Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post

Moshe · 08.02.2006, 03:23 AM

"Dry Bones" is probably a recording from 1999:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01EFD8103DF934A25752C1A96F9582 60

JAZZ REVIEW; Tribute to Harry Smith, Musicologist and Muse

Published: November 17, 1999

The musicologist, filmmaker and painter Harry Smith, who died in 1991 at age 78, was a super-bohemian, which is to say that his life was determinedly messy, his interests determinedly scattered, his interpretation of culture determinedly oppositional.
He was an idol who tried the patience of his idolaters; stories about Smith often end with his asking for money, glazing over in an alcoholic haze, becoming a nuisance. And in that respect, the five-hour concert honoring him at St. Ann's Church on Friday night -- it was the second of two benefits for the Harry Smith Archives, produced by Hal Willner -- seemed properly imitative of the man being honored: intellectually ambitious, eclectic, unreasonable, long-winded.
The concert focused on Smith's contributions to culture from several different angles. Many of the 20 performers played songs from his ''Anthology,'' first released by Folkways records in 1952 and reissued to great acclaim as a six-CD set two years ago.
The album is a compendium of commercial recordings of the late 20's and early 30's by obscure artists in blues and mountain music and other forms. It is organized thematically, linking murder, dancing, religion and myth across race, territory and musical style. A primary source of material for the folk revival in the 50's and 60's, the album forces the listener to make connections about American music and the St. Ann's show did the same.
The concert immediately made clear that Smith's anthology, and by extension the idea of the prewar American South, pulls out different reactions from different people. Nick Cave opens the anthology and sees desperate, devil-haunted oracles; he enacted one of his ponderous imitations of a Southern preacher as he performed Blind Willie Johnson's ''John the Revelator.''
By contrast, Van Dyke Parks sees golden wheat fields and riverboats; his arrangements of ''The Wagoner's Lad'' and ''The Butcher's Boy'' for keyboard and strings with the help of the Soldier String Quartet and the singer Rufus Wainwright were sweet, bucolic dreams. Lou Reed sees himself: his barking style was suited to a largely one-chord ''Frankie and Johnny,'' but his singing did nothing for the lyrics, and it sounded like any number of second-rate Lou Reed songs.
Kate and Anna McGarrigle brought a lovely, anti-histrionic understanding of rural music to their performances. Bob Neuwirth, in a country vein, and Wilco, in a roots-rock vein, gave similarly confident showings. The Fugs and Mary Margaret O'Hara provided necessary comic relief; Robin Holcomb made ''Froggy Went A-Courtin' '' a song of chanting and mystery; and Adam Dorn and DJ Spooky performed with samplers and turntables in front of Smith's experimental films, some of them hand-colored abstractions, others animated cartoons of spheres, snakes, skeletons and other vaguely religious symbols.
One of Smith's lifelong preoccupations was the idea of alchemy, and the evening's great trick of transubstantiation was pulled off by the trombonist Roswell Rudd, who performed ''Dry Bones'' with Sonic Youth.
Mr. Rudd placed shouting, New Orleans-funeral style trombone improvisations over a rock 'n' roll drone and it worked; then he hollered fragments of the song's lyrics, stretching out words. From a former Dixieland jazz player in his mid-60's with a lumberjack shirt, swept-back white mane and beard -- he looked like something between a country doctor and Moses, and his shouted lines rose above the gathering din behind him -- those words had a curious impact.
The evening had plenty of longueurs, but this wasn't one of them; if the greatest claim to be made for the ''Anthology'' was that it took music aficionados by surprise, the unlikely marriage of Mr. Rudd and Sonic Youth was very much in its tradition.

08.02.2006, 03:23 AM	#4
Moshe Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 5,862	"Dry Bones" is probably a recording from 1999: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01EFD8103DF934A25752C1A96F9582 60 JAZZ REVIEW; Tribute to Harry Smith, Musicologist and Muse Published: November 17, 1999 The musicologist, filmmaker and painter Harry Smith, who died in 1991 at age 78, was a super-bohemian, which is to say that his life was determinedly messy, his interests determinedly scattered, his interpretation of culture determinedly oppositional. He was an idol who tried the patience of his idolaters; stories about Smith often end with his asking for money, glazing over in an alcoholic haze, becoming a nuisance. And in that respect, the five-hour concert honoring him at St. Ann's Church on Friday night -- it was the second of two benefits for the Harry Smith Archives, produced by Hal Willner -- seemed properly imitative of the man being honored: intellectually ambitious, eclectic, unreasonable, long-winded. The concert focused on Smith's contributions to culture from several different angles. Many of the 20 performers played songs from his ''Anthology,'' first released by Folkways records in 1952 and reissued to great acclaim as a six-CD set two years ago. The album is a compendium of commercial recordings of the late 20's and early 30's by obscure artists in blues and mountain music and other forms. It is organized thematically, linking murder, dancing, religion and myth across race, territory and musical style. A primary source of material for the folk revival in the 50's and 60's, the album forces the listener to make connections about American music and the St. Ann's show did the same. The concert immediately made clear that Smith's anthology, and by extension the idea of the prewar American South, pulls out different reactions from different people. Nick Cave opens the anthology and sees desperate, devil-haunted oracles; he enacted one of his ponderous imitations of a Southern preacher as he performed Blind Willie Johnson's ''John the Revelator.'' By contrast, Van Dyke Parks sees golden wheat fields and riverboats; his arrangements of ''The Wagoner's Lad'' and ''The Butcher's Boy'' for keyboard and strings with the help of the Soldier String Quartet and the singer Rufus Wainwright were sweet, bucolic dreams. Lou Reed sees himself: his barking style was suited to a largely one-chord ''Frankie and Johnny,'' but his singing did nothing for the lyrics, and it sounded like any number of second-rate Lou Reed songs. Kate and Anna McGarrigle brought a lovely, anti-histrionic understanding of rural music to their performances. Bob Neuwirth, in a country vein, and Wilco, in a roots-rock vein, gave similarly confident showings. The Fugs and Mary Margaret O'Hara provided necessary comic relief; Robin Holcomb made ''Froggy Went A-Courtin' '' a song of chanting and mystery; and Adam Dorn and DJ Spooky performed with samplers and turntables in front of Smith's experimental films, some of them hand-colored abstractions, others animated cartoons of spheres, snakes, skeletons and other vaguely religious symbols. One of Smith's lifelong preoccupations was the idea of alchemy, and the evening's great trick of transubstantiation was pulled off by the trombonist Roswell Rudd, who performed ''Dry Bones'' with Sonic Youth. Mr. Rudd placed shouting, New Orleans-funeral style trombone improvisations over a rock 'n' roll drone and it worked; then he hollered fragments of the song's lyrics, stretching out words. From a former Dixieland jazz player in his mid-60's with a lumberjack shirt, swept-back white mane and beard -- he looked like something between a country doctor and Moses, and his shouted lines rose above the gathering din behind him -- those words had a curious impact. The evening had plenty of longueurs, but this wasn't one of them; if the greatest claim to be made for the ''Anthology'' was that it took music aficionados by surprise, the unlikely marriage of Mr. Rudd and Sonic Youth was very much in its tradition.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|