The Mars Volta

What I've been listening to lately: The Mars Volta. It's hard to live in the same house as Ali and Amir and not be fans of this band. A new album's been released, The Bedlam in Goliath, which Ali threw on my playlist. I find myself going back to it again and again.

TMV is hard to classify. Progressive rock, I guess, with heavy jazz, salsa, funk/punk, and electronica influences. Very psychedelic. The band's been known to go on stage for a show and just improvise wildly for close to an hour, then leave. So much for expecting to hear your favorite cuts from Frances the Mute or Amputechture.

Lineup for The Bedlam in Goliath is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Isaiah Ikey Owens, Juan Aldarete de la Pena, Adrian Terrazas-Gonzalez, Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez, Paul Hinojos, Thomas Pridgen, and John Frusciante (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Pridgen, new to the band, is a drum prodigy from Berklee; he's only 24, but has been playing circles around almost everyone in the world since about the age of 9 or 10.

My favorite track at this point is "Metatron." The lyrics, like all TMV lyrics, are food for thought. At least these are in English. Here's a sample: Folding wormholes/My time is writing in the alphabet/Folding wormholes/My time is writing on the wall./In the dead plot you dream in/Ten go away/Ten born of prey/Ten go away.

Maybe makes sense if you're on drugs. Anyway, mindbendingly surreal and satisfying.

Blogging on Bugling

This morning, friend Maggie and I took a ride to New Haven to visit the Foundry Music Company. Maggie's a musician who can drop hundreds of dollars in a place like that and call it business expenses. I'm just a person who can be talked into going on a random ride on a beautiful day. Especially if the destination lands us within a few blocks of the world's best pizza.

We had an hour on the meter, and Maggie had no trouble using it up at Foundry Music. I'm not very musical, but I had no trouble amusing myself. I found an interesting book, "Bugle Signals, Calls & Marches for Army, Navy, Marine Corps Revenue Cutter Service & National Guard," by Captain Daniel J. Canty, U.S. Army, Retired. From this little book, the size of a postcard and 34 leaves thick, I learned more in twenty minutes than I've accumulated in the last six decades about bugling.

I learned that to be a bugler, it is not necessary to read music (although of course it's very helpful). It's possible to learn "by air." The real requisites for a good bugler are 1) an ear for music 2) knowledge of proper breathing 3) medium sized lips and 4) good front teeth.

This little book contains many familiar and not-so-familiar marches: "You're in the Army Now," "Marching Through Georgia," "The Blue and the Gray," "The Drunken Soldier," "Chicken on the Fence." Also sound-offs: parade calls originally supposed to heighten the troops' spirits before marching off to battle.

Most interesting to me, however, were the signals and calls. Although bugle calls are mostly ceremonial in nature now, historically they were a method of issuing commands over distances greater than that over which a human voice could be heard. That is to say, they are a musical language.

Drill signals tell the military unit how to move: to the right, to the rear, trot double time, double section left oblique. Reveille tells the unit to get up; mess call, to eat; tattoo, to stop drinking and get ready for bed. The navy has the most interesting calls: clean bright-work, knock off bright-work, point guns abeam, man overboard.

Man overboard?? I wonder about that one. When a man falls off the boat, first somebody has to go round up the bugler, and then the bugler has to signal everyone, and then people rush over and help? If you fall off a navy ship while the bugler's in bed, pray there are no sharks.

Word of the Day: Egregore

An egregore is a psychic or astral entity, the spirit of a group or organization. An egregore acquires its definition and draws its power from the members of the group, but the egregore may be stronger than all the members individually, and may persist after all the members have left the group or died. A club, a political party, a nation may all have egregores.

I was reminded of this word yesterday when I attended the Yardbirds concert. This group has been around since 1963 in various incarnations. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck all came and left; the band disbanded and reformed; many other strong musicians--Top Topham, Keith Relf, etc., etc., etc.--came and left. The current lineup is Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar and Mike McCarty on drums (original band members), Billy-Boy Miskinnon on vocals and harp, John Idan on bass, and Ben King on guitar. But even with this radically revised lineup, the sound was still 100% Yardbirds.

The group covered several classics: "For Your Love," "Dazed and Confused," "Over, Under, Sideways, Down," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," and so on. Also a lot of new stuff, which had the same mix of bluesy base with psychedelia, straightforward openings with multiple changes, building up the tempo to change gears and then change again, jazz-like improvisation and unbelievable virtuoso guitar solos. Ben King, who's so young even his parents might not have been fans of the original group, is like a young Clapton or Beck, and Dreja and McCarty are the same as they ever were, only more experienced. Idan's from Michigan, but couldn't look or sound more mid-sixties British, and Billy-Boy's spot on as well.

The group played with the energy they've always been famous for. Dreja and McCarty are old, but they don't look mummified like some of their peers I could name. The Yardbirds weren't stuck-up and distant; they weren't over-the-hill and pathetic. They were friendly, professional, in their element, and connecting with the audience. Obviously having a ball and taking everybody in the Square right along for the ride. Hilton Valentine, former guitarist for The Animals, who lives fairly close by, popped in at about the third song and joined right in. Free concerts four blocks from your house don't get much cooler than this.

I'm old enough to remember the Yardbirds when they first became popular. This concert took me right back to 1967...the Club Écossais in Paris...clubs in London with no name and no sign. Mary Quant eye makeup...two pairs of false eyelashes...Sassoon haircut...black stockings...high boots...minidress...dangly earrings. The vibe was perfect. The egregore was that powerful.