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Dalrymple "Make Believe" (Artist Direct, 2019)

Music is like an emotional lubricant, easing our passage through time, especially tough times. I continue to appreciate all of the musicians in my life, whether they be friends or people I know only through their recordings. I also appreciate that Bandcamp continues to waive their fees once a month, although it has definitely become a case of feast or famine for me, as I buy many things on the eagerly-awaited First Fridays but not much the rest of the month. Famine really isn’t the correct word though, because the beauty of recorded music is that one can listen to it again and again. I’m in the middle of re-listening to everything I own, mainly due to the fact that it’s easy to overlook things or forget about them entirely once a collection burgeons to a certain level. I think I passed that level years ago, but that doesn’t stop me from buying more. My tastes and musical obsessions change with the passing years, but revisiting music I bought in my youth is nonetheless rewarding, although sometimes expensive (as in, “I forgot how great this is! Why don’t I have everything this artist recorded?) At any rate, I have decided to once again attempt to get back into regularly reviewing recorded music, with relevant links of course.

Dalrymple “Make Believe” (Artist Edition, 2020)

Dalrymple is a new project which starts up where Lasher Keen left off. I’ve reviewed a number of Lasher Keen shows on this blog (here's a link to one of them), but so far have only gotten to see one partial Dalrymple performance, way back in August of 2018, which I didn’t review because I had gotten burned out on writing about every show I attended. It was the second show of a two-show night in Oakland and Berkeley, with the first being at Classic Cars West in Oakland with Luxury Skin (featuring the sultry stylings of Juliet Gordon, ex-The Classical), Cube, and others. Leaving that show, I frantically raced toward the Starry Plough, where Dalrymple’s set was already in progress. I remember being entranced by puppets, an eclectic assortment of instruments and styles, and in general a fascinating assortment of sounds and sights, like I’d wandered into a wandering minstrel show in an alternate universe. This was followed by the always-entrancing Faun Fables who, like always, entranced. That brings me to “Make Believe,” Dalrymple’s first recorded output under this name.

“Make Believe” is available as a digital download, a CD, or a beautiful double LP. The cover features original artwork featuring Dalrymple himself, appearing as a renaissance man (in both definitions of the term), with his head lit up by ideas and inventions and his Indian-diety-like extra hands clutching a plethora of instruments, a book, and a key. The inside of the gatefold has lyrics, illustrations (credited artists are Arthur Rackham, Sidney Sime, and Morris Williams (I had to Google Williams, and I’m glad I did). The illustrations on the inner sleeves are by Rackham, I think. Angie Holm is responsible for the back cover, an image of four hands beckoning from behind a partially opened door. There is also a bibliography, which helps illuminate the lyrics and provides pathways for fearless explorers who routinely ignore warnings of dragons.

If one doesn’t count the brief intro, the album is bookended by evocative memories of childhood in the form of the songs, In My Youth, and album closer Storytime. In between is a wild ride through folklore and myth, where we meet a disparate crew of characters such as Willy Wonka, Pan, Baba Yaga, and many more. The music is blessedly hard to pigeon-hole, which is as it should be. I hear renaissance prog-folk mixed with the jagged edges of East Bay art rock, wyrd folk, a touch of In Gowan Ring-esque whimsy, and the snarling sounds of Comus, if Comus woke up on the right side of the bed one fine morning. The Discogs entry for the album classifies it as medieval, neo-classical, operetta, and psychedelic rock. In short, we all hear different things through our personal filters. The list of instruments played on this record is daunting, so I’m not going to type it up, but if you, like me, enjoy the anticipation engendered by a list of instruments that is both lengthy and weird, this is a record for you. Dalrymple and James Word seem to be the two permanent band members, with a healthy list of collaborators (including the always exciting Nils Frykdahl (Free Salamander Exhibit and Faun Fables) and partner in rhyme Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables), Colla Voce Children’s Choir, and Early Music Choir.

I can imagine whimsically entering an almost overlooked record store located on an ill-traveled side street, breathing in the welcome, musty smell of neglected stacks of vinyl and flipping to the back to find an oddity. The cover has ring wear and corners softened by age and neglect, but the illustrations promise wonders. Buying it for $1.99, I rush home and discover that I’ve found a lost private press masterpiece from the seventies. Searching online, I can find no internet presence. It’s as if the ambitious, crazed creators have retreated into another world somewhere, leaving behind the record I hold as the sole proof that they ever existed. The swirling mix of exotic instruments, great range of vocal styles (from children's choir to basso profundo, and back again), and purposeful abandonment of genre tropes is a refreshing to hear in these troubling times. In 2020 especially, I often wish I could retreat into a storybook somewhere.

My take on this album is that is centers around the importance of stories and storytelling. We are, after all, living collections of the stories we’ve been told and the stories we tell ourselves (not to mention the stories we’ve read), and these stories can determine how we relate to the world. The song, Morning of the Magicians, is a gleeful roll call of magicians both fictional and otherwise, with the common thread being inspiration. Where else will you see Alejandro Jodorowsky and Yoda rubbing shoulders. Yodarowsky? The perfect muse...

Elsewhere, in The Blessing of Pan, we are treated to the Colla Voce Children’s Choir singing about the Great God Pan, which always evokes Arthur Machen for me. Come to think of it, Algernon Blackwood often sprang to mind while I was listening, especially his novel, Prisoner in Fairyland. Again, this is the filter I see this record through. "Hoof beat, hoof beat..."

The lengthy The Trickster Ferryman is entrancing enough that I didn’t realize it was lengthy until I looked. With a title like this, one could be forgiven for assuming it’s about Iktomi or Coyote, or one of the other classic trickster characters from folklore and myth. It’s not though. It’s about Willy Wonka. In fact, the lyrics were written by Roald Dahl, and should be familiar to anybody who was read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or seen the original film. The propulsive rhythm of the song sluices us down an ominous tunnel, like a childhood fantasy gone unexpectedly dark. Suddenly we don’t feel so safe, and that’s okay, because now we’ve added to our story collection.

We are also treated to Dalrymple’s musical version of the W.B. Yeats poem, The Stolen Child. Here again we can hear (appropriately enough), the children’s choir helping weave the tale. I’m reminded that the first time I heard this sung was by Loreena Mckennitt, and despite the delivery being completely different, the magical effect is the same. This is the power of well-chosen words.

Dalrymple’s multi-instrumentality and distinctive voice, added to the gleeful, complex approach to the task at hand, produce unexpected juxtapositions of sound and story at every turn. It’s hard to pick a favorite song, and I imagine that any early favorite will shift in status with repeated plays. The aforementioned The Trickster Ferryman is excellent, but then again so is GogMagog, which sounds like a Mordor marching song. Whatever the case may be, this is obviously going to hold up to many repeat listens (I always listen at least twice before writing a review, and so far, so good).

Now I have All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth playing in my head. For better or for worse, we're more likely to remember our childhoods better than we remember what happened last week. If your childhood was traumatic, let this record be what you remember instead. It might be a start of the healing process.

This record is, I think, a paean to childhood and a celebration of the magical powers of stories. I wholeheartedly approve.

Buy the record and learn more by clicking the links below:

Dalrymple's website

Dalrymple MacAlpin's Bandcamp page (remember that Bandcamp is still waiving its artist fees on the first Friday of every month during the pandemic). 

 

What Do Dar Williams and Bruce Dickinson Have In Common?

 Last year, I saw two musicians, Dar Williams and Bruce Dickinson, on book tours. Admittedly, Williams included music as part of her performance, but the other Dickinson's was a book reading/slideshow at an actual book store. Here in 2018, I’ve finally gotten around to reading the books, so here’s some words about words. I'll try not to be too wordy.

Dar Williams

I never knew that Dar Williams was a fan of city planning, but given her astute lyrics about human interrelationships and foibles, I’m not surprised. As a touring musician, she gets to visit a wide range of communities. Better yet, she gets to revisit them and notice changes.

I have a BA degree in Sociology, so this kind of thing holds some interest for me.

As far as my musical interests go, Dar Williams is an outlier. Her songs have a poppy, effervescent quality missing from most of my music collection. Her lyrics are more feel-good than feel-bad, but she manages to write with such heart-warming intelligence and charm that I was won over early on. In this case, “early on” means the time I saw her open for Finnish folk group Varttina at the Great American Music Hall in 1992, back when “The Honesty Room” was her only album.

A quarter of a century later and I’m still a fan, although my favorite CDs are still the early ones. I mentioned above that her songs are more cheerful than my usual listening fare, so it was interesting to note that during her performance and the recently renovated UC Theater (it used to be a movie theater, and I can remember many happy hours there – but come to think of it, given the subject of her book,  it was a perfect venue for her on this tour), she only played a couple of verses of my favorite song, Bought and Sold, from her third album, “End of the Summer”, deeming it too depressing to play in its entirety. The thing is, out of all of her songs, it is probably the most thematically related to the book.

“What I Found In A Thousand Towns” isn’t the first book she has published, and it isn’t even the first book of hers that I’ve bought, but it is the first one I’ve read. I’ll get to “Amalee” one of these days, but since it’s a children’s book, I’ve put off reading it.

The book is divided into three sections. The first part, Spaces, investigates ways in which created spaces, natural space, and waterfronts can help facilitate positive proximity (a term that binds this book together, so to speak). Positive proximity is the concept that is first mentioned in the introduction as being the essential ingredient to determining positive relationships in our towns. Some towns, like Moab, Utah, are luckier than others when it comes to natural space, and obviously waterfronts are a relatively rare commodity. Created spaces can be anywhere, as long as there are people with the time, ambition, and resources to make them.

Part Two investigates identity building, and Part Three is about translation. Williams states that, “translation is the magic ingredient that makes successful towns and cities happen,” and she then further breaks down the concept into structural, mutual, and individual translation. Structural translation is the physical underpinnings of a community – its wiring, signage, and ease of access. Mutual translation is the human partnerships, and as for the individuals, Williams spends a fair amount of time writing about people she calls “conscious bridgers” who take their extroverted selves to the next level when it comes to making connections with others, diving headfirst into taking on projects that benefit their communities, and generally behave in a way that would be exhausting for an introvert like myself. I know some people who could be described as conscious bridgers, and more power to them, because I don’t think I’d ever be good at being one.

There are a lot of anecdotes about towns Williams has visited on tours or lived in. Names both familiar (Pete Seeger, for one) and unfamiliar appear in the text.

This book is not in any way an autobiography or memoir, so readers expecting such a thing will be disappointed. There were a few moments where my eyes glazed over as I tried to keep track of which town I was in and who the large cast of characters were, but that may be partially due to my habit of reading in bed at the end of long days.

I even stumbled across a story I mention every week at the science camp I work for. On her section about waterfronts, Williams writes about how many waterways were in pretty dismal shape before environmental regulations started the long path toward cleaner living conditions. One such waterfront was along the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cuyahoga was so polluted during the sixties (and before) that it actually caught fire in 1968. Williams refers to this as Combustible River Syndrome (CRS), and mentions a few other U.S. rivers that at one point or other (some many times) went up in flames.

When writing about translation, Williams brings up this viral video about police officers in Gainesville, FL (a town that Williams states is full of conscious bridgers) being called out due to a noise disturbance. This is only one example of some of the beautiful stories mentioned within these pages. We live in a time of deep division, and anything people can do to connect with others is a beautiful thing. See the video and the rematch video here. I wish all cops were like this guy.

Bruce Dickinson

After reading Williams' book, I dove right into Bruce Dickinson’s autobiography, “What Does This Button Do?” For those who need an introduction, Dickinson has been Iron Maiden’s vocalist for 30 years or so. The title refers to the author’s penchant for taking chances, which in this case, has certainly borne fruit.

Last year, Dickinson stopped by Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park on a book tour. Coincidentally, this happened only a few months after I’d rekindled my interest in Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden were perhaps my favorite band during the early eighties, and although I’ll admit to having a particular soft spot for their first two (non-Dickinson) albums, I happily bought the first few albums featuring Dickinson before gradually losing interest due to the expansion of my musical horizons in other directions. I last saw Iron Maiden perform at San Francisco’s Cow Palace on their “Powerslave” tour, back in 1985 or so.

Early last year, I watched one of those “kids react” videos featuring Iron Maiden, and it made me realize that I hadn’t listened to the band in forever. It also made me realize that they had released around three decades of music that I hadn’t even heard. I subsequently marched out and bought a stack of used CDs. Conveniently enough, they had just released a double CD entitled “The Book Of Souls”. I made that mine as well. Then I found out about the book tour…

Iron Maiden predates my current, adult take on musicians and celebrities in general. I can remember being a teenager (and younger) during a time when meeting members of my favorite bands was an unlikely proposition. That said, standing in line for an autograph isn’t really “meeting”, is it? All of this aside, the fact that Bruce Dickinson was going to be speaking at Kepler’s on a book tour was pretty mind-blowing. Iron Maiden are pretty much as close to mega-stardom within their chosen genre as anyone. Needless to say, tickets for the event sold out, but not before I bought one ticket/book combo and one stand-alone ticket. That meant, we found upon arrival, that my wife, Jeanine, and I couldn’t sit together. We would have had to buy two books to do that. Various old friends were peppered throughout the audience too. Dickinson arrived with a humorless minder who stood to the side of the little stage area and maintained impressive vigilance during the talk. To be fair, he’d probably heard the same talk enough times for the varnish to have worn off of it.

Dickinson proved to be an accomplished public speaker (no doubt from over thirty years of publicly speaking and singing to audiences numbering in the tens of thousands). He was also unexpectedly hilarious. He read selected passages from the book, which only whetted my appetite for reading it, took questions from the audience (although they had to be written down on 2 by 5 cards and vetted), and finally sat at a table so people who bought the book could line up and get it signed. It was all done very efficiently because apparently he had to be on a plane to New York immediately afterward.

My friend Wayne surreptitiously photographed me while I was getting my book signed. He's good at that.

The book traces Dickinson’s path from childhood up through the recording of the aforementioned “The Book Of Souls”, ending with his cancer diagnosis and grueling treatment. He writes about this incident in a hilarious and self-effacing fashion, and a good chunk of this chapter was read to us at the event.  It was weird hearing a childhood hero relate his troubles on the toilet.

Generally speaking, the book traces the path of an amazing renaissance man, whose love of singing, fencing, piloting, writing, adventuring, and briefly, filmmaking, are all well documented. His writing style is unique, and he proves adept at telling the story in a way that keeps the pages turning. I came away wanting to read his novels (yes, he has written a few), and delve into his solo career (to my knowledge, I have heard exactly none of his solo albums). Like they say in showbiz, if you can leave them wanting more, you’ve done your job well.

I had known that Dickinson was a pilot, sometimes flying the band around the globe on tour, but beyond that, I was in the dark. It was interesting to get a look into that world. As I read, a picture emerged of a man who doesn’t seem to sit still for long. His creative endeavors sound exhausting, but at the same time, inspiring. He has pared down this book to the essentials (ie: the things that people are likely going to want to read about).  In the afterword, he writes, “No births, marriages or divorces, of me or anybody else.” This was a sound decision, I think. Events of personal significance don’t always make the leap to gripping literature.

I also have to mention the chapter about Sarajevo, when the band played a gig in the middle of an active war zone. That makes for some gripping reading. Kudos to them for doing such a thing.

As a longtime fan of the early albums (I’m still digesting the later ones), I really enjoyed reading about those years. The thing about this book though, is that I believe it has a more universal appeal. Being an Iron Maiden fan helps, but it isn’t a necessary criteria for admission. Dickinson’s trajectory is interesting enough to have universal appeal.

Of the two books, “What Does This Button Do?” is a much more compelling read, although “What I Found In A Thousand Towns” is more interesting from a sociological perspective. Dickinson inspires the reader to heights of personal greatness, while Williams reminds us that cooperation and networking are crucial to collective greatness. It's nice when people whose work I enjoy reveal themselves to be multifaceted.

In closing, here's a photo of the assembled nerds after the signing.

 

 

The Inevitable Year-End List of Musical Favorites

For some reason, I’m continuing to buy into the tradition of creating an annual “best of” list.  As always, the list is entirely subjective, and I’m aware that most people couldn’t care less about what I think, just as I’m sure that everybody has different ideas about what the top releases of the year were.  Still, my formative years as a music listener were as part of a local music community (emphasis on the word community), and because of this, I continue to enjoy finding common ground with other music listeners.  That means I’ll continue reading other peoples’ lists and continue posting my own.  I get a kick out of seeing some of the same albums on the annual lists of other writers.  The other reason I create these lists is simply for my own reference in years to come.

I’ve noticed that many of the music blogs I read are very genre-specific, while this one is and always will be as varied and general as my musical tastes.  Does that interest readers, or frustrate them?  Not that I plan to change, but I’d be interested in feedback. 

I got 169 releases this year, and of the ones that were actually issued in 2011, the following were my favorites: 

Albums:

Amebix “Sonic Mass”

Tenhi “Saivo”

Stone Breath “The Aetheric Lamp”

Syven “Aikaintaite”

Arborea “Red Planet”

Natural Snow Buildings “Chants of Niflheim”

Owls “The Night Stays”

Current 93 “Honeysuckle Aeons”

Damion Suomi & the Minor Prophets “Go and Sell All of Your Things”

Irr. App. (ext.) “Vulgar Probabilities”

Sol Invictus “The Cruellest Month”

Vagtazo CsodasZarvas “Csillaglovaglas”

Luup “Meadow Rituals”

Birds Of Passage “Winter Lady”

Bohren & der Club of Gore “Beileid”

In Gowan Ring “Webs Among The Din Volume 3”

Yat-Kha “Live at the Stray Dog” -  I had noticed this album mentioned on the band’s website, but couldn’t find it for sale anywhere.  Then, last week, I discovered that it’s available for free download on their Bandcamp page.  It features some songs from their latest studio album, “Poets and Lighthouses”, which was on my year-end list of favorites in 2010, and also earlier songs, including covers and Tuvan traditional songs.  If you like your Tuvan music heavy, with lots of guttural Kargyraa singing and electric guitars, go download this.  Go download it regardless.  It’s great.

Box Sets:

Simon Finn “The Distance Between Stones”

Sol Invictus “The Collected Works”

Tenhi “The Collected Works”

Book:

Murder In The Front Row, by Brian Lew and Harald Oimeon.  This is a photographic journey through my roots as an underground music fan, chronicling the San Francisco Bay Area thrash metal scene in the early eighties, when bands like Exodus, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and others were pimply-faced teenagers.  I was a pimply-faced teenager too, as can be seen in the book.  Yes, that’s Cliff Burton stabbing me in the neck with a pencil on page 116.  I was 15 then.  I don’t listen to much so-called “thrash metal” these days, but I remember fondly seeing all of these bands in little clubs for next to nothing, and I remember even more fondly the sense of community.  I’m glad that Brian and Harald were in the habit of bringing their cameras with them, because I wasn’t.  It’s too bad I didn’t obsessively chronicle my music habit back then.  Nonetheless, I contributed to this book in a small way, by allowing Brian to plunder my archives for flyers and related detritus.  Even so, my archives are but a pale reflection of his, because he kept just about everything.  In a way, this book serves as a predecessor to this blog, since what you read on this site is no less than my own personal chronology, from the standpoint of a music fan.

Since I’m in a mood for reminiscence, I’ll share a link to a video of an entire Stikky set at Gilman St. from New Year’s Eve, 1987 (although the band kept insisting that it was actually the beginning of 1978.  Comedy punk at its finest.  Note the constant barrage of Isocracy garbage.  Every time they played, Isocracy would to bring as much trash as they could find, absolutely laying waste to any venue they performed at.  See me as a 20 year old, being annoying.  That’s me with the long, blonde hair, popping up on stage every so often.  Between “Murder In The Front Row” and this video, I feel that my youthful live music experiences are pretty well summed up.  Thanks to my old friend Sylvia for mentioning me in a comment about this video on Facebook.  Otherwise, I might not have seen it. 

Live shows:

I didn’t see too many live shows this year.  During the Summer, I don’t think I saw any at all.  I kind of made up for it late in the year though.  Below I’ve listed my favorites.  For some reason, the majority of my favorite gigs of 2011 were in the first few months, but most of my favorite releases appeared towards the end of the year.  Note:  these are in descending chronological order, with the exception of my very favorite gig of the year, which is at the top of the list.

Asta Kask at The Fire Escape, 5/25/11

Marissa Nadler at Café du Nord, 12/18/11

Arborea at Amnesia, 10/21/11

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum at the Independent, 4/10/11

O’death at 418 Project, 3/25/11

Swans at The Regency, 3/1/11

Murder By Death at The Bottom of the Hill, 2/12/11

Neurosis at The Great American Music Hall, 1/15/11

 

I’m already looking forward to the coming year, with tickets in hand for Ghost (Swe), Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, and Godspeed You Black Emperor.  Also on the horizon are local appearances by Antisect and English Dogs, and both Black Sabbath and Dead Can Dance have announced imminent tours.  It looks like a good year to be a music fan. 

There aren’t any specific releases I’m excited about currently scheduled for release in the coming year, other than the long awaited pair of new releases from Kathleen Yearwood, which I really hope finally see the light of day in 2012.  As of this writing the year is only a day old though, and I’m sure much musical delight is in the offing.