135: Kaveret, ‘Medina Ktana’ (Little Country)

Kaveret, ‘Medina Ktana’ (Little Country)

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday dear Israel, happy birthday to us.

It’s our 64^thtoday, and the few millions of us here are mostly out on the roads, visiting air force bases, national parks, waving flags and fanning the grill with our families and friends. But not far below the surface there’s a sincerity in it all, a true recognition and celebration of our very existence, something we don’t take for granted.

The Center of the Universe

Did you know that Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is in a minor key? Could be because after 2000 years of persecution it was built on the ashes of a near genocide. Israel has fought three existential wars in its 64 years, and hence lives with an acute sense of fragility. It’s the only country in history recreated by a miraculous act of will out of a tribal imagination, the only nation to return to its homeland from dispersion, reviving a dead language on the way. It’s also the only democracy in this part of the world, a bizarre mix of refugees from every corner of the world stuck in the middle of the Levant, hence a sharp sense of irony regarding our still-evolving national identity. People run around like crazy trying to be normal in the most abnormal of societies.

Kaveret

In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which the country barely survived obliteration, a bunch of army buddies formed a band called Kaveret (‘beehive’), sometimes also known as Poogy (after the name of their first album, “Poogy Stories”). The leader and chief songwriter was Danny Sanderson, an Israeli who grew up in the US on rock and roll. In three years they recorded three albums as out of place and ahead of their time in the Israeli musical landscape as the country is in the Middle East – sophisticated in music, production, performance and content.

Patriotic symbol

Many of their songs have become cultural icons, still sung today by teenagers and recycled by rock stars. I’d like to share one with you, sort of a mock anthem, a modest little song that captures the spirit and ethos and self-image of this noisy, neurotic little country better than anything else I know of – ‘Little Country’.

We Israelis get pretty tired of seeing ourselves on the front page of the NY Times every day. On the other hand, we also see ourselves as the center of the universe. Go explain it. Well, Sanderson’s lyrics do it best – our wry perception of our very existence, our precariousness, our homey patriotism better expressed in self-effacing humor than in pompous parades.

Happy birthday, Israel. Here’s SoTW’s official nomination for our unofficial anthem.

מדינה קטנה

Additional Listening from Kaveret:

Medina Ktana (Little Country)

Shir HaMakolet (The Grocery Store Song)

Yo Ya

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Tags: Danny Sanderson, Independence Day, Israel, Kaveret, Poogy, Yom Ha'atzmaut

134: Lee Konitz, ‘Duende’

Lee Konitz – Duende

Next month bassist Avishai Cohen, pride and joy of the Israeli jazz scene, will release a new CD, a duo with the very fine, very young Israeli pianist Nitai Hershkovits. I love the idea of a piano/bass duo (Ellington/Ray Brown’s “This One’s for Blanton” pops to mind as my favorite; Bill Evans/Eddie Gomez’s “Intuition” is also pretty fine). But what really caught my eye is the album’s title, “Duende”, which threw me back to an obscure favorite of mine.

Lee Konitz (b. 1927) is my hands-down favorite living jazz artist. A couple of years ago I had the honor and privilege of interviewing him at length, which I described in SoTW 037, where I poured out my heart at length about how much I love Mr Konitz’s music. He began his professional career in 1947, and at 85 is still a major creative force, a living legend.

Most of his economically modest and artistically towering career has been centered in Europe, where he ‘makes a living’ playing alto sax. Harold Danko (b. 1947) played piano with Lee in the late 1970s and 1980s. “I saw my role as supporting and orchestrating Lee’s lines, acting as a catalyst, and leaving some space that he could create something with.”

In 1984 Lee was at the top of his game musically, very much in sync with Danko. They had been performing all over Europe for months, travelling by train, picking up local rhythm sections wherever they played. They ended one tour in Glasgow, and went into the studio “on a cold Thursday evening, no guests, no distractions, just the two musicians preparing to deal with material they had worked and reworked” during the tour. The resulting CD “Wild as Springtime” is a rather obscure work in an illustrious corpus. Even the liner notes gloss over the fourth track, written for Lee by Chick Corea.

But for me, ‘Duende’was love at first hear. It wrenched my heart the first time I heard it, and has done so every time since.

A duende is an evil little goblin in Spanish and Latin American mythology. But ‘Duende’ also denotes ‘a certain magic’, including irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical. Federico Garcia Lorca, in a famous lecture in 1933 in Buenos Aires, “La Teoria y Juego del Duende” (‘The Theory and Function/Play of Duende’), called duende “a sort of corkscrew that can get art into the sensibility of an audience… the very dearest thing that life can offer the intellectual… Thus duende is a power and not a behavior, it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old master guitarist say: ‘Duende is not in the throat; duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action.”

Oh, boy. I’m no maven of Spanish mythology, diabolical goblins, or Chick Corea’s reading of them. But this cut of Lee Konitz speaks to me with all the passion and magic in the world.

I don’t know which ‘Duende’ inspired the name of Avishai Cohen’s new CD. I sure hope it’s this one. But even if not, it’s my pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to present you with five minutes of that certain magic: Lee Konitz, ‘Duende’.

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Tags: Avishai Cohen, Chick Corea, duende, Harold Danko, Lee Konitz, Nitai Hershkovits, Wild as Springtime

133: Spencer Davis Group (Stevie Winwood), ‘I’m A Man’

Spencer Davis Group, ‘I’m A Man’

I never cease to be amazed at the disparity between what you expect from some ostensibly tasteful people and their ringtones. You know, like the professorial octogenarian on the train, and all of a sudden some crass electronic salsa comes blaring out of his iPhone.

I of course have a metal bell ringtone on my phone. But I’ve often wondered, if I had to pick a pinch of music that would identify me to all those people on the train, and one that I had to hear at least five times a week (I don’t get a lot of calls), what would it be?

I’m not sure how well I could hear a bass guitar above the rumble of the train, but mundane technicalities aside, my runaway choice would be the spooky, funky, dark, glorious introduction to The Spencer Davis Group’s ‘I’m A Man’ – written, played, and sung by the 18-year old Stevie Winwood.

Stevie was a 15-year old Birmingham schoolboy when he formed a band with his brother Muff and their mate Spencer. Muff: “Spencer was the only one who enjoyed doing interviews, so I pointed out that if we called it the Spencer Davis Group, the rest of us could stay in bed and let him do them.” They had two very forgettable hits in 1966 which will remain uncited here. Then in 1966-7 (“Although the recording is said to be late 1966, this date is in fact controversial. In an article and an interview on the “Living Archives” (Elävä arkisto) website of YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, the producer of the original live recording, Mr. Tapani Karhu, clearly states that the date of the show was 19 March 1967.”) [SNORE—JM] they recorded two stunning, deep black-and-blue smash hits cut from the same bolt of cloth, “Gimme Some Lovin’” and our SoTW, ‘I’m A Man’.

Both songs are co-written by the adolescent Winwood, ‘I’m A Man’ together with Yankee mega-producer-to-be Jimmy Miller (“Beggar’s Banquet”, “Let It Bleed”, “Blind Faith”). I don’t know what instruments Stevie plays on the recordings. On these very live versions of ‘I’m A Man’ and “Gimme Some Lovin’”, he plays organ. (Why are organists always pushing all those buttons? It almost always sounds like a skating rink anyway. But not in the masterful hands of Stevie Winwood.) For my money, he’s the most talented white multi-instrumentalist in rock (no one’s going to try to compete with that other Stevie W., right?), rivaled only by Stephen Stills. He plays organ, piano, acoustic, rhythm, lead and bass, all brilliantly, all worth the price of admission.

I don’t know who plays bass on the recorded version of ‘I’m A Man’. It might be Stevie’s older brother, but if you watch him fumble through the bass intro on the live version, and then compare it to the memorable recorded version–I’d put my money on the younger Winwood.

And that’s not to mention his voice, one of the most distinctive and soulful ever heard in honky town. Listen to his rendition of ‘Georgia On My Mind’. He admits his debt to Ray Charles, and the surface similarity is obvious. What I find so remarkable is this British kid doing The Genius’s song with such mature respect, without slavish imitation and without competing. His treatment is mature, self-confident, and virtuosic. Stevie Winwood’s voice takes a back seat to absolutely no one, never.

So what about the song ‘I’m A Man’ itself? The bass, the shakers, the Hammond, the little bell, the guitar, the drums, the handclap, the voice, the backing vocals, Jimmy Miller’s percussion embellishments. Ay ay ay, it just doesn’t get any better than that. The lyrics rank with The Rolling Stones of that era (‘Satisfaction’, ‘19^th Nervous Breakdown’, ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby’) for indecipherability, but who cares?

Stevie went on to bigger things (Traffic, Blind Faith) but never better ones. There is nothing better than these two songs. The kid is eighteen, his acne clearly showing in the close-ups. But, oh, the voice.

I have a long history with ‘I’m A Man’. Once upon a time I directed a funky, punky ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in a discotheque. The actors occupied the dance floor, the audience the rest of the space. The first two scenes dispense with the young royals in the palace, and with the rustics. Then the third scene gets into the nitty-gritty: the haunted, enchanted wood inhabited by Oberon, Titania, and a whole gaggle of fairies. I like visual (as opposed to verbal) theater, especially Shakespeare (“Would he had blotted a thousand”). So instead of Puck describing the frightful atmosphere of the forest Elizabethan pentameter, I had a lot of luscious lasses in lascivious leather leaping across the disco floor, strobes all a-strobing. And some Winwood thumping that inimitable bass introduction to ‘I’m A Man’.

That’s my ringtone.

Well my pad is very messy and there’s whiskers on my chin
And I’m all hung up on music and I always play to win
I ain’t got no time for lovin’ cause my time is all used up
Just to sit around creatin’ all that groovy kind of stuff.
I’m a man, yes I am, and I can’t help but love you so
I’m a man, yes I am, and I can’t help but love you so

Well if I had my choice of matter I would rather be with cats
All engrossed in mental chatter moving where our minds are at
And relating to each other just how strong our wills can be
I’m resisting all involvement with each groovy chick we see

I got to keep my image while suspended from a throne
That looks out upon a kingdom full of people all unknown
Who imagine I’m not human and my heart is made of stone
I never had no problems and my toilet’s trimmed with chrome

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Tags: British Invasion, Georgia On My Mind, Gimme Some Lovin', I'm a Man, Jimmy Miller, Muff Winwood, ringtone, Spencer Davis Group, Stevie Winwood

132: James Taylor, ‘Enough To Be On Your Way’

James Taylor, ‘Enough To Be On Your Way’

This week was the fifth anniversary of my sister’s death, at 62, from lung cancer. She was a denizen of Marlboro country all those years, and succumbed to statistics. Madie was five years older than me, and I loved her dearly. Never, not once in our entire lives, did we fight. Not when we were kids, not when we were adults. As youngsters, we had the age and sex differences to keep us apart, and a mutual enemy to keep us together. As adults, there was a literal ocean between us. From 21, when I left the US, for almost 30 years, I saw her only a few times for a few days each. We would talk on the phone for a short time a couple of times a year, and exchange only sporadic aerograms.

She never came here to visit me in the life I made for myself. For many years it was logistically and financially impractical, and then she got sick. But I understand that she really didn’t want to come, so strongly did she resent my having moved to “the other side of the world”. She loved me simply and deeply and purely, as I did her. She wanted me near her on occasion, in the hard times, in the good times, as she went through her life. But I had removed myself, and she never overcame the resentment of that fact.

Read more…

Tags: Alex Taylor, Enough to be On Your Way, Hugh Taylor, James Taylor, Kate Taylor, Livingston Taylor, Sweet Baby James