock wank.  If this was a hockey team, Cartwright and Cora would be the exciting wingers, Laswell the center, and I guess Bill Bacon and Skopelitis the defensemen, though I guess that isn't enough people to have a goalie.  There's four short, collectively improvised cuts that are actually my favourites on the album.  'But Get It' on side two resembles the free folk/No Neck kinda sound somewhat, and 'Binoculars' is wonderful directionless and where Skopelitis gets pleasantly scratchy with his axe.  This was recorded in Woodstock, NY and live at CBGB's, so it's pretty funny to think about how un-rock this is despite physically occurring in two of the most famous locations ever.  

Paul Bley - 'Open, to love' (ECM)

Paul Bley has made a few solo piano records and I admit that they are a guilty pleasure of mine. Though this is the only one I actually own, I would not pass up another were I to stumble across it at a fleamarket, swap meet, or secondhand record store. You see, I used to tinkle the ol' ivories myself a bit, back in the day, and I maintain a real soft spot for that instrument. I started playing piano when I was 7. Actually, I went to a Suzuki lesson when I was even younger but that didn't work. The teacher drew a smiley face on middle C; I was in a class with about 40 other students and we all took turns going up and playing middle C once. No thanks, mom! I said on the drive home and that was that; I later started studying with a an old nun named Sister Bernadette and you can be sure that was the "traditional" method. Anyway, I bring all of this up now because after 8 or 9 years of piano lessons I could just about bash my way through Rachmaninoff's 'Prelude in C# Minor', but when it came to actually playing something interesting or evocative, sorry, no way. Thus my interest in solo piano records by people like Bley, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Cecil Taylor. Additionally, I just love the way solo piano sounds on vinyl - when you can really crank it up and hear all sorts of air in the room, and the highs just scream out of my Ortofon cartridge. Now, Bley in particular is the other end of the spectrum from Taylor; he's slow, sparse, and a major bummer. This is downer music of the highest variety. It's hard to imagine that you could want to slit your wrists by listening to a guy play piano for 40 minutes, particularly in that abstract ECM way, but give this a listen if you don't believe me. Even when he gets into more rolling songforms like 'Ida Lupino', there's just enough hesitation to inflict some real soulpain. This track is a killer because of the way he accents the tune - it's definitely got the depressed lounge feel (more than any of the others on here) which you can thank his ex-wife Carla for cause she wrote it - but Paul's grace notes and embellishments are what makes this track so amazing. Well, that and I think I can hear him humming as he plays, Glenn Gould style. Three of these tracks are written by his ex-wife and two by Annette Peacock; however, he makes it all his own. The title of the album and track 'Open, to love' emphasises the isolation felt here - a divorced man, playing piano alone in a room in Norway. You can only imagine the Helvetica font and Scandinavian design to maximise the cultural stereotypes we have about these things. I listen to this record when I want a downer, sure, but it's not angry or bitter bad vibes at all. Instead, it's music of resignation. Insecurity, trepidation, and fear also play a part. Bley doesn't try to impress by playing fast or dazzling you with crazy tone clusters, cause I guess he did all that on his 60's records. This is more like the Steely Dan of avant-jazz; an older, calculated performance inspired by disappointment instead of energy.