Evil

One of my favourite rock riffs.

Is That You Melissa?

Just bought this.

Stars Stanley Turrentine and Grant Green. An early live recording (1961) of these two regrettably underrated and undervalued jazz musicians who both deserve to be wider known and appreciated, despite the fact that Green recorded more songs at Blue Note from 1961 to 1965 than any other Blue Note musician.

So, in what follows, I’ll attempt to indicate why I’m so crazy about Grant Green.

Green swings on the guitar with a sort of earthy bluesy feel, creating an irresistable rhythm that makes you tap and groove along. But unlike most typical 12-bar blues that tend to fizzle out of interesting lines and ideas and descend into boring predictability after a while, Green constantly keeps his improvisations interesting, engaging and memorable by subtly changing the melodies and rhythms of his original lines. All this despite his comment on the music he plays “It’s all just the blues anyhow.” Green absorbed the music of Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker and “used to sit up all night copying Charlie Parker solos note by note”. [And now, I, sit up for many nights copying Grant Green solos note for note!] In many ways, Green’s frequent non-chordal, single-line approach embodies the sound of classic Blue Note horn players, funky, jazzy, soulful and swinging.

In a book by Sharony Andrews Green Grant Green: Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar, I came across the following quotes about Grant Green.

This is what Michael Erlewine says about Grant Green in the All Music Guide to the Blues:

Critics only seem to know how to rate what stands out. This won’t work for groove music. In groove, the idea is to lay down a groove, get in it, and deepen it. Groove masters always take us deeper into the groove. These artists are our windows into the groove, and their hearts become the highway over which the groove can run. They reinvest. And we ride the groove. This is why jazz critics have either passed…over groove masters like Grant Green and Stanley Turrentine or heard something, but did not know what to make of what they heard (and felt). If music is not viewed as such an intellectual thing (something to see) but more of a feeling kind of thing, then groove masters can be appreciated. You may not see the groove masters, but you can sure feel them. In groove, the sold (and all else) only exists if it adds to the groove. Witness Grant Green’s incredible single-note repetitions. Who would ever think to do that? You wouldn’t think of that. It is done by pure feeling.

... He is so far in the groove that it will take decades for us to bring him out in full…we groove on and reflect about this other dream that we have called life. All great musicians do this to us. Grant Green’s playing at its best is like this too. It is so recursive that instead of taking the obvious outs we are used to hearing, Green instead chooses to reinvest – to go in farther and deepen the groove. He opens up a groove and then opens up a groove and then opens a groove, and so on. He never stops. He opens a groove and then works to widen that groove until we can see into the music, see through the music into ourselves. He puts everything back into the groove that he might otherwise get out of it. He knows that the groove is the thing and that time will see him out and his music will live long.

Leonard Feather said this about Green in the liner notes for Green’s Green Street album:

It is accurate, though somehow not adequate, to hail him as a vital new link in the six-stringed lifeline from Charlie Christian through Barney Kessel to Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery. But the degree of maturity already discernible in Grante Green indicates that it would be an injustice to him to make the usual comparisons with his predecessors or toss some of the conventional and overworked adjective his way…Christian, let us not forget, was barely out of his teens when he joined Benny Goodman; Kessel was twenty when he made the Norman Granz film Jammin’ the Blues. Bearing this in mind, one should not find it totally unbelievable that in his thirtieth year Grant Green has accomplished at least as much as had his important predecessors when they first came to prominence…Though it may seem heretical, I would venture the opinion that Green has extended jazz guitar playing far beyond [where] ...Christian has taken it…If a Grant Green had come along in 1938, playing exactly as he plays on this LP, the arrival of Charlie Christian the following year would have seemed anticlimatic. But this is a hardly valid hypothetical case, since there could have been no Green without a Christian, a Bird, and a Miles”

Producer Bob Porter wrote, “If Green had never recorded as a leader, his contributions as a Blue Note sideman in the 1960s would be enough to make him one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history.

George Benson said “Guitar players were trying to learn what his secret was, and there were people in general who just loved his groove. Grante made the guitar come alive and sing. It was his talent alone. Only he could do it like that. Nobody else I ever knew could make the guitar talk like that or speak like that.”

Elvin Jones said ” I always thought Grant Green was one of the greatest guitarists that ever existed since Charlie Christian. I haven’t seen anybody before or since that could compare to his artistry and conceptions of music.”

All quotes and information taken from Sharony Andrew Green’s book.

Update since this post. I’m pretty much done transcribing No. 1 Green Street [Scroll down to listen to track. Download does not seem to work for Firefox, only for IE] from his album Green Street. Like 98% done. Just need to remember what I transcribed, practise and “catch” the last descending chord sequence.

Check out the reviews of Green Street here and here and here.

I’ve been obsessed with Grant Green lately. Tried to get as many of his albums as possible even though I haven’t had the time to listen to them carefully. Ok, time to sleep.

From The Guardian article, Ted Hughes, the domestic tyrant:

A new book reveals that Hughes’s lover, Assia Wevill, was ordered by him not to have lie-in, wear her dressing gown around the house or take a nap during the day. Wevill told friends the poet’s lovemaking was so ferocious that ‘in bed, he smells like a butcher’. The claims are made in A Lover of Unreason: The Biography of Assia Wevill, by two Israeli journalists who have spent 15 years researching her story.

...The book also reveals that Hughes and Wevill starting sharing Plath’s bed in the London flat where she died within two days of her suicide. Wevill, a German-born Jew, was probably already pregnant by Hughes and used the same bed to recover from an abortion six weeks later.

Their affair had started after Wevill and her husband, David, visited Hughes and Plath at their home, also in Devon, in 1962. The biography tells how Assia claimed that Hughes had kissed her when they were alone together in the kitchen. Five weeks later, Hughes hurried to a London agency where Wevill was working, scribbled a note and left it with the receptionist. It said: ‘I have come to see you, despite all marriages.’

Koren and Negev continue: ‘Having always preferred rough waters to smooth sailing, she couldn’t resist the thrill of responding – but she wanted to do it in striking, memorable fashion. From her office window, she noticed that a gardener was mowing the lawn below – and found her inspiration. She went down, picked up a single blade of the freshly cut grass, dipped it in Dior perfume and sent it to Ted. Three days later, an envelope arrived at Assia’s office: in it, the blade of grass lay beside one from Devon.’

Betrayed and desperate, Wevill’s husband took an overdose of sleeping pills but survived. The book claims: ‘While David lay semi-conscious on a stretcher, [Assia] was ruthless enough to announce that Hughes had raped her… After a taxi took them home that Sunday evening, [David] composed a short note to his rival: “If you come near my wife again, I’ll kill you”.’

But the Wevills were destined to separate and Assia joined Hughes in Plath’s old flat. ‘Assia did not make any secret of Ted’s ferocious lovemaking when it came to her office friends. She told Edward Lucie-Smith: “You know, in bed, he smells like a butcher.” ’

The couple parted in 1968 after Hughes embarked on another affair. The following year, at the age of 42, Wevill gassed herself, just as Plath had done. In a diary entry, she blamed the ghost of Plath for making her suicidal.

Tribes

Rain Maker

Ladies Night

Chloe showed me this video. Very funny and like what Hossan Leong promises, it’s a concise history of Singapore. But to fully understand all the references and the humour, you probably would have to live in Singapore for quite a while. Nonetheless, the two paras after the video would help in explaining some of the lyrics of the song (in italics) to some extent.

Singapura very strong
Big guns all pointing wrong
Japanese came on bikes
Invade us from our backside

IMF must smile more
Want to protest go indoor

“SINGAPORE: Civil Society Organisations have expressed disappointment with the 14 by 8 metre space allocated to them for indoor protests within Suntec Singapore.

Police say the IMF/World Bank joint secretariat had been consulted when choosing the site.

The area, demarcated by four poles, is where protests will be allowed during the Annual Meetings.

Police say a sizeable number of delegates who come in coaches will have to pass through this security checkpoint before entering the convention hall, hence giving the civil groups ample visibility.

Over 500 civil society organisations have been accredited by the IMF World Bank, but the police does not expect the majority of them to stage an indoor protest at the same time.

The police added that even though demonstrations are allowed here, they will move in to control the crowd if the crowd got too rowdy.

Wooden placards and metal poles will also not be allowed for safety reasons, and police will provide cardboard and paper poles.

This protest space is offered on a first come first served basis.”

See full Channel NewsAsia story here.

Full lyrics to song here on Hossan Leong’s blog. Think I also saw Marianne, an old schoolmate of mine among the audience in the video.

Baby Please Don’t Go

Mojo Hand

Going Down Slow