Dane Rousay four-hour uninterrupted solo percussion performance, Tuesday 5 December at Ventura (San Antonio)

KSE recording artist DANE ROUSAY, a fellow San Antonio resident, will be doing a FOUR-HOUR (!!!!) uninterrupted solo percussion performance next Tuesday night, at Ventura here in S.A. This should truly be an event….and it’s one I do not want to miss.

He will have copies of his KSE album, released earlier this year, ANATOMIZE (KSE #373) for sale at the show. Hope to see any of you within driving distance there. Yes, it’s a weeknight, but that’s why they make coffee and energy drinks. I’ll just have an extra espresso or two when I get up for work at 5:45 the next morning….

DANE ROUSAY

Four hour uninterrupted  solo percussion “ENDURANCE PERFORMANCE”

Tuesday 5 December, 8 pm to midnight

Ventura SATX, 1011 Avenue B, San Antonio

donations accepted, with all proceeds going to Pride Center–San Antonio

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FROM THE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT:

Dane Rousay will be performing a solo set of acoustic percussion. This performance will last four hours. Rousay will receive no breaks and there will be no outside collaborators.

This is an endurance-based performance – pushing creative boundaries as well as physical ones.

Donations will be pushing social boundaries – advocating for change/support within the San Antonio community.

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sign up on the Facebook event page:  https://www.facebook.com/events/318749585197584/

 

6th in the series of Natchez poems, SATORI IN NATCHEZ, from Bill Shute (KSE # 391)

the sixth release from the recent poems written in Natchez, Mississippi

BILL SHUTE, “SATORI IN NATCHEZ”

(KSE #391, poetry chapbook)

edition of 41 hand-cut, hand-assembled copies

$6 US postpaid / $7 elsewhere postpaid

payment via paypal  to     django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com

please leave note with your order letting me know which items you are ordering and your mailing address…..thanks!

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“the dropping of a handkerchief can be for

the poet the lever with which we will

lift the universe”–  Frank O’Hara

I composed SEVEN six-page poems during my two weeks in Natchez, Mississippi, in May 2017, and here is the sixth one to be edited and formatted: SATORI IN NATCHEZ. The final one will come out in December, and I also hope to record all seven in the coming months for 2018 release. As usual, it’s open-field poems filtered through the consciousness of a narrative persona who is up to his waist in the muck, but looking toward the horizon (I’d say stars, but these were written during the daytime)—-JUNK SCULPTURE FROM THE NEW GILDED AGE.

As I read these pages aloud to Mary Anne after not having looked at the pieces for months, I was reminded how deeply the red wheelbarrows and petals on a wet black bough of my teenage poetry studies took root, then the initial shrubbery later trimmed and pruned through my study of Charles Reznikoff and Lorine Niedecker….but I’m not the kind of person who thinks of influence very often. One learns one’s craft in adolescence and then learns how to apply and develop—-and, we hope, go beyond—-the influences during one’s apprentice years. After that, we have the tools to add whatever life throws our way into our poetic stew and to make it work and make it distinctive and make it seductively tasty in such a way that others will want to consume it….and then want to come back for next week’s variation.

Also, in terms of poetry serving as a core sample of life as it is lived circa 2017, if we want to better understand and to document this age, we need to taste the soil and walk the walk in places such as Natchez, Mississippi. There is a lot to experience, a lot to learn…and a lot to savor. The voices past and present are calling out….

Crew members took the flowers from the tables before the banquet ended….piquant piccadilly sunshine cuts through the layers of kudzu and the residue of habit….standing water from yesterday evening’s showers, widening the cracks in the cream-stained wood, washing the grime from our feet, mis-shapen from the miles marched in steel-toed boots….two black horses pulled the carriage with the coffin through a swarm of beret-wearing beatnik flies, acting as if they were still in Brooklyn…intoning the sutras of the swamp, lined-out by mud, punctuated by mosquitoes, indentured to the payday-loan store & pretending to look alive…..I’m not able to change my gait, but I can adapt it to the needs at hand….

These seven pieces written in Natchez will eventually be collected in a full-sized professionally printed book, but as always, the home-made KSE chapbook publication is the only publication in the original formatting, with the original art, with the original epigraph (this time from Frank O’Hara, see top of post), and in the intended form of its creation. There are only 41 copies….grab one now, while you can.

Each of these chapbooks is a stand-alone piece (the “serial poem” concept of Jack Spicer seems to fit my work well), so don’t worry about what order they are in. I consider each narrator to be a unique person telling his/her unique story from his/her unique perspective. I as poet am just the actor playing the part, the gallery-operator assembling the exhibition.

I hope you find SATORI IN NATCHEZ interesting and worthwhile. Thanks for your reading all these years!

Also available, for the same price:

($6 US ppd/$7 elsewhere ppd)

KSE #382 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “The Difficulties, The Impossibilities,” 5th of the Natchez poems

KSE #380 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “Time Crystals,” 4th of the Natchez poems

KSE #378 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “Meltdown,” 3rd of the Natchez poems

KSE #376 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “New Jerusalem,”  2nd of the Natchez poems

KSE #374 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “Guest Register,” 1st of the Natchez poems

and not part of the Natchez sequence, but written after those, while in New Mexico and El Paso

KSE #386 (poetry chapbook), BILL SHUTE, “Trimmings”…..

new album from MATT KREFTING, “Microchips” (KSE #390)

MATT KREFTING, “Microchips” (KSE #390, CDR album)

$8 postpaid in the US (see below for ordering info and overseas pricing)

Honored to present a THIRD  KSE album from the ultimate post-postmodern renaissance man, Western Massachusetts’ MATT KREFTING….perhaps the only man who can be featured at an experimental music festival and be the most outre artist on the bill, who can sing a George Jones song in a way that can break your heart, AND who’s been published in the Huffington Post! One of the wonderful things about Matt’s work in any discipline (and as with David Bowie, MK could be described as a “generalist,” in the best sense of that term) is that you really can’t anticipate what he will deliver, except to say that it will be elegant, it will possess wit, it will be carefully crafted, and it will be intellectually engaging on a deep level. When I have sent him my comments about his previous KSE albums, our conversations sometimes have existed exclusively on the theoretical/conceptual level.

We originally arranged for this album to be a 2016 release, but Matt did not feel the work had really fallen into place yet, and he continued to tinker with and re-evaluate the “Microchips” project until delivering us the finished master last month. It is not a long album—-just 27 minutes, divided into 14 tracks—-but I can’t imagine anything being added to it. Most of the raw material comes from found sources, but it’s merely clay in the hands of this master sound sculptor. Curiously, this collage of an album can contain spoken sections about “mircochips” that sound like their original source might have been some religious conspiracy theory podcast (the kind of thing Jim Bakker does while selling survivalist foodstuffs to older people he’s filled full of paranoid fantasies), but the way they are re-contextualized and then placed among passages of almost-rococo pillowy music (perhaps growing out of tape manipulation, but does it really matter? I think not, only the result matters), this sound-installation of an album creates something that’s both witty and disquieting—-and is THAT a difficult trick to pull off! I can imagine some listeners who are chained to a particular genre of music, even if it’s in the so-called “avant-garde,” might wonder if they are being “put on” by this album (especially as it folds in on itself in the last track, with echoes of a virtual Greta Garbo and Curly Howard), but hey, I remember that being said about Dennis Hopper’s THE LAST MOVIE and Godard’s KING LEAR. And those are the works that have turned out to be the most forward-thinking and contemporary, the further we careen into the future…because they embrace contradiction and have woven a sense of being incomplete into their warp and woof.  I have a feeling that MICROCHIPS (and whenever I read that title, I hear “Microchips And Fish” by the Red Crayola playing in my head) may well be the work that NAILS this sorry but fascinating year of 2017. What contradictions and possibilities and pain and achievement and loss and confusion are happening in this year ! Truly, it is the best of times and the worst of times….and the most absurd of times….and the pinnacle of achievement in some ways in the midst of a diamond-crusted New Gilded Age that would drive a Theodore Dreiser or a Mark Twain or a Woody Guthrie crazy. Don’t ask me for specifics, but somehow this album seems to exemplify and contain in one package the contradictions. In the immortal words of Walt Whitman, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Indeed!

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As always, Mr. Krefting has provided a witty and elegant statement on the album, which like the album itself, is self-deprecating and embracing of seeming contradiction:

“MICROCHIPS. Microchips, if implanted in pets, can be very sensible. But what are pets, really? Like what ARE they?

If applied to human medical records, they (microchips, not pets) can still be sensible, maybe, but also more open to exploration. Still, a good idea?

But take it out, tease it. A bit more. I have no idea what microchips even are, really. I just have an idea about them. I got obsessed with that idea, which is different than being obsessed with the chips themselves. Then I found them everywhere. Or, I found them in places that felt like everywhere. And I went from there. Then out. Then back again.

How might I render this in a way that folds into the methods I like to use to make music? I don’t know. I took well over a year thinking about that and working on the pieces that comprise this album, but I still have nothing that even resembles an answer.

In many ways, this is the most purely experimental thing I’ve ever done, but it is, I promise, also minutely considered in its final form. Plenty of moments lie on the cutting room floor.

I could not create a unified atmosphere, no matter how I tried, but I also worked against something too fractured. It’s like a diary of a particular moment that shows a complete disregard for the passage of actual time.

I feel like taking the muscles out of my body, and I feel like I ought to keep them for myself, and make them into something.

There’s no sense in even being paranoid anymore, is there? It’s just the way it is, this assumption of guilt….A drill in the head is worth three in the underbelly.

So my chip sits wherever it sits and it sings to me, a soft, far-off, rusty golden sort of glow, letting me know that I am where I am and nowhere else and I’ll say for sure that I can go either way. Some nights I think the walls are gorgeous and mysterious, and the next night they’ll make me want to scream and extinguish myself. But that’s life, or something like it, so that’s enough for now.”

Matt Krefting, Holyoke, October 2017

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Well, there’s nothing I can–or should–add to that. You should print out Mr. Krefting’s words and keep them as liner notes for this album, which you now cannot help but purchase and share with your friends.

Matt Krefting has issued two previous albums for KSE (both out of print): RECITALS (KSE #266) in 2014, and SWEET DAYS OF DISCIPLINE (#220), from 2012. We also published a chapbook of his poetry, THE PRINCESS OF KNIGHT AVENUE (KSE #259) in 2013. Matt also appeared on the KSE 10th Anniversary Compilation album.

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MATT KREFTING, “Microchips” (KSE #390, CDR album)

NOTE: ALL CDR’s  ARE NOW PRICED @ $8.00, postpaid in the US (see below for ordering info, via paypal).

(OUTSIDE THE USA , one album is $18.00 postpaid, first two albums are $20.00 postpaid, then $8 each postpaid after that—sorry, but it now costs almost $14 US to send one CDR overseas….you save A LOT by buying more than one—in fact, the price on an order of two or more HAS GONE DOWN!

1 album= $18, 2 albums= $20, 3 albums= $28, etc. Thanks for your understanding of this. The Post Office now charges $14.50 to mail ONE cdr without a jewel box to Europe or Asia!)

Payment is via paypal, using the e-mail address   django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com   . It might be helpful for you to also shoot me an e-mail telling me you’ve sent funds and what items you want…or if you prefer, tell me what books/cdr’s you want, and I’ll send you a paypal invoice.

OTHER ALBUMS ALSO AVAILABLE:

 

KSE #385 (CDR), TOM CREAN, “3 Heads Tame”

KSE #379 (CDR), SHANGHAI QUINTET (featuring Alfred 23 Harth), “ShangShan/Stone Age Music” (Harth and young Chinese musicians, recorded live in Shanghai, China, October 2016)

KSE #371 (CDR), SAMUEL DUNSCOMBE & TIM OLIVE, “Zanshi”

KSE #377 (CDR) JOHN BELL (new for July 2017), ‘Cambridge Surprise Minor and other peals’….new compositions for percussion from Bell, well-known for his collaborations with Alfred 23 Harth….

KSE #373 (CDR), DANE ROUSAY, “Anatomize” (new for July 2017), solo percussion from the San Antonio-based composer and multi-instrumentalist

KSE #375 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE & JAMES L. MALONE, “The Limits Of The Possible” (new for July 2017)… one of .KSE’s most acclaimed artists,  saxophonist-composer-theorist Massimo Magee is back with a blistering duo album with guitarist James L. Malone

KSE #381 (CDR), BILL SHUTE, “Bridge On The Bayou: Bill Shute Reads the Arnaudville Poems”….readings of the five poems composed in Louisiana in 2016, soon to be published in one book-length volume

KSE #372, ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Manitas” solo classical guitar

KSE #369, A. F. JONES, “FOUR DOT THREE TO ONE”

KSE #362, FOSSILS & BILL SHUTE, “Florida Nocturne Revisited”….new interpretations of Shute’s Florida Nocturne Poems

KSE #370, “KSE 11th ANNIVERSARY ALBUM” featuring newly recorded, exclusive tracks from members of the KSE family and friends: JEN HILL, VANESSA ROSSETTO, ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, LISA CAMERON, BRIAN RURYK, FOSSILS, MORE EAZE, JOHN BELL, MASSIMO MAGEE, MATTHEW REVERT, STEVE FLATO

KSE #355 (CDR), MORE EAZE, “wOrk”

KSE #357 (CDR) SMOKEY EMERY / VENISON WHIRLED, “turning into”

KSE #363 (CDR) ALFRED 23 HARTH’s BERLIN ENSEMBLES

KSE #359 (CDR), TOM CREAN & MATT ROBIDOUX, “Blank Space”–cover art by Jennifer Baron

KSE #336 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH, “Kepler 452b Edition”

KSE #351 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Music In 3 Spaces”

KSE #350 (CDR) ANTHONY GUERRA / BILL SHUTE, “Subtraction” KSE  reissue of album originally released in 2011 on Black Petal Records, Australia 

KSE #335 (CDR album), REVEREND RAYMOND BRANCH, “Rainbow Gospel Hour…On The Air!”—a wonderful hour-long AM-radio broadcast, mastered from cassette, capturing the warmth and joy of Rev. Branch in both music (lots of it) and spoken message

KSE #333 (CDR album), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Tunnels” solo 12-string acoustic mantra guitar

KSE #318, ALFRED 23 HARTH & JOHN BELL, “Camellia”

AND as a public service for Matt Krefting fans, we are bringing out of the garage the LAST available copies of the 2016 KSE 10th Anniversary album (KSE #331), featuring Matt, plus also otherwise unavailable tracks by ALFRED 23 HARTH,  SARAH HENNIES, RAMBUTAN, VANESSA ROSSETTO, ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, DEREK ROGERS, BRENT FARISS, GRAHAM LAMBKIN, and MASSIMO MAGEE. Available ONLY with the purchase of a copy of MICROCHIPS (same price as any other KSE album)

We’ll be back in a few weeks with the final releases in our Winter batch: Lisa Cameron/Robert Horton……More Eaze…..and Ernesto Diaz-Infante. And then in the early months of 2018, an exciting new poetry collection from John Sweet!

As always, thanks for your support as we finish out our 12th year  of operation.

 

BING CROSBY, “GOOD & RARE, Volume 3” (Sepia UK, CD)

BING CROSBY, “Good & Rare, Volume 3” (Sepia Records, UK, CD, issued 2016)

During his 50-year recording career Bing Crosby made a staggering number of recordings, a figure made even more impressive when one factors in his decades of radio broadcasts. Crosby also recorded a staggering variety of music during those years, reflecting not only his wide and diverse tastes but also his desire to satisfy different audiences…and also as a singer who worked in a wide variety of formats, and like Elvis, he was someone who recorded many songs for each of his many films. This was also a period when a song that looked to become a hit would be recorded by a number of vocalists, each bringing his/her unique spin to it (and, from a business perspective, looking to carve out their own piece of the pie). And let’s not forget that Crosby was an artist who recorded “concept albums” long before the term existed.

Sepia Records in the UK has done a fine job bringing back into print, in chronological order, Crosby’s  lesser-known late 40’s and early-to-mid 50’s recordings in 10 separate volumes, and those volumes were cherry-picked for quality rarities in the first two GOOD & RARE albums. Thus, I was quite pleasantly surprised when getting this album and finding out that it was NOT another trawl through the 50’s Decca obscurities, but instead a 30-year collection of super-rarities, all fascinating and many of them being demos with just a pianist and a guitarist. I’ve included some brief comments on each track below to let you know its origin. For the Crosby aficionado, this album is one rare treat after another. For the Crosby novice–and probably most regular readers of this blog do not actively collect Crosby recordings or listen to his radio shows in their spare time, I’m guessing–this collection is a fine cross-section of odds’n’sods which should show anyone the mastery that Crosby brought to his performances in any era. Do I even need to say that Crosby is surely the only human being who recorded with both Bix Beiderbecke and David Bowie?

Those who’d like to explore Crosby’s body of work further without spending any money can go three places:

A. The Crosby family website (at bingcrosby.com) offers a Crosby Internet Radio, which you can put on while working or washing the dishes or whatever and get a steady stream of Crosby

B. You can listen to Arne Fogel’s stunning radio show THE BING SHIFT (to be found at http://www.jazz88.fm/show/the-bing-shift/)….Fogel is THE Crosby fan and archivist, so the show is dedicated to DEEP cuts from Crosby’s 50 year recording career….it’s also featured at the Crosby Family website

C. You can listen to and download a few years worth of the early 60’s BING CROSBY AND ROSEMARY CLOONEY (George’s aunt) daily radio show, which was (along with YOURS TRULY, JOHNNY DOLLAR) one of the last shows on CBS radio…Bing and Rosie were not only people who loved working together, they were close friends, and the warmth and good humor and affection between the two is a joy to hear….as are the small group musical performances under the musical direction of keyboard player Buddy Cole (in his own right, a lounge music legend, who is here what my late mother would have called “jazzy”–as opposed to hardcore “jazz”)….on each show, Bing usually takes one song solo, Rosie takes one song solo, there’s one duet, and there’s an instrumental number from Buddy, all held together by the banter between Bing and Rosie and announcer Ken Carpenter (who’s kind of in the Don Wilson vein)….here is a link to 220+ twenty-minute episodes   https://archive.org/details/OTRR_BCRC_Singles

For about ten dollars you can also get the album itself, which includes superb notes from Crosby authority Malcolm MacFarlane (author of BING CROSBY DAY TO DAY and also an Oxford University Press volume on Rosemary Clooney’s late-period career). Here’s the link to Sepia’s listing for the album:  http://www.sepiarecords.com/1296.html

ENJOY!
1. OL’ MAN RIVER (1928, alternate take, w/ Paul Whiteman Orch.)
2. POOR LITTLE G-STRING (1929, unused film recording)
3. SONG OF THE DAWN (the song Bing would have sung in the King of Jazz film–it was sung by John Boles instead–had he not spent the night before in jail!)
4. A BENCH IN THE PARK (1930 radio recording with Rhythm Boys)
5. EVERYTHING’S AGREED UPON (1930 radio recording with Rhythm Boys)
6. AFTER SUNDOWN (alternate tk of song from ‘Going Hollywood’, w/ Marion Davies)
7. LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART (1934, alternate take)
8. RED SAILS IN THE SUNSET (1935, alternate take)
9. IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER (1936, from the film Mississippi, with W. C. Fields, this is the film version, not the Decca record version)
10. THE MOON GOT IN MY EYES (1937, trio demonstration record)
11. ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE (1937, trio demonstration record)
12. LAUGH AND CALL IT LOVE (Demo Version A)
13. LAUGH AND CALL IT LOVE (Demo Version B)
14. WHERE IS CENTRAL PARK? (1938 demo, written for but not used in Sing You Sinners)
15. BEWARE! I’M BEGINNING TO CARE (1939 demo, written for but not used in East Side of Heaven)
16. EAST SIDE OF HEAVEN (demo for title song from film, quite different from Decca version)
17. SING A SONG OF SUNBEAMS (demo of song used in East Side of Heaven)
18. WHEN THE MOON COMES OVER MADISON SQUARE (1940 demo of song used in Rhythm on the River)
19. DUKE THE SPOOK (1943 private recording for military flyers)
20. SONG OF THE SEVENTH AIRFORCE  (1944 private recording for military flyers)
21. SONG OF THE FIFTH MARINES (1944 private recording for Marines)
22. NIGHT AND DAY (1944 alternate version of the Cole Porter song)
23. THE BLUE ROOM
24. CHEEK TO CHEEK
25. MOUNTAIN GREENERY (23-24-25 are all alternate versions of songs from the 1956 album “Bing Sings While Bregman Swings”)