Eh…What’s Opera, Doc?

When Mike Pat­ton played Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion for an April Fool’s joke last year, not every­one got it. The com­bi­na­tion of jump cuts, cal­cu­lat­ed mis­cues and caf­feinat­ed exper­i­men­ta­tion was too heavy for the avant garde (with excep­tions) and too car­toon­ish for any­thing but the art met­al scene, leav­ing it orphaned for ADHD weirdos and nos­tal­gia freaks (seem­ing­ly just two…)

Strange­ly, despite John Zorn’s imprint being all over Sus­pend­ed Ani­ma­tion, as well as the cura­tion of Warn­er Bros. enig­mat­ic and dizzy­ing Carl Stalling Projects Vols. 1 & 2, there was nary a men­tion of the man behind the Mer­rie Melodies orches­tra. Pat­ton’s rit­u­al­is­tic Ani­ma­tion relies on Stalling’s ellip­ti­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, moody and play­ful com­po­si­tions evok­ing the vio­lent one moment and the bucol­ic the next. Pat­ton’s record­ings are per­haps more tweaked and in some instances more child­ish, but that’s owed more to his brood­ing com­po­si­tion­al men­tal­i­ty than any­thing else; Stalling drew on com­po­si­tion­al schiz­o­phre­nia to match wits with Mer­rie Melodies. Stalling’s self-con­scious zani­ness lends itself well to the sort of post-mod­ern meta-nar­ra­tive of ther­a­peu­tic lan­guage that’s part and par­cel of every­day speech — it’s a com­pli­cat­ed metaphor for every­day life: is this real­ly hap­pen­ing? After all, Bugs once assured us that he’d been adju­di­cat­ed non com­pos men­tis, and I think we can take his word for it.

Fantômas — “04/01/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Var­i­ous Cues from Bugs Bun­ny Films”

Fantômas — “04/19/05”

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol. 1 — “Stalling Self-Par­o­dy: Music from Porky’s Preview”

Carl Stalling — “What’s Opera, Doc?”

On The Boards

Pearls and Brass, with Pho­ton Band and Jack Rose @ The Khy­ber. 9 p.m.

Let’s not bela­bor the point: Pearls and Brass are unabashed­ly the prod­uct of past gen­er­a­tions of Delta and South Side blues­men, Nuggets era Anglo-Amer­i­can psych rock­ers, and the pan­theon of clas­sic rock icons. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly weird or pecu­liar about them and there’s no self-con­scious gim­mick either. This isn’t to sug­gest that Huth’s head should appear on the heavy met­al totem pole with Iom­mi, Page and Clap­ton, but when it comes to clas­sic rock­’s minor his­to­ries, the dev­il is in the details, and there’s some­thing worth­while in that lin­eage. You could always ask Boo­gie Witch, or you might just see for yourself.

Taste — “What’s Going On”

Pearls and Brass — “No Stone”

This is the Music of Life

John Tchi­cai Trio & Mar­shall Allen @ The Cin­e­ma, 3925 Wal­nut St., 8 p.m.

Of Dan­ish and Con­golese decent, John Tchi­cai (b. 1936) is best known for his con­tri­bu­tion to John Coltrane’s 1965 new jazz mas­ter­piece, “Ascen­sion.” He co-found­ed the New York Con­tem­po­rary Five with Archie Shepp and Don Cher­ry as well at the New York Art Quar­tet with Mil­ford Graves and Roswell Rudd. Tchi­cai record­ed with Albert Ayler (New York Eye and Ear Con­trol), the Jazz Com­posers Guild, and John Lennon (Life With the Lions). And, fol­low­ing three years as a cen­tral fig­ure in New York’s avant garde, Tchi­cai relo­cat­ed to Den­mark in 1966 and found­ed a large work­shop ensem­ble called Caden­tia Nova Dan­i­ca, which he led until 1971. Short­ly there­after, he cut back on per­form­ing to con­cen­trate on teach­ing. In 1977, he returned to the stu­dio, lead­ing a fair­ly steady series of record­ing dates into the ’80s, when he switched to tenor sax and joined Pierre Dorge’s New Jun­gle Orches­tra. In 1990, Tchi­cai received a life­time grant for jazz per­for­mance from the Dan­ish Min­istry of Cul­ture; and the fol­low­ing year he relo­cat­ed to Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Bay Area, where he and his key­boardist wife Mar­gri­et found­ed John Tchi­cai & the Arche­types and the John Tchi­cai Unit, which both record­ed dur­ing the ’90s.

New York Eye & Ear Con­trol — “ITT”

The First Amendment has a penumbra…

But I think, as Mr. Jus­tice Bran­deis says, that apart from the Con­sti­tu­tion the gov­ern­ment ought not to use [277 U.S. 438, 470] evi­dence obtained and only obtain­able by a crim­i­nal act. There is no body of prece­dents by which we are bound, and which con­fines us to log­i­cal deduc­tion from estab­lished rules. There­fore we must con­sid­er the two objects of desire both of which we can­not have and make up our minds which to choose. It is desir­able that crim­i­nals should be detect­ed, and to that end that all avail­able evi­dence should be used. It also is desir­able that the gov­ern­ment should not itself fos­ter and pay for oth­er crimes, when they are the means by which the evi­dence is to be obtained. If it pays its offi­cers for hav­ing got evi­dence by crime I do not see why it may not as well pay them for get­ting it in the same way, and I can attach no impor­tance to protes­ta­tions of dis­ap­proval if it know­ing­ly accepts and pays and announces that in future it will pay for the fruits. We have to choose, and for my part I think it a less evil that some crim­i­nals should escape than that the gov­ern­ment should play an igno­ble part.

Jus­tice Oliv­er Wen­dell Holmes, Jr., OLMSTEAD v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928), dissenting

Napalm Death — “You Suffer”

Napalm Death — “From Enslave­ment to Obliteration”

An Empty Glass on the Nightstand

Pun­ish­ment, then, will tend to become the most hid­den part of the penal process. This has sev­er­al con­se­quences: it leaves the domain of more or less every­day per­cep­tion and enters that of abstract con­scious­ness; its effec­tive­ness is seen as result­ing from its inevitabil­i­ty, not from its vis­i­ble inten­si­ty; it is the cer­tain­ty of being pun­ished and not the hor­ri­fy­ing spec­ta­cle of pub­lic pun­ish­ment that must dis­cour­age crime; the exem­plary mechan­ics of pun­ish­ment changes its mech­a­nisms. As a result, jus­tice no longer takes pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty for the vio­lence that is bound up with its practice.

- Michel Fou­cault, Dis­ci­pline & Punish

Mar­i­on Brown — “27 Coop­er Square”