When they started their set, I heard people say, "Who is this? It sucks!" Maybe, maybe not, but that is what's special about Tortoise. You never know what to expect. It was an atypical dance tune what really wasn't bad, which lead into some songs from their new album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die. It's a great album, but I have to admit that the second half of their set, which concentrated on older tunes, was much better. Their older material is better suited to live performance. I had a chance to talk to the bassist Doug McCombs for a bit after the show. We talked about Simon Reynolds' efforts to dub them some sort of leaders of "American Post-Rock." Always easygoing and down-to-earth, McCombs was diplomatic. He said they had finally met Reynolds recently and "He's a nice guy . . . but I wish he would stop writing about us!" He prefers that Tortoise speak for themselves through their recordings and performances and not get confined to any labels. They will be touring Europe for two months, and probably have more U.S. dates in the summer.
Dub Syndicate were a disappointment. Back in the early 80s they contributed some of the timeless recordings for British producer Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound label. Along with African Head Charge, Creation Rebel, London Underground, New Age Steppers and Singers And Players, Dub Syndicate helped take dub a step further with studio creativity and psychedelia. I highly recommend the Classic Selection Volume 1, which includes much of the classic Pounding System album from 1982. Now they just sound like any other slick reggae band.
The Elvis of Mambo is back. I was disappointed to have to see him at a sports bar, but what can you do. Puente is a joy to watch in any setting. You can't help but feel good when he plays. He's such a ham, doing his funky-chicken dances, wagging his tongue about and winking at the women in the front row. Considering he has 103 albums to choose from, I was glad to hear many of his old cha cha and mambo classics from the late 40s and early 50s, when Puente and his orchestra were at their peak as innovators. They also threw in a little jazz and several songs sung by a woman who I'm unfamiliar with. He mentioned several times throughout the show that he plays whatever he feels like, because at this point in his career he doesn't care anymore. That's not entirely true. Tito Puente is a pure entertainer, and he would never let you down.
An all-instrumental band, featuring Tortoise's Johnny "Machine" Herndon on drums, bring the Meters up to date to funkify your life. The real attraction though was the amazing rhythmic gymnastics of guitarist Bill Dolan. Great stage moves too. My date insisted he was sexy enough to make her swoon. Bassist LeRoy Bach and keboardist Jeremy Jacobsen were no slouches either. At one point, a guy came up to do some vocals. He was aping Mick Jagger a bit much, but was entertaining. Is this a portent of the future?
As soon as I heard last year's Birthday Cake EP I knew there has always been a space in my collection waiting for this East Village duo of Japanese expatriates. Sure, it's a little amateurish, and more than a little precious. But Cibo Matto exhibited too much promise to be written off as a cutesy joke band. Their debut full-length exceeded my expectations. Viva! La Woman deserves to (and will) be immortalized as a classic party album in the tradition of Deee-Lite's World Clique, The Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill, Talking Heads' Speaking In Tongues, the first B-52's album and Funkadelic's Standing On The Verge of Getting It On.
The best three songs from their EP are reprised here with a vitamin injection of healthy studio trickery. How can one resist rapping along with dada humor like "I KNOW MY CHICKEN -- YOU GOT TO KNOW YOUR CHICKEN -- One day, the blue one went away -- The other grew up fuckin' well -- She was noisy every night -- I had always chicken-bite -- Then I met a lover -- One night, she made me dinner -- Licking finger, I wondered -- where she got the chicken -- I KNOW MY CHICKEN -- YOU GOT TO KNOW YOUR CHICKEN..."
Their incorporation of hip-hop beats, jazz and collages of electronic and found sounds is not revolutionary. But no two songs sound the same and you won't find the pretentiousness that's unavoidable with equally adventurous bands. Not to mention the hilarious non-sensical lyrics that can also get philosophical and erotic ("He stared me up and down as if I was a restaurant menu -- The accidental meeting made my blood red like chianti -- Mio...mio bambino...Blindfold me...only feeling -- When you touch me on the knee -- I can feel your vibration -- When you capture my secret key -- I can hear your pulsation HIT ME!"). Food is a recurring theme. I bet these women really know how to eat. They know that there is a fundamental connection between the sensuality of taste, touch, and sound. They were definitely serious about the meticulous aural layers that flow so smoothly between their raucous hip-hop outbursts. Like Bjork, Cibo Matto inject some much needed humor and playfulness into the groove-oriented styles popularized by Portishead and Tricky. Cibo Matto have joined the growing international community of funky chickens whose music pays no heed to geographic or stylistic boundaries.
1995 was the year dub returned. One could argue, however, that dub was never here in the first place. Outside of Jamaica, the only reasonably well-known influences of dub were found in bands affiliated with Adrian Sherwood, P.i.L.'s Metal Box/Second Edition, a handful of songs by The Slits, The Clash, Generation X and other punk bands, and Rhythm Collision Dub Vol. 1 on ROIR, The Mad Professor's mix of The Ruts D.C.'s 1982 swansong. Until last year, most people had no idea what dub was, even if they were familiar with reggae.
For those who still unfamiliar with dub, here's a quick history lesson. The roots of dub can be traced all the way back to the late forties, when sound systems first appeared in Jamaica. Young deejays would play r&b imports from the U.S. on a setup of an amplifier, massive homemade speakers and a turntable. Sound systems became more prominent when Jamaica was emancipated from Britain in 1962. The best sound systems had deejays who could introduce the songs and coax the dancers using the latest "jive." U. Roy became the biggest star, deejaying for Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd's Downbeat, and then King Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi. As American r&b was replaced by rock & roll, deejays played more and more homegrown records. The two-track recordings reserved the B-side of the record to test sound levels. The instrumental B-side, or the "version," became popular with deejays like U. Roy who had the freedom to toast throughout the record without competing with recorded vocals. Duke Reid, a sound system "selector" who branched into recording at his Treasure Isle Studios, began making "specials" in 1969, using U.Roy's voice-overs. In experimenting with the versions and specials, Reid's studio engineer, King Tubby, began making versions of songs in which the vocals dropped in and out amongst a cacophony of echo, reverb and heavy, heavy bass. The first dubs were "You Don't Care" by the Techniques, and songs by the Melodians and Phyllis Dillon.
While Lee "Scratch" Perry insists that he invented dub first, there is no recorded evidence to prove it. However, his dubs of Bob Marley & the Wailers from 1970 (Soul Revolution Vol. 1 & 2, Trojan) indicate that he developed the technique almost concurrently with King Tubby. Perry represented a more mystical aspect of dub. He produced a kaleidoscopic variety of eerie sound effects, explaning that they were "the ghosts in me coming out." Indeed, dub is rooted in the word "dup," which is Jamaican patois for "ghost." Perry suggests that dub is not only a doubling of sounds, but of one's soul from the spirit-world into the tehnological world. For more information, see Dick Hebdige, Cut 'n' Mix (1987) and S.H. Fernando Jr., The New Beats (1994).
With the help of labels like Blood & Fire, several dub classics were re-issued, including King Tubby, Lee Perry, Horace Andy, Yabby U and Keith Hudson. Adrian Sherwood's post-dub experiments were reissued on a handful of On-U Sound compilations. 1995 also saw entire albums worth of re-mixes of Ui, Scorn, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Tortoise. These albums featured creative re-mixes that went far beyond the definition of dub by such people as John McEntire, U.N.K.L.E., Moby, Aphex Twin, Bill Laswell, Germ, Coil, Jack Dangers, Steve Albini and even Beck.
As interesting as the results are, the most musically successful album is British reggae producer Mad Professor's dub of Massive Attack's 1994 album, Protection. It's coherence can be attributed to the fact that the mixing job is limited to one person who happens to have at least twenty years of experience in the genre. The Mad Professor does more than fuck with the songs -- he improves them. He takes near-duds like "Weather Storm" and "Heat Miser" and turns them into rhythmic juggernauts, textured with fascinating and hypnotic effects. When former Massive Attacker Tricky released Maxinquaye, it was given that he had left his old band chewing on his dust. No Protection suggests that if they signed on the Mad Professor as a permanent member or producer, Massive Attack might have a fighting chance not just against Tricky, but the hordes of young "trip-hop" artists who have become so popular in the rebirth of dub.
Macro Dub Infection was compiled by Kevin Martin, leading member of God, Ice and Techno-Animal, and contributor to The Wire. Like his 1994 compilation Isolationism, Martin includes a group of artists so diverse in sound, style and philosophy, it's sometimes hard to see why they should be sharing the same album. There are only a couple tracks that could be considered dub. The rest, to quote the cover sticker, explore "today's diverse dub genres of trip hop, jungle, techno, and ambient." I found the techno and jungle tracks by Spring Heel Jack, Bedouin Ascent, Omni Trio and Wagon Christ to be an annoying interruption to an otherwise infectious collection of dark grooves. I have yet to figure out how jungle is supposed to fit into my life. I can't dance to it, and it doesn't stand up to repeated, concentrated listenings. The best tracks are by bands that cannot be easily pegged into any particular "dub genre," like Tortoise, Laika, Scorn and Tricky. There's something for everyone here, but beware of the ridiculous import price for the double CD set.
1995 saw the release of several "trip hop" compilations on labels such as Shadow Records, Moonshine Music, Below 2 CD and Mo Wax. While many of the compilations failed to accomplish anything more than mildly funky aural wallpaper, the artists on the British Mo Wax label represent the cream of the "trip hop" crop. This includes the legendary DJ Shadow, Nightmares on Wax, LA Funk Mob, Autechre, U.N.K.L.E. and an amazing piece called "Wildstyle - The Krush Handshake!" teaming Howie B with former Japanese gangster, current hip-hop artist and Mo Wax's most prolific member, DJ Krush. As a self-described "collage of 16 instrumental excursions from the hip-hop avant garde," Headz will someday be regarded a classic of early instrumental hip-hop, just as DJ Kool Herc, Sugarhill Gang, Spoonie Gee, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa are reverently anthologized now. Only time will tell if the Mo Wax artists will sound as dated (or timeless, depending on who you ask) as the early rap pioneers, 5 to 10 years from now.
I can only hope that the rich, dub-inspired soul and hip-hop fusion of Massive Attack and Tricky, the wildly experimental sounds on Macro Dub Infection and the impressionistic hip-hop collages of Mo Wax will continue to evolve and surprise, rather than devolve into the next big thing to be consumed by the lowest common denominator.
I had been looking for the McLaughlin and Lifetime for years, wondering if they even existed. I had high expectations, and was not disappointed. These three albums represent McLaughlin at his peak. I'm not particularly fond of jazz fusion as a whole, particularly the mid-seventies work of Miles Davis' former acolytes, Weather Report, Chick Corea and Return To Forever, and even Lifetime and McLaughlin's own Mahavishnu Orchestra. They represented the worst of cheesy 70s excess, a reflection of the hilarious pomposity that was British prog rock at the time. Slick chops and slicker production were favored over spontaneity and passion. But once upon a time, fusion was exciting, new and seemed to be limitless in its possibilities.
By his recording debut in January of 1969, John McLaughlin had already recorded a timeless masterpiece with Extrapolation. With saxophonist John Surman, McLaughlin created and composed a beautiful set of songs that were not fusion, but were on the cusp of something new. It was apparent that he was ready to change the face of jazz when Miles hired him.
Miles Davis's In A Silent Way is often regarded as the birth of fusion, although Lifetime was happening concurrently. It was still early in 1969 when McLaughlin hooked up with drummer Tony Williams, who had been playing with Miles Davis since the mid-60s, and was rivaled only by Elvin Jones. The music on Emergency! is fusion at its newest and hottest. Because the Lifetime band took a lot of risks, it wasn't always smooth and perfect. Let's take the vocals. I wish we didn't have to. I wish we could turn a knob and leave William's horrendous mewling out of the mix. But just like one loves their family, one can't help but love Emergency! with all its imperfections.
Bitches Brew gets all the credit for being Miles Davis's best fusion album while A Tribute To Jack Johnson was almost completely overlooked. At it's best, it actually surpasses Bitches Brew. It contains some of McLaughlin's best playing ever. "But dig the guitar and the bass," wrote Davis in the liner notes, "...they are Far-in..." And Davis wasn't too shabby either.