One third of the followers of this blog are former members of the Ragged Bags...

(Actually, the blog just lost one of its six followers, so now 40% of the followers are former members of the Ragged Bags...)

Which is neither here nor there. Right now I am blogging in a vain attempt to hold onto what's left of my sanity. I would have liked to be at this gig:



Eli Keszler/Adam Bohman/Steve Beresford live at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London, 04/01/11

Or at any of the three performances of the musical that Talibam! wrote and performed with Sam Kulik: "Talibam! Goes To Bed with Sam Kulik and Discovers Atlantis" (click on the header and read more, if you care, or dare, to...)

Do Not Adjust Your TV Set

Adjust your computer instead, because this stuff is absurd!



Tamio Shiraishi
Live at the Silent Barn,10/29/10.



Rye.
Same gig.



Andrew Smiley, dry ice performance with Liquid State Bypass

Like a stripped-down Roxy Music,

like a bride re-dressed by her bachelors, even, Kurzmann & Vandermark & Brandlmayr at Konfrontationen 2010:



Click on the header for a slew of clips from the Konfrontationen festival, shot by MuzicaDeVest...

Call Him Ishmael

Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith recently had a residency at the Cafe Oto in London. Here are a couple of clips shot by Shuffleboil:



Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith & Pat Thomas at Cafe Oto, 07/25/10



Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith & Mark Sanders at Cafe Oto ,07/24/10

Bass & Other

Gus Garside (double bass) and Dan Powell (other) at Mopomoso Free improvisation night at the Vortex Jazz Club in London. Filmed by Helen Petts, 06/20/10.

Saxophone & Other

Darius Jones (saxophone) & Martin McCavitt (other) at the Ratward in Hampton, Virginia, 08/11/04

I'm searching for the now. I'm looking for the real thing, yeah. Head through a blue haze. Waiting for the musical craze...

Pat Thomas shown here...



han bennink-drums
pat thomas-piano and electronics
john coxon electric guitar

surreal gig @ pizza express dean street, london, 05/26/10

And a rare chance to just experience Han at the kit, without him getting up to play chairs or kick cymbals around (even though he is good at it...).

Braxton at 65

"MUSC293: Music of Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen" @ Wesleyan University, Spring 2008



Anthony Braxton Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet live in Moscow, DOM Cultural Centre, 06/29/08

Anthony Braxton - alto, soprano, sopranino, baritone, bass and contrabass saxes, electronics,
Taylor Ho Bynum - cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo, bass trumpet, trumpbone, mutes and shell,
Mary Halvorson - electric guitar,
Katherine Young - bassoon
Category:
Music



Anthony Braxton and Richard Teitelbaum, NY 1994



Braxton with William Parker and Don Moye
Pomigliano jazz live 08/11/09

Stylophones & Sunglasses

Tania Chen and Steve Beresford in an improvised duet at the Usurp Gallery in London, 05/30/10, Beresford well-dressed and pressed as per usual, and Chen is sporting some hip shades:

Tania Chen and Steve Beresford duo at Usurp Gallery from Tania Chen on Vimeo.

Speaking of sunglasses, here is Tania Chen discussing her collection of vintage eyewear:

Perhaps somewhere in here there is possibly a solution

to the undersea hemorrhaging of oil taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. But probably not. At any rate, here is an odd little performance by Adam Bohman
on amplified objects and Steve Beresford on electronics performing at the Usurp Gallery, Harrow, filmed by Helen Petts. Worth seeing full-screen.

The Suzuki Method

is pretty similar to the Chuck Berry method; Damo Suzuki comes to a town, and the promoter has a band of local musicians set to back him up...except he's not doing Chuck Berry songs (or songs by Can, for that matter), he's doing all improvisations.
Here are clips of some recent performances:



DAMO SUZUKI feat. CHATEAU LAUT - LIVE @ AUSLAND, BERLIN, 04/30/10



REnDeR PLaNT & Damo Suzuki
Part of a three-day Experimental Music Festival at the Luminaire in Kilburn in May 2010



Damo Suzuki and The Vultures, The Luminaire, 05/03/10



Damo Suzuki and the Dominic Lash Quatertet, The Luminaire, 05/03/10
Ricardo Tejero (sax), Javier Carmona (drums), Dominic Lash (bass), and Rodrigo Montoya (Japanese shamisen), perform at the Luminaire in the vicinity of Kilburn.

And sometimes the Chuck Berry method works really well:

I don't have much to say about...

the recently deceased Dennis Hopper, but I won't pass up an opportunity to put up some beatnik jazz combo music, especially if it's in a cellar joint. It would have been even better if they could have gotten Steve Lacy or Ornette...



Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson in Curtis Harrington's "Night Tide" (1961, the upside-down year)

Here's some more common Bug Melter fare:



Diagram A Live @ basement show in Providence, R.I.



Tiger Hatchery, 05/09/09 @ Now That's Class Champagne Of Fests
Shot by Loumnz

Two Wongs don't make a Wright...

as you would know if you were a fervent viewer of Woody Allen's movie "What's Up, Tiger Lily." Here is Jack Wright, not with two guys named Wong, but rather Pascal Battus from France and Michael Johnsen from the Pittsburgh area:





Pascal Battus (France) : Objects, contact mics
Jack Wright : Reeds
Michael Johnsen : original electronics
04/21/10 at the Red Room, Baltimore, Maryland
(a/k/a Bal'More and Charm City)



Videos courtesy of Dennisovich

That's the Long and Short of It...

Jack Wright/Johan Nystrom/Forbes Graham/Pascal Battus
Dad City, Amherst, MA
04/13/10



Jack Wright/Pascal Battus duo

That's not really short, is it?

This is:



Pascal Battus/Jamie Coleman/Sebastian Lexer

The microphone guitar finally rid of her.

Must bust in early May

Or possibly Free Games for May...films courtesy of Helen Petts:



John Butcher (saxophones), Okkyung Lee (cello) and - in the dark - Christian Marclay (turntables) and Steve Beresford (electronics). Cafe Oto, London, 05/07/10.



Beresford & Marclay



Lee & Beresford, 05/08/10



Lee & Marclay, 05/07/10



Marclay & Butcher, 05/07/10

Like watching paint dry.

Interdisciplinary at THE BONNINGTON with Steve Beresford [electronics, etc.], Tom Chant [soprano saxophone] and Marcus Heesch [eggtempera] - filmed by Chikae Tomiyama and Richard H. Parry.

Live in London, 08/18/03





trumpeter Axel Doerner and trombonist Toshihiro Koike
painter Marcus Heesch
Realtime improvisation at David Adam's atelier in Berlin, 03/09/04

Saw, Sax, etc.

Notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE:

On Saturday, November 2nd, 1996, I participated in an event in Pittsburgh entitled "High Evil" organized by Edgar Um Bucholtz that took place in a building that's now demolished. This event was significant for me as one of the 1st shows I participated in after moving to Pittsburgh & as possibly the only time I ever used the toy VideoPainter as a video improvising tool. Since I've been too poor most of my life to afford 'professional' equipment, I've often used toys & borrowed &/or broken equipment. The broken equipment in this instance being a WJ MX-12 AV mixer that I STILL use & that's STILL broken. Providing improvised sound were Sharyn Lee Frederick: child's violin, measuring cups, voice; Michael Johnsen: saw, amplified oboe, baritone sax; Greg Pierce: records, intercom, guitar, alto sax, dictaphone; & Dave W(Ho)le Shim: 4 track cassettes. I contributed projected video mixing. This brief movie is probably a simulation of the visuals done at home - since the actual conditions of the show probably didn't involve any video recording. For more info, see entry 201 @: http://www.fyi.net/~anon/MereOutline1... - February 16, 2010

You can see/hear much more Michael Johnsen by clicking on the header...

I enjoyed this performance

(At least I enjoyed these little films of this performance, presented here in reverse order.)



Cut Paste Featuring Weasel Walter,



Peter Evans,



Cory Smythe, Steve Lehman



@ Le Poisson Rouge, NY, 03/16/10

Shot by MarcEdwards5050

But then again, I am also enjoying researching videos by Wendy & Lisa...

Spooky/Shipp

The prequel to Butcher/Shipp?


DJ Spooky & Matthew Shipp - Optometry // live at Banlieues Bleues, 03/19/03 // a film by Jacques Goldstein // DJ Spooky - turntables, samples / Matthew Shipp - piano / William Parker - bass / Guillermo Brown - drums, laptop //

Almost Autumn in South America

Alan Courtis en Santiago de Chile



Lee Ranaldo in Chile, 03/28/09



São Paulo Underground, video by Akin

Springtime Addendum:



"Dark 'N' Lovely," as Stevie Wonder might say...

El jueves, 04 de marzo de 2010
Espacio Ecléctico, Humberto Primo 730
Buenos Aires

Nicolás Diab: Bajo
Fernando de la Vega: Batería
Alan Courtis: Guitarra

Courtisy (heh) of Suciotraporojo