Eric Dolphy- Out To Lunch

As something of a dilettante to the world of jazz, I hope it still holds some weight that the first time I heard Out To Lunch I didn't know what to make of it. I had a pretty good idea of what avant-garde and free-jazz were about but foreknowledge often can't quite prepare you for what's to come. Even now when I listen to Out To Lunch it sounds like such a refreshingly bizarre album, operating under its own internal logic. The bass on 'Hat and Beard' drones and groans in a way I would call non-jazzy, and the use of bass clarinet and vibraphones on the album seems more in the wheelhouse of a finicky, eccentric singer-songwriter than a jazz band. What I'm getting at is, this record clearly originates from jazz yet sounds very little like what most people think of when you say the word “jazz.”

It's impossible to calculate the influence of Eric Dolphy on future generations of musicians, but I think it's most telling that some of those musicians weren't jazz players. Frank Zappa titled a track on his Weasels Ripped My Flesh album after Dolphy, and I have to speculate that Zappa pal Captain Beefheart was also a fan. Take the most avant-garde, 'out' moments from Trout Mask Replica and they have the sound of free jazz as played by a 60s rock band. Out To Lunch, like that underground masterpiece, is the kind of music that sounds simultaneously freely improvised and out of control while also being structured and tightly played. I can't explain how, but eventually one learns to tell the difference between random nonsense and expressive/freeform music; Out To Lunch is inarguably the latter.

'Gazzelloni' is a kind of Rosetta's Stone to understanding what is going on in this album. Ostensibly the record's most structured and traditional track, the solos on flute, trumpet, and vibes are undercut, accented, challenged, and cheered on by the other instruments. I almost hesitate to call them solos in the strict sense because of the full group improvisatory feel of this music. An impossibly young Tony Williams on drums is the keystone to it all, snapping off militaristic snare lines on many of the songs and dueling, via cymbals, with bassist Richard Davis near the end of 'Gazzelloni.' Still, it's the final two tracks where Dolphy returns to the more traditionally jazz oriented alto sax that things really get cooking. The towering title track has always ironically sounded more to me like the frantic rush of a person doing physical labor rather than the relaxed afternoon eating of someone on a lunch break. Regardless, Freddie Hubbard plays a patient, burning solo while the rhythm section goes absolutely insane around the 4:27 mark, at once atonal and arrhythmic yet melodic and swinging in its own way, like a machine stamping metal parts in a factory.

I find it a little sad and a little prescient that Miles Davis didn't like Eric Dolphy's music. Sad, because I think if Dolphy had lived longer, he and Davis could have learned a lot from each other's music. Prescient, because I think Davis was one of the few musicians who saw that avant-garde and free-jazz weren't so much a portal to getting some place else as they were an end in and of themselves; there was nowhere to really go 'from' this kind of music. Davis ended up fusing rock, funk, blues, and, arguably, electronic music into his form of jazz, which proved to be of more lasting influence and popularity. Yet I think there is still much to learn from the other direction jazz took in the 60s, and Out To Lunch is one of the essential texts to not merely study, but also to enjoy.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Shuffling I

OK, we all know that when I post videos, they're the quickest entries to whip up for Whiskey Pie. But the real world being what it is, my time being as finite as it is--especially now that I have two jobs--I can't post intensive material every day. So rather than post nothing, I decided to just whip up a new column I can break out whenever I want to write something but am too tired/braindead to bother with something meatier.

And so, Shuffling; a new column series where I--you may have guessed it!!--put my digital music software of choice on random shuffle and talk about the first five songs that come up as I listen to them.

Apologies in advance for the rough nature of this post, but I've been away from home from roughly 7 this morning to 9 tonight and as I'm writing this I'm getting progressively drunker. Yes, this is the kind of professionalism and intelligence you demand from Whiskey Pie...
Nevermind that bit. I went back edited the post.

1) Leave Your Effects Where They're Easily Seen by Spoon: This comes from the bonus disc of random studio scribbles, experiments, and outtakes that was released with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. As such, there isn't much to talk about. It has plodding, lo fi guitar and the singer whining out something or other that I can't make out. An auspicious start indeed.

2) Gazzelloni by Eric Dolphy: I'm far from an expert on jazz, but I've got enough of an appreciation for strange things to love Out To Lunch, which is an experimental odyssey through free jazz and 'out' playing. Beyond that kind of bare description, it's an album of unique textures. If I recall correctly, there's no piano on the album at all, which is rare for an album of this period. 'Gazzelloni' will sound like random soloing and chaotic bass/drums to the uninitiated but is like sweet textural, rhythmic, and melodic honey to people like me, who don't need easily defined song structures and chords to get by. If you don't think that flute and vibraphone can be avant garde, you've never listened to this song.

3) Da Funk/Daftendirekt by Daft Punk: As an on and off fan of Phish and the Grateful Dead, I'm always excited to see bands utilize the live setting to do more than just play a straightforward set of their songs. Daft Punk, of all people, seem to have taken this directive to heart, but rather than from the angle of jazz musicians they come to it from the DJ set angle, mixing their own songs together and mashing them up in new and interesting ways. Alive 2007 is not-so-secretly one of the best live albums that's ever emerged from the electronic music field, and even if you only know Daft Punk's name because of that "one more time" song, it's a brilliant example of why this kind of music can be so addictive and euphoric. I have to confess that I don't really know either of the songs being smashed together here, but now that the shot of whiskey and half of a can of PBR are taking effect after a full day at both of my jobs (it's a long, boring story) I feel like I can relate to the rave kids of the 90s who stayed up all night dancing while rolling on ecstasy and then went into their jobs the next morning with little to no sleep. And then did it all over again the next night. On a side note, wasn't Kanye West's using a Daft Punk sample for that one hit song kind of like a modern day echo of Afrika Bambaataa using a Kraftwerk sample?? I think so.

4) Alphonse Mambo by The Mountain Goats: Huh, harmonica, eh?? This is one of the few early-ish Mountain Goats songs that doesn't sound like it was recorded into a boombox. I'm still a little underwhelmed by the last Mountain Goats album, but John Darnielle is the kind of artist who has such a huge back catalog, and continues to release new stuff, that you're never disappointed for very long. Good but not great.

5) Let's Get Lost by Elliott Smith: I don't know if we will or can ever hear From A Basement On The Hill without always thinking about his death. We'll always have that context even if we try to put it out of our heads and judge the music on its own merits. It's a decent enough album, but it still has that unmistakable feel of something that was finished after an artist's death. Kind of like how Stephen Spielberg "finished" 'A.I.' after Stanley Kubrick died. Wait, what??....The last year or so of Smith's life was a confused mess and I'm not sure we'll really know if he killed himself or was stabbed by an intruder/assassin. Whatever the case, I think the album's title is very evocative and this song's stripped down production hearkens back to his first few albums.