Katherine Young: Bassoon Time

Katherine Young — Further Secret Origins (Porter, 2009)

I got curious when the Love, Gloom, Cash, Love blog got so excited about a solo bassoon record. And it even had a tie to that viola trend I’d written about earlier:  One of Katherine Young’s ongoing bands is Architeuthis Walks on Land, a duet with Amy Cimini on — what else? — viola. I had to check this out.

Because it was on the verge of being released, I figured I’d give Young’s solo bassoon album a listen first. It’s definitely experimental, often bordering on drones, but it rewards close listening with wisps of melody that do add up to a whole, a story. And the bassoon is accompanied by electronics that tap out subtle rhythms backed with the texture of small crinkles or static crumples.

“Terra Incognita” opens with a freightliner’s blast of bassoon, but from there it explores quieter bleats over a soft electronics backing.  “For Autonauts” likewise explores quieter territory, with raspy gentle tones, clipped short like tentative harmonica notes, played over a subtle, irregular pulse.  The tones get longer later on but keep to the same careful, near-melodic template. It’s not a drone, more like a whispered song that’s not in a hurry. This is the track I’m thinking of with that “close listening” remark — it’s 14 minutes, but if you’re in tune with its frequency, the time flies by, and the wandering near-melody makes perfect sense.

Same thing on “Elevation,” in a smaller dose.  The bassoon produces more of those harmonica sounds, even some multiphonic bits ….. You can hear the effort. It’s like watching art being etched from stone, a careful pace.

“Some People Say That She Doesn’t Exist” is the most accessible track, with a bass pulse underriding a pleasant melody. But it’s followed by “Orbis Tertius,” which closes the album by getting us back into abstract improv turf — long tones evoking an eternal sea.

The Architeuthis duo covers similarly abstract ground, but Young plays in all sorts of contexts from pop to Anthony Braxton. I’ll have to keep an ear to the ground for her.

Patrick Cress’ Telepathy

Patrick Cress’ Telepathy — Alive and Teething (Telepathic, 2009)

Telepathy is a longtime hidden gem of the local jazz scene, and it’s too bad more people haven’t checked out the way Patrick Cress and Aaron Novik bounce sax/clarinet lines off one another in this energetic quartet. I got to see them live back in June, and as I’d mentioned then, they’ve got a live album out.

Most tracks feature a hard-punching middle-tempo. Tim Bulkley’s drums lay down solid smacking beats that both horns can play off. This lays the foundation for some terrific group work.

The main theme of “The Workout” is chipper and snippy; I love the snappy attitude in the way the sax clips short the first quick note in that line. For Novik’s solo, the band seems to spread out, offering a nice wide space without necessarily slowing down much — elbow room. “Metal Telepathy” buzzes low to the ground (baritone sax plus bass clarinet?) and rocks out with some raspy soloing in front of a busy rhythm section.

So, you don’t get full-tilt Spy Vs. Spy speedballing, but you do get catchy tunes with a heavy stomp to them (sometimes in an odd time signature) followed by solos that blaze and sear, with Cress and Novik egging each other on. Or, sometimes, they’ll solo together in intertwining lines.

The composing certainly draws from players like Ornette Coleman and Tim Berne, but it’s also got Klezmer and world-music twists to it, for a vaguely Eastern European tinge sometimes.

“Powder Monkey” (track 2) features the kind of sinewy, twisting melody I’ve come to associate with these guys. (And it’s in 10/8, I think.) “Optichism” comes in with a languid snakelike pulsing, a vague touch of Asia. It’s the kind of track that’s slow in spirit but not physically slow in tempo, and the theme serves as a launching pad for what eventually becomes a lurching maelstrom.

“Teething” opens the album on the right foot: a chugging little composition that quickly hits a hiccup, a preplanned bump in the groove as it shifts from 6/8 to 4/4, if I’m counting right. That’s followed by an energetic group-soloing stretch. “Hi Hi Pizza Pie” is a seven-beat rhythm with a swingy melody, richly harmonized between the two horns.

Things close out with “Annika’s Lullabye,” a sweet little melody that leads into a free and open-ended, but still sweetly soulful, improv section. It’s like a gospel-tinged free jazz, not far removed from the free jazz of the ’60s. You can hear the crowd noise during the quieter segments here.

Brian Groder’s Pickup Band

Groder & Greene — s/t (Latham, 2009)

A brisk session of free jazz from some terrific modern players.  I first heard of trumpeter Brian Groder on the album Torque, where his backing band with Sam Rivers‘ trio (with Sam Rivers included).   Here, he’s got another crackerjack band, with pianist Burton Greene up front.

“Landfall” opens things with a late-night feel, between the piano chords and the crisp trumpet.  It passes for a normal modern-jazz composition until things start to break down, getting into a free-jazz rumble as its middle section of “solos.”  Then, like curtains parting, the late-night sound descends back into the foreground.  It’s a nicely organized track, and a standout.

“Nigh” is another fun one, with Ray Sage’s drums setting up a straight grooving rhythm.  Groder and saxophonist Rob Brown bleat out free jazz lines, separately or overlapping, for a few minutes, just enjoying the beat. Greene jumps in on piano a little later to really crack things open.

Then you’ve got the straight-out goofing around of “Hey Pithy, Can You Thropt the Erectus,” which includes someone (Greene?) spitting out disdainful little spoken phrases.

“Separate Being” ends up in more disjoint territory, particularly when Greene goes off on a faux-ragtime piano jaunt during everybody else’s blocky free-jazz-improv phase. On “Amulet,” the band goes all-out abstract (although Greene adds some more old-timey jazz for kicks). It’s a spacious track dominated by prepared piano, plinking along with a stacatto rubber-band sound. Adam Lane’s thick bass and Sage’s drums add plenty of meat without getting too cluttered.

(A word about Lane on bass — he’s a real treat here, as always. The springing, ever-shifting lines he comes up with in the intro to “Only the Now” are trademark Lane work. Always good to see him added to a session.)

“Cryptic Means” shows off Groder and Greene by themselves, through some brisk, jazzy improvising. It’s a speedy track that still conveys a sense of patience, of letting the music carry its own weight. (I’m probably thinking that just because it’s a sparse track, having only two instruments and all.)

Very nice work, overall.  Groder surrounds himself with good company, and as on his previous CD, it pays off.

Beth Custer’s Clarinet Thing

Clarinet Thing — Cry, Want (BC, 2009)

Clarinet Thing, Beth Custer’s all-clarinet group, has existed for 20 years but only has two CDs to its credit (to my knowledge) and plays only rarely.  When a show popped up at Yoshi’s last week, I figured I practically owed it to the band to show up.

Not as long-form or abstract as ROVA, not as ethereal as Chris Speed’s “The Clarinets,” not as metal as Edmund Welles, Clarinet Thing might have a closer analogue in the World Saxophone Quartet. They do get into some freeform improv and some wild free-jazzy soloing, but it’s all unapologeticly jazz at heart, down to the Duke Ellington covers that showed up on their first album.

Cry, Want draws more on Jimmy Guiffre and Carla Bley for inspiration (the title track is a Giuffre cover).  At the Yoshi’s show, billed as the CD release party, we got treated to lots of original compositions from the new disk, some covers, and a couple of tunes that are apparently being prepped for the next CD, which might be out in just six months.

A few of the pieces from Cry, Want that they played:

“Iluku,” Brown’s piece about his father, who was given that nickname while living in Africa as a boy. Lots of old-time jazzy counterpoint, a pleasant tune.

“Who Died and Where I Moved To,” a Ben Goldberg piece with a playfully sneaky beat, bluesy chord changes, and lots of catchy old-jazz borrowings in the individual parts. A highlight of the show and the CD.

“Polestar,” another Goldberg piece, this time gossamer and lovely.

“2300 Skidoo,” a Herbie Nichols composition that shows how he straddled contemporary and future jazz traditions in his time.

And versions of “Night in Tunisia” (stunning) and “Crepuscule with Nellie” (during which Custer lost her place and couldn’t locate the proper sheet music page in her folder — an experience second only to the time she forgot to put a reed in her clarinet, she said).

As for the newer stuff, Custer trotted out two parts of a five-part suite inspired by Buckminster Fuller.  It started out nicely enough but without the abstract or geometric aspect I’d expected, considering this was the guy associated with geodesic domes and buckminsterfullerene.  But then they kicked into some wild improvising and a quirky riff that kept reappearing.  Better.

The group also did a waltz, “Sweeping Staircase,” that comes from one of Custer’s silent-film scores. And the show closed with a bit of Brazilian choro music by Pixinguinha.

As for the lineup of Clarinet Thing: Custer, Sheldon Brown, and Ben Goldberg are still around from the previous quintet formation (which put out the album Agony Pipes and Misery Sticks in 2005).  Peter Josheff and Ralph Carney are out, replaced by longtime local jazzster Harvey Wainapel. The four of them sat in the usual arc formation, like a string quartet would, and they took turns introducing their songs on the mic. It was a casual show, a fun air.

Goldberg spent most of the night on the contra-alto clarinet, which resembles a one-legged tuba (it’s got a stick to help the performer hold it at mouth level). The other players covered nearly every other type of clarinet between them, including a lot of bass clarinets.

Fun concert overall, and a nice CD that of course has a similar sound.

And if you want to hear what they sounded like live on KPFA a couple of weeks ago, click here, but do it fast — that archived show will expire Thursday, Nov. 26.

Happy Birthday Fred

Fred Anderson Trio — Birthday Live 2000 (Asian Improv, 2009)

Part of the spoils from the Chicago trip.  This is a limited-edition disk that was being sold as a fundraiser for the Velvet Lounge, Anderson’s South Side joint, so it was a tad more expensive than usual.  That’s fine.

There’s not much to the packaging aside from the attractive black-background cover, a photo with enhanced borders for a line-drawing look. The music is the attraction: three fairly long (22-, 13-, and 14-minute) pieces.

The 22-minute opening track is table stakes, the kind of high-energy jazz you’d expect from Anderson’s bands: a straight-up sound with plenty of free attitudes in the soloing. Nice stuff that shows Anderson still has the creative fire burning.

Track 2 starts with a clever, poking bassline from Tatsu Aoki, a minimalist funk patter accompanied by a light tapping beat from Chad Taylor on drums.  It all hints at an exotic African rhythms, particularly once the saxophone starts into a slow, jamming mode and Aoki’s bass lays the foundation in very low, swampy notes and a catchy beat. It’s a wonderful piece, the best of the bunch.

Track 3 starts with Anderson unaccompanied, first in an upbeat blues mood but later wandering into other jazz territories, of course. He covers a lot of ground in five minutes before the rhythm section kicks in, Taylor with breezy fast drumming and Aoki opting for a bouncy, descending-note bassline. Anderson comes in with sax that’s plenty fast but not abrasive; coupled with the busy drums, it’s a piece with a lot of movement and a warm glow about it.

Great stuff.  But for a real birthday bash, check out the lineups for Anderson’s 2009 celebration, his 80th. You can see a list on Tatsu Aoki’s site, if you scroll down: Six days of artists like Ernest Dawkins, Ari Brown, Kidd Jordan, Henry Grimes, Dee Alexander and Jeff Chan. The Velvet Lounge is still selling promo posters from the event.

Tracking “Dogon A.D.”

Early on in my obsession with Tim Berne, I learned he was heavily inspired by Julius Hemphill’s Dogon A.D. album. And I’ve longed to hear it since, to get a sense of how Berne’s career germinated. It’s like being a scientist tracing matter back to the Big Bang (except my job was a lot easier).

Problem was, Dogon A.D. is long out of print and not likely to resurface. In an interview, Berne said he’d tried once to get the rights to reissue it but was stymied. (He did manage to reissue Blue Boye, a solo Hemphill album. Berne witnessed the recording process, as he notes in this great interview on Ethan Iverson’s Do the Math.)

How quickly things change. “Dogon A.D.,” the title track, was briefly available on the Destination: OUT site (a great study aid for free jazz listeners), so I got to hear the original’s funky pulsing. And now, cover versions have emerged from Vijay Iyer and Marty Ehrlich.

How do they compare?

First, here’s the premise. “Dogon A.D.” is built on a grinding, grumpy funk riff that’s in a subtle 11 time — you don’t sense the real rhythm until you pay tight attention to the drums and realize you’re lost. That catchy riff becomes a platform for free improvising from the horns.

Ehrlich sticks close to the original formula, down to Hemphill’s lineup of sax, trumpet, cello, and drums. In fact, his whole album, Things Have Got To Change, is a Hemphill tribute, sporting three Hemphill compositions and a group of Ehrlich originals that show Hemphill’s stamp of catchy, complex funk.

Ehrlich resurrects “Dogon A.D.” with repect and gusto. He chooses a relatively relaxed arc for his own solo; rather than sandblasting (which isn’t his style anyway), he plays around with unexpected tonalities, a sideways push into new ground. Then James Zollar digs in with the trumpet, showing some polished free-jazz flash.

Iyer’s version, which had been previewable at NPR in the weeks before the Historicity album came out, has a necessarily different sound, as Iyer’s trio uses just bass and drums behind his piano. Iyer’s rolling piano solo includes his usual low-register rumblings and hard bass pumping, and lots of adventuruous, breezy work with the right hand. The bass and drums cut free from the basic riff for a good all-soloing feel, and the bass later takes over for a short, quiet, bowed solo.

But the real treat to Iyer’s “Dogon A.D.” is in the way he deals with the composed and pre-arranged parts. What was once an airy two-horn theme becomes a tense piano punchcard. And the re-emergence of the dual horns towards the end is replaced by a quiet break, where the beat continues suspensefully, followed by some hard-chorded jazzy drama and a nicely fluttering ending. Iyer’s remolded the guts of the song like clay, a prime example of the good that can come of taking new approaches to tried-and-true material.

(Note, too, that Historicity has a theme: cover songs chosen for their “disruptive quality,” as Iyer says in the liner notes. Like Ehrlich and Berne, Iyer apparently considers this a pivotal piece worth preserving and expanding upon.)

And the original? It’s still magical. Abdul Wadud’s cello holds down that 11-based riff, later twisting it into a heavy-sawing phrase that ends on a two-note chord that he lets ring, like a struck match. It’s a nice touch. Hemphill doesn’t blaze lightspeed with his solo but produces a lot of sharp corners and sudden turns, all the while pouring out a fiery, raspy sax sound, a gritty air that Ehrlich and Iyer don’t try to replicat — probably because that’s Julius, and not them. On trumpet, Baikida Carroll lets the sparks fly but also leaves a lot of white space, so that the cello part keeps on drilling into your consciousness.

A word on drumming, too, since Philip Wilson gets a nice mention in that Berne interview. Ehrlich’s take, and Iyer’s, to a smaller extent, both open with a crisp drumbeat that spells out the 11/8 pulse. Wilson, on the original, just splashes out the stressed notes for a 4-4-3 rhythm. It’s a nice sound and leaves some mystery out there as the cello riff starts asserting itself. Then again, if the other versions started that way, they’d be just copycatting. I think the difference is warranted.

The Berne interview has inspired me to try catching up on more of Hemphill’s material. That’ll be the subject of another posting, probably not for a few weeks.

Dogon A.D. remains unavailable, although you might be interested to read one of these.

Steuart Liebig’s Mentones: Chamber Jazz Rocks

Steuart Liebig & The Mentones — Angel City Dust (pfMentum, 2009)

I love that Steuart Liebig has a bar band. The Mentones not only stomp through some rocking beats, they also pair up the saxophone with a chromatic harmonica, one that gets played like an electric instrument. It’s a buzzing, flailing, bluesy good time.

But under the surface, the band is playing the same kind of complex chamber-jazz music that Liebig uses on his more “serious” albums.

Pomegranate, one of those “serious” albums, was my introduction to Liebig. He’s part of the southern California crowd that includes Vinny Golia, G.E. Stinson, Nels Cline — and Jeff Kaiser, the guy who’s kept the scene documented for the past decade on the pfMentum label.

Pomegranate consists of four long chamber pieces,
each featuring a different guest soloist. I love the mix of cerebral jazz and thoughtful composing here — especially on the Nels Cline track, which ditches all chamber-jazz pretentions and goes for a total noise freak-out. Yeah!

But back to that bar band, The Mentones. This is fun stuff that evokes images of dive bars just outside town, where the motorcycles kick up the desert dust. But with sheet music. Bill Barrett’s harmonica adds a honky-tonk touch to otherwise chamber jazz-y compositions, and then he blazes through his solos like he’s ready to throw beer bottles back at someone.

A track like “Empty” or “Locustland” manages to rock out amid complex twists and turns in the writing. “Headlock” is a great head-banger. “Wool” and “Slow Burn Fever” go for the slower, swampy tempo of a dusty 110-degree day, although the latter ends up in a brutal battle of harmonica versus Tony Atherton’s sax.

This is the third Mentones album, after Locustland and Nowhere Calling, and I’d recommend any of the three.

Sax & Drumming Core

Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core — Stone Shift (Rogue Art, 2009)

* Appearing Sunday, Oct. 4, at 21 Grand, w/Ochs’ Kihnoua (see below)
* Also in NYC on Oct. 13, performing at Roulette.
* And lots of other east/midwest cities (see below)

Drumming Core puts Larry Ochs‘ sax in the middle, flanked by drummers: Donald Robinson on one side and Scott Amendola on the other. It’s not a unique setup (see Ken Vandermark and Sound in Action), but it’s compelling, and Ochs has gotten good mileage out of it.

While Stone Shift is the third Drumming Core album in seven years — a decent track record for avant-garde groups — tours and shows for the group have been sporadic, probably a byproduct of busy schedules and the usual economic handicaps.

Based on Ochs compositions, Drumming Core pieces have a songlike feel. The drums get plenty of freedom, but for long stretches, they’re also responsible for keeping an overt rhythm to the pieces, creating an interweaving of rhythms and soloing that doesn’t get overwhelming.

In live shows, it’s a treat watching the contrast between Robinson and Amendola. Both play all kinds of styles, of course, but each has trademark moves that are particularly satisfying — Amendola’s traces of funk in the beat, Robinson’s deliciously intricate mallet work on the toms. Their styles overlap quite a bit, too, but the differences make a live Drumming Core show really percolate.

For the past couple of years, Drumming Core has added the team of Satoko Fujii (piano) and Natsuki Tamura (trumpet), who appear on Stone Shift. The result opens up more possibilities for interplay and new sounds, of course.

I really enjoyed the dry, stripped-down feel of the original trio, but I also can’t blame Ochs for wanting to explore new territory with the band and the compositions. Stone Shift is a good listen, built of four extended pieces that make good use of all the band’s talents.

“Across from Over” opens in a swingy, thumpy vein, Ochs buzzing on tenor sax with the drummers playing rhythms that could have fit a blues jam. After a few minutes, the trumpet makes its entrance — but then, everything condenses into a quiet improv, pocked with tiny blips of organ-sounding synth.

The final minutes get into an exciting rhythmic pulse, with heavy-handed piano and ecstatic trumpet blares over a deep drumbeat. It shows how the extra two instrument can kick up the level of drama.

Some of that drama also shows up in “Finn Veers for Venus,” which goes for an open and spacey sound accented by occasional synth flurries. (Every Drumming Core album has had a Finn/planet track: “Finn Crosses Mars,” then “Finn Passes Pluto.”)

“Abstraction Rising” shows off the compositional nature of Drumming Core, in the form of unison sax/trumpet lines, a sound that draws from the late ’60s well. The track puts Fujii’s piano up front right away, a combination of abstract splashing and ocean-deep middle-register phrases. As the sound settles down, the trumpet and sax play out a unison jazz line that draws from the ’60s well. After some brisk group improv, another composed line surfaces from a pulverizing sea of low-register piano (a Fujii trademark).

The quiet opening to “Stone Shift” shows off the subtle possibilities of the drums, including an especially tight, soft roll that could be either drummer but conjures up Robinson in my mind.

I have to admit, Fujii’s use of synthesizer on here is weird and sometimes distracting, like a gimmick. You could call that a bias on my part — here’s a new sound that my ears don’t associate with this type of music, or at least with this band, so it’s getting rejected like an organ transplant. Could be. Or maybe, just as the bagpipes or piccolo wouldn’t sound right in certain settings, the synth isn’t what’s needed here. At any rate, she uses it sparingly, and sometimes to good effect — a bubbling low-register synth backing serves well against an energetic Ochs solo on “Stone Shift,” like a menacing lava pool just under the surface. And near the end of the piece, there’s a sparse phase of muted trumpet and tiny sax sounds — it reminds me of parts of Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures — with light synth that acts as a background curtain.

All told, this is a solid album. Catch this group while you can. Like Finn passing all those planets, they don’t come around as often as you’d like.

By the way, a word about Kihnoua, which will be performing at the Oct. 4. show. It’s an improvisatory group that includes Amendola, vocalist Dohee Lee, and various guests: Okkyung Lee or Joan Jeanreneaud (cello) in the permutations I’ve seen; Fred Frith (guitar) or Liz Allbee (trumpet) on the Oct. 4 show. I wrote up a brief review of a performance last year, and Ochs is aiming for a CD release in the spring.

Here’s the rest of the Drumming Core tour itinerary, for those who aren’t in the Bay Area or NYC:

Oct 8: The Whole Music Club, University of MN, Minneapolis
Oct 9: Sheldon Concert Hall, St Louis, MO
Oct 10: Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
Oct 11: Timicula White House, Orlando, FL
Oct 12: Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY
Oct 13: Roulette, New York City
Oct 15: Real Artways, Hartford, CT
Oct 16: Portland Conservatory of Music at Woodford¹s Church, Portland, ME

Spiller Alley

Larry Ochs, Miya Masaoka, Peggy Lee — Spiller Alley (Rogue Art, 2008)

Stef got it right on his Free Jazz blog eight months ago: This is not-so-small music built on small sounds. I’ll echo him in calling it “light:” Even when Peggy Lee is bowing hard on cello, or Miya Masaoka is digging away at the koto, there’s an airiness to the sound. You’re in a whirlwind of feathers.

The quieter pieces display these qualities most strongly, highlighting the cello and koto with Larry Ochs working in small phrases on sopranino sax, careful not to crack the delicacy of the sound.

“micro mirror”* is a lovely quiet exploration with nighttime cello plucking and tense, soft koto trills. “neoNawi” is closer to what you might call a traditional setting. Lee’s cello carves bold, mourning lines, while the koto produces abstract plinks and, occasionally, one of those lovely bending notes.

The album opens aggressively with “nobody knows,” full of tumbling koto and, later, some high, squeaky cello. Ochs keeps a light touch, as on the quieter tracks, but allows himself more skronk with the tenor sax.

The 18-minute title track feels more like “regular” free improvisation, with that abstract and tart sound. Maybe that’s because of the long stretches of group work. Snippets of composition help ground the piece. They pop into view like tiny organized dances — there’s one about 12 minutes into the piece, another at the very end. On first listen, they seemed effectively placed, creating a nice listening journey.

“last light” is a surprisingly rugged piece. That’s what I get for peeking at the track times: You see a 4:49 song to close the album, and you assume it’s a quiet lullabye. It starts that way. But there’s some jazzy, growling tenor sax by the end, alongside scratchy cello. It’s one of the album’s loudest moments.

* I’m honoring the lower-case titles, which in this case are clearly delineated (as opposed to album covers where everything just happens to be in lower-case). It looks weird to me, and I don’t think I like it, but I’ll try it once.

Eric Hofbauer: Pocket Chops

Fighting jetlag on my recent run through Boston, I tossed my sleep cycle into the shredder, hopping the “T” one night to take in a jazz show at the “Y” on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge.

Guitarist Eric Hofbauer is a young guy with a casual and charismatic stage presence, and his Infrared Band was worth staying up for. Its compositions are jazz at heart, with the occasional free-form diversion and some adventurous soloing. Very nice outside-in stuff, fronted by Hofbauer’s jazz guitar but drafted with ample soloing space for everyone.

“The Chump Killer” is a standout of their playbook. You can’t miss it. Hofbauer explaned that the Chump Killer is a hero who searches the earth to go defeat evildoers and generally nasty people (“chumps”), and not necessarily in violent ways. After a cool, overlapping call-and-response theme between sax and guitar, the music took an extended break for saxophonist Kelly Roberge to play the roles of the Chump Killer and the Chump, using electronically enhanced, cartoony voices. His dialogue had the Chump Killer taunting the Chump but then winding up in some sort of trap. Pretty funny stuff (inspired by a kung fu movie, it turns out). The rest of the mini-suite followed, and given its chipper nature, you have to assume things turned out OK.

There were also some tunes at once catchy and tricky, like “Pocket Chops.” Hofbauer explained how the term arose in conversation, when someone asked him — I can’t recall the story exactly, but I think he was telling someone about the contrast of playing in Boston versus somewhere else. “Oh, man, you gotta have pocket chops,” he said at the time. Of course, Hofbauer had no idea what that meant, but he rode with it and, years later, wrote it up as a piece.

In the rental car the next day, I took a quick sampling of the CDs I’d bought at the show: The Infrared Band’s Myth Understanding and Hofbauer’s solo acoustic American Vanity. Not the best listening environment, but it was the one available to me, and I thought a car listen would be an interesting blogging experiment.