Pelt Road to catawba 2004_03_05 Paris (LP Side 1)

sample from HERBCRAFT's cassette TABS OUT released by his in-house imprint SA

HERBCRAFT - TABS OUT (SAMPLE)

October 01, 2015 — practicing, writing.

October 01, 2015

Track from upcoming album "Tance neznámé" from Jakub Šimanský & Tomáš Niesner. Out Spring 2019 on Stoned to Death (vinyl/tape).

Jakub Šimanský & Tomáš Niesner - Ženy A Heřmánek

Musicians and authors Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays discuss their new book "Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century Middle East" with Jordan of World Turning.

What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim (traditional instrumental improvisation) that performers and listeners implicitly know? How can Arabic music be so rich and diverse without resorting to harmony? Why is it so challenging to transcribe Arabic music from a recording? Inside Arabic Music answers these and many other questions from the perspective of two "insiders" to the practice of Arabic music, by documenting a performance culture and a know-how that is largely passed on orally.
Arabic music has spread across the globe, influencing music from Greece all the way to India in the mid-20th century through radio and musical cinema, and global popular culture through Raqs Sharqi, known as "Bellydance" in the West. Yet despite its popularity and influence, Arabic music, and the maqam scale system at its heart, remain widely misunderstood. Inside Arabic Music de-mystifies maqam with an approach that draws theory directly from practice, and presents theoretical insights that will be useful to practitioners, from the beginner to the expert - as well as those interested in the related Persian, Central Asian, and Turkish makam traditions. Inside Arabic Music's discussion of maqam and improvisation widens general understanding of music as well, by bringing in ideas from Saussurean linguistics, network theory, and Lakoff and Johnson's theory of cognition as metaphor, with an approach parallel to Gjerdingen's analysis of Galant-period music - offering a lens into the deeper relationships among music, culture, and human community.

Inside Arabic Music: Interview with Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays

This is a live recording of VACATIONLAND, the show that became the book of the same name. I recorded it on 9/29/2015 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto. It's maybe my best performance of the show, and certainly my favorite. I had performed it at another venue the night before in Toronto and made the mistake of reading a review of that performance just hours before I went to the QE. The reviewer really disliked the show, which was his right. People like what they like, and he really hated what he hated. But my worry was that people who had tickets for the Queen Elizabeth show would read it and stay home. They didn't. Everyone showed up and it was one of the truly warmest and loudest and happiest crowds I've ever played to. It was a reminder. John Flansburgh told me when I first started doing my version of comedy that in live performance, sometimes you just get punched in the stomach. Bad review. No show crowd. Whatever. But you get up and you do it again anyway. Thank you Toronto for reminding me to keep getting up. I hope you keep getting up. Anyway, I just decided to post this, so I had to pick some album art quick, so I grabbed this blurry photo of me in Maine last year and those are lobsters as epaulets, obviously. Toronto, I salute you. That is all. JH

VACATIONLAND Live in Toronto

Sacred Harp - Part III - 11.13.10

To celebrate the release of Egyptian Sports Network (Matt Mondanile of Ducktails & Spencer Clark with a special guest appearance from Mark McGuire) Spencer Clark has compiled a mix of upcoming Pacific City Sound releases. This mix originally came as an exclusive Volcanic Tongue-only bonus CD-R included with copies of Monopoly Child Star Searchers - The Garnet Toucan LP. 

You can purchase the new Egyptian Sports Network LP at Volcanic Tongue: http://bit.ly/19hmTpG

Photo: 
THE FUTURE: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (EVA VAN DEUREN of ORPHAN FAIRYTALE AND BERLITZ in the Garden of Hotel Cailfornia playing STEEL DRUMS)

Spencer Clark's notes about this mix:

1. TARZANA - Spencer Clark/Jan Anderzen - Jan came to Hotel California last year for seven days, to record Tarzana. Five of those seven days he hung out with Kalevela groupies, the other we jammed.  The “Master”, as he calls himself, would not divulge any of his samples on these recordings so he had to play through my, as he called it, “same old echo gear”.  We have been collaborating through the mail since, and it should come out in ten years or so, on Pacific City Sound Visions. Besides Lieven Martens, Jan is the guy I have had the most hangovers with in Europe. James has these two, beat by maybe 35.000 doners.

2. SHREDDER ORPHEUS SOUNDTRACK - Skating to Hell - I think I saw this movie on James' floor in Hollywood, before I found one, and decided to release it on record.  What I should release is a live video (bloopers) of me trying to find the director of this SCI-FI SKATE FLICK, on the internet. This movie has some pretty cool scenes, while the soundtrack is by the Keyboard player from Ministry, Roland Barker. It was released by AIP INTERNATIONAL VHS, owned by an actor who was in West Side Story. The aftermath of working on Westside Story is evident in such flicks as SOULTAKER or LA CRACKDOWN.  Not for the squeamish.

3. STEEL MAGNOLIAS - Spencer Clark/Eva Van Deuren - Eva Van Deuren from Orphan Fairytale came to Hotel California to record last year as well.  We decided to make a Steel Drum album called Steel Magnolias. At one point I emailed her in excitement about the proposed title, she wrote back saying that she had had the same thought.  Later it turned out that I had emailed her numerous times about the title and we had both forgot, leaving this mystical case: closed. The album is very special though. Many tracks sound as though we were influenced by BAMBI swimming through an Aquarium looking for her mother. We rented Two huge orchestral Steel Drums from a country critter town called Woodburn or something. At the time I had no money, so we got real fast at playing the steel drums. Out next year on Pacific City Soundvisions.

4. VOX POPULI! - Half Dead Ganja Music - This album sounds like the title, no doubt. Whole album coming out on Pacific City next year.  When I was 16 I ordered this tape from Old Europa Cafe distribution. I went out to this stoner's house in the woods and snuck this in the tape player while we were on mushrooms. Dude later enlisted in the military to fight in the middle east, that's how scary some of this shit is. 

5. TARZANA - Spencer Clark/Jan Anderzen - Out in 2021

6. TRADE WINDS excerpt from Original Soundtrack- This is the first windsurfing movie ever made. The soundtrack is so good, this is just a taste. I was gonna bootleg it, until by miracle I found the director on the internet (only miracle for me). He is Jack Mccoy, director of the best surf movie of all time, StormRiders.  Jack is sending me some better audio tracks in the mail, so its on.  In the middle of this audio, there is this music, that finds its way on a lot of old surf movies, where it sounds like an old dude falling in the tub or something.  Anyway, I am sorry, I couldn't get this shit off there, tried to use garageband to separate the track? And have you ever seen THEODORE REX with woopie goldberg? Full Soundtrack to TRADE WINDS comes out next year on Pacific City….

7. TARZANA - INTERSTITAL MUSIC

8. FOUND VHS ALTERNATIVE SOUNDTRACK TO "ALIEN" - I found a copied version of "Alien" at a GarageSale in Ventura, it had this music instead of the usual audio in the part where they discover the ALien Ship.  The label says "Ripley's Discovery".  The crazy thing about this, is the audio is so much better than my music.  Some dude probably buried this vhs tape after sitting on it for years and then it wound up in a wet box at a GarageSale.  

9. NEW IMAGE OF MAN - CHARLES BERLITZ - This is an excerpt from my next record, which is inspired by a week of dreams I had, in which I found myself in a gold room, in prayer, listening to the voice of PINHEAD foretelling the future of man. There were gold buttons levitating in the air spinning around and then stopping, when PINHEAD'S voice would begin. He told me about myself and my possible inclusion in the future of mankind's next alterations. He represents the transmutation of flesh. What flesh becomes I think was what my dreams were about. The experience of making this next record should be a communication of my wishes to understand, not the dream, but the world.

10. MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS - Typhonian Highlife - This song is coming out on the real "Make Mine, Macaw" lp that is coming out on Pacific City later next year. The original cdr that appeared on the internet as " a departure for Spencer Clark", or shitty metal that your little brother's band wouldn't even open up for, was a Hackers mishap- Some metro-guppie got drunk and mislabeled a pile of cdrs, and blogged his brains out. music that literally sounds like the person burning the cdr inserted a blankdisc into the space below his computer and above the coffee table on which it sits.

Pacific City Mix for Volcanic Tongue by Spencer Clark

Excerpts, outtakes, and other miscellanea.
—
Richmond, Virginia
Cairo, Egypt
Houston, Texas

October 01, 2015

Rag Lore