Columbus food

Columbus, OH, for whatever reason, is a serious food town. Friends from other cities, even those from megalopolises on coasts, are impressed by our food choices. I've been in Columbus since 1990, and the food choices seem to get better and better.

I should mention that I am inherently suspicious of people who do not like to eat (presupposing there is no medical or psychiatric malady at the root of this). People who pick at food, or order the smallest thing on the menu, or are plain afraid of chowing down make me uncomfortable. The presence of these folks can bring down the mood of an entire dinner party, or after-gig meal.

Which is why I think Columbus Foodie is so cool (http://www.columbusfoodie.com/). Written by "a thirtysomething fat married chick who loves to eat locally and try new things," I love hearing the culinary delights of my adopted city celebrated. I maintain that we have representatives of just about any cuisine you'd find in a major city (good Thai food being a sad exception). The trick, though, is that you have to be willing to search for these restaurants and do a little driving.

So we have world-class Chinese (Little Dragons on Morse Road), fine Mexican (several of the Mexican markets by my house on the west side have in-store restaurants), old-school steakhouses (the Top in Bexley), great Japanese (many choices there -- it doesn't hurt that the Honda Accord is made just northwest of the city), and so on.

Lots of great stuff on Columbus Foodie. Some tantalizing "food porn" with pictures of things you just want to eat. There's also links to food blogs around the world; just checking those links out will take me a long time.

101 Musicians

People love lists. People hate lists.


Of course, the whole point of crafting a list is so that readers will think of all the other things in the universe that should have been on your list but aren't. When making a list, you are performing a valuable service. You are giving people something to do. You are giving people something harmless at which to direct their anger. You are giving old partners a chance to smile and remember shared experiences and joys. You will encourage people to make lists of their own, which will in turn encourage other people to make other lists, which will give even more people a task to make their lives feel rewarding, if only for one night.


The Bible is full of long genealogies, which are kinds of lists:


Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

See, even god likes lists! But I digress...

I thought it would be interesting to compose a list of 101 musicians, the first ones that come into my mind as I write. This is not a list of best, worst, or most influential -- just a musical state of my mind. The goal is that the listing will be written quickly without any deliberation. The only rule I made for myself is that the listees should be musicians who more than just a few people have heard about. These are musicians who release CDs with their names on them or play shows that some people want to see or appear in books or magazines. Otherwise, the list would not be as fun for you. Do you really care about Mark Gloden (my high school band director) or Jim Henley (the best noise guitarist you'll never hear)?

Larry's 101 Musicians: October 29, 2008

1. Johann Sebastian Bach

2. Miles Davis

3. John Coltrane

4. Eugene Chadbourne

5. King Diamond

6. Neil Diamond

7. Michael Diamond

8. Syd Barrett

9. Robert Fripp

10. Jimi Hendrix

11. Olivier Messiaen

12. The Violent Femmes

13. Blue Oyster Cult

14. Merzbow

15. John Fahey

16. Black Flag

17. Sonic Youth

18. Suzanne Vega

19. David Lindley

20. Carl Palmer

21. Lemmy

22. Mike Watt

23. Bill Bruford

24. Tony Iommi

CPE Bach

25. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

26. György Ligeti

27. Aram Khachaturian

28. The Meat Puppets

29. Kingdom Come

30. King Tubby

31. Agnostic Front

32. Leo Kottke

33. Paul Chambers

34: Philly Joe Jones

35: Bela Fleck

36. Jerry Douglas

37. Joe Perry

38. Ace Frehley

39. Gene Simmons

40. Slayer

41. Motorhead

42. Kraftwerk

43. Klaus Schulze

44. Jean Michel Jarre

45. Vangelis

46. Tony Trischka

47. Euronymous

48. Public Enemy

49. Jimmy Page

50. Eldon Shamblin

51. Pandit Pran Nath

52. John Cage

53. Morton Feldman

54. Paul Stanley

55. Gary Numan

56. Joe Jackson

57. The Jam

58. Oasis

59. The Sugar Hill Gang

60. Schoolly D

61. Yngwie Malmsteen

62. The Vapors

63. Edgard Varèse

64. Karlheinz Stockhausen

65. Pat Metheny

66. Charlie Haden

67. Ornette Coleman

68. Don Cherry

69. Ed Blackwell

70. Albert Ayler

71. Donald Ayler

72. Anthony Braxton

73. The Kodo Drummers

74. Deerhoof

75. Veruca Salt

76. The Breeders

77. Pearl Jam

78. Cheap Trick

79. Kiss

80. Judas Priest

81. Bill Monroe

82. Earl Scruggs

83. Earl Klugh

84. Allan Holdsworth

85. Brian Setzer

86. Henry Kaiser

87. Fred Frith

88. Derek Bailey

89. Hüsker Dü

90. Minutemen

91. Blind Idiot God

92. Bad Brains

93. The Rolling Stones

94. The Beatles

95. The Kinks

96. Hank Marvin

97. Michelle Shocked

98. The Dream Academy

99. A Flock of Seagulls

100. Berlin

101: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Truth in advertising: I did spell check these, but made no deletions or additons of names. Who did I forget?

I'd love to see your lists if you would be willing to share them.

New release: Silent Film Soundtracks Volume 1

My latest project, Larry Marotta: Silent Movie Soundtracks Vol. 1, is ready and available for purchase on Amazon, iTunes, and wherever music is sold online. Over the years, I've had requests for the soundtracks for some of the silent movies I've scored for Kino International (http://www.kino.com/), and I'm happy to finally have those out there. As suggested by the title, there will be more volumes forthcoming over the coming months. The good folks at my label, Pimalia (http://www.pimalia.net/) ,have been very supportive and encouraging, so I'm definitely excited about getting some more music out there.

This first release contains soundtracks for the films Anemic Cinema, H20, Regen, and Christmas, USA. In the coming days, I plan to publish some posts giving a little more information about the films and their directors.

In the studio

One of my favorite things to do is to play on someone else's recording, or substitute for a missing band member on a gig. It lets me enjoy playing in a already fully-formed musical situation without any of the personal stress of booking studio time, hustling for gigs, coping with temperamental musicians, writing songs, etc. It also gives me a chance to play in ways that I might not normally.

RTFO Bandwagon

On Monday, I brought my lap steel over to Columbus band RTFO Bandwagon's studio for a session. I knew up front that they wanted some slide playing, but maybe something a little off, and I definitely fit that description. Although you might think otherwise, playing lap steel is actually very, very difficult. The easy part is that the instrument is tuned to one chord (for guitar geeks -- I use E - B- E - G# - B - E) and you don't have any tricky left-hand fingerings. What is tricky is that have only one finger -- the slide -- and that your intonation has to be pretty spot-on unless you don't mind sounding drunk, not to mention the fact that you have to know the fretboard pretty well to play variations of chords -- even minors and sevenths are a little hard to coax from the instrument at first. The more I play the instrument, I realize the only way to get better at it is time -- hours and hours and hours of time spent with the instrument.

Andrew from the group is the one who contacted me. Turns out he also works at the OSU Urban Arts Space hanging shows and was at last week's concert. While I set up, he plays a recording of the basic acoustic guitar and vocal track and explains what he is looking for. This is a good sign because some of my worst recording or film scoring experiences result from people in awe of my humble abilities and ask me to do whatever I want. The ideal situation is when someone tells you what they're hearing, and then you use your experience as a guitarist and music fan to give them what they want, and hopefully exceed their expectations.

For some reason, the combination of lap steel, amplifier, and volume pedal sounds better than I ever heard it. The song is making me think of Neil Young's Harvest album and Ben Keith's excellent pedal steel playing, so I am doing a lot slow volume swells and tuneful things. In other words, it wasn't sounding "a little off."

After a while, I think we all agreed that we would keep the steel playing pretty conventional, that this tune will stand out on the CD just because the style of it is so much different from the other songs. A couple of takes, a touch up on the chords I play at the beginning of one of the choruses, and we're done. A nice easy session with some very nice people.

Check out RTFO Bandwagon here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=58033568.

Their LP is due out in February 2009 on Dull Knife (http://www.dullkniferecords.com/).

Sunday double header

Ryan Jewell and I drove down to Athens, OH, on Sunday to play a couple gigs with cellist Marina Peterson. We've played as a trio a few times now, and we're starting to develop an interesting identity. It was a beautiful fall day, and Athens is in probably the most beautiful part of the state in what are the foothills of the Appalachian mountains.

Gig one was at Arts West, just east of downtown. The performance is part of a weekend-long arts festival. Ryan and I are a little discouraged when we arrive because there is absolutely no audience for the act proceeding ours except the sound guy. Luckily, when we do start playing, we have an extremely attentive and friendly audience of about 10 people who seem into what we're doing. The space is an old church, not an especially big one. There are rows of wooden pews, the ceiling is not too high, and floor is carpeted. The acoustics are perfect for what we are doing; you can hear every sound no matter how small.

The set ends up being one long piece with lots of quiet sounds which sound just lovely in this space. It's odd how good acoustics can make even your own instrument, which you are holding right in front of you, sound better to your own ears. The set is an easy one, and the ideas seem to flow effortlessly. A few folks come up and introduce themselves afterward, and tell us about a monthly noise night at the space, which is sort of experimental music night/potluck. If you're in the area, support these folks' endeavors!

Set two happens a couple of hours later at Marina's house as we play a concert for her professor colleagues at Ohio University and some of their grad students. It's a nice attentive audience. The atmosphere is more like a nice party, with lots of bottles of wine and snacks, but with weird music in the middle of it. This set is more work than the earlier one. Improvising twice in one day can be tricky, and I find myself relying more on my mind than on intuition to get started. I think the playing went well, although I think Marina thought we never quite gelled like we did at Arts West. I prefer to think of the music as a series of slightly related episodes.

The evening ended with a performance of John Cage's Speech (1955) for newsreader and five radios. The five radio folks spread out throughout the downstairs giving a nice spatial effect. The only instructions in the piece are stopwatch settings for when to turn on or turn off the radios with some directions like "fade in," "fade out," and "expressivo." My part is pretty simple, as I basically fade in my radio and then fade it out for the first section, then set it all a regular volume for the second section. I have my radio on one of the shortwave channels, which gives us a lot of extra static and radio signals. Other folks have more complicated parts. There were some truly funny moments as unexpected music and commercials faded into the mix. It's a fairly long piece -- about 47 minutes -- but a great one, and I'd recommend it as an after-dinner or party game, not just for the concert hall.

Making a buck

In total contrast to my Thursday art gallery gig, on Friday I played at a well-known country club in C-Bus. I was actually looking forward to this gig because it is one of my favorite trios -- Steve Perakis on bass and Jimmy Castoe on drums. But I've never done a country club gig that I've particularly liked.

Of all the gigs I play, country clubs seem to make a point of making musicians feel like the hired help, or maybe even a notch below the hired help. In fact, one country club I play at from time to time makes us sit in the men's locker room when we're not actually performing. This night, when I went to text my daughter in between sets, I was informed that they have a "no cell phone policy," and I am directed to a small phone room where I have to stay if I wish to use my phone.

The older I get, the less patience I have for stuff like this.

Country clubs, at least the ones I've seen, are institutions designed to make people who, in general, have not been rich their whole lives feel rich and special and better than other people. I contrast this with top-notch resorts and hotels, some of which I have had the good fortune to visit and enjoy in my life. Those places in general do not make a point of making their guests feel better at the expense of other people, and the guests are usually pretty considerate of the hired help. I think that this is because the people at these resorts by-and-large are rich and classy and have probably always been rich and classy, and thus have nothing to prove to anyone.

But the gig: the usual assortment of Real Book snoozers like A Train and Blue Bossa, but then some tunes that I really like playing like Watch What Happens and Confirmation. The acoustics in the room are really weird in that we can't really hear each other that well over the chattering of the diners, who by-and-large would rather talk than have jazz imposed on them. But jazz is supposed to make people feel special and cultured, so play on we must. If we turn up enough to hear each other, then we are too loud, so we have to settle for a vague semblance of chords and walking bass lines and ride cymbals and hope we're all end up at the same place at the end.

It's fun hanging out with Steve and Jimmy in between sets. Steve I've probably played more gigs with than anyone in my life and I've known him about 18 years now. Jimmy is a gruff but gentle bear of man with an amazing touch on the instrument and just full of funny stories and comments. The two of them are amazingly well-versed in a wide variety of music, so we can pretty much play or talk about anything.

Steve and me at Jazz and Ribs Fest, 2008 (Photo: Tim Perdue)

But, these country gigs pay, and a little extra money is never a bad thing. But of course, the check is in the mail...

Success!!!

Well, the first installment in the Marotta Hour series at the OSU Urban Arts Space was a great success. In fact, everything went perfectly. Fluxmonkey and J-Guy Laughlin played a fabulous set, and Ryan and I sat in with them for the last piece of the night. We had a great turn-out for these sort of shows -- about 25 people. The musicians made some money, and I was happy, and the gallery seemed happy, too. The music sounded great in the space, with smaller sounds taking on a larger character than usual.

I look forward to the rest of the series. I'm feeling pretty optimistic!

Larry

Music for airports

After reading yesterday's blog post about airports, Becky pointed out this review to me. Two books about airports are reviewed: Naked Airport: a Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure by Alastair Gordon (University of Chicago Press) and Politics at the Airport edited by by Mark B Salter (University of Minnesota Press). The word "limbo" appears, which clearly shows that I have my finger on the pulse

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/09/naked-airport-gordon-politics

I was struck in particular by this line:

[I]t seems airports are taking their inspiration from Philip K Dick's stories
of non-people condemned in non-places.

For some reason, though, I'm always excited about going to airports. It means the start of an adventure. But being in a terminal too long does weird things to the psyche.

Gearing up for the series

Here we are lost, and our sole punishment
Is without hope to live on in desire.

Dulles Airport in DC is definitely the dingiest, most depressing airport I've been in. Even worse than the US Airways terminal at LaGuardia. I'm stuck here right now waiting for a flight back to C-Bus, which leaves in two hours. Being alone -- or at least completely anonymous -- in an airport invites reflection for some reason. Airports are in a kind of limbo, like Dante describes in our opening quote. They don't really exist in the cities that they're in. If you've been in the Atlanta airport, have you really visited Atlanta? Not really. They're large places where people wait, and look at clocks, and eat bad expensive food, and then wait some more, like some Beckett play. Then you sit in a metal tube eating peanuts while your ears ache.

Tomorrow I'm kicking off my new concert series at the OSU Urban Arts Space. I'm excited, but also nervous. Putting on a concert is like having a party. You invite a bunch of people, make elaborate preparations, provide fabulous food (but in this case, music), but then there's always that moment where you just have to wait. You look at the clock, repeatedly, you watch the door, you make excuses to the performers about people usually showing up late. There is a point in your party, no matter how wonderful the offerings, where you have to hope that people come. I hate that waiting.

A lot of this stress of inviting, preparing, and then waiting is why I got out of the promotion game in the first place about four years ago. But then again, I miss out on one of the greatest pleasures I have as a musician: the ability to craft my own show with wonderful musicians who inspire me. I also get a chance to see people perform that I wouldn't otherwise. It also gives me a chance to play some music myself. In experimental/improvised music, you kind of have to make things happen for yourself, otherwise you do a lot of...well...waiting!

And I come to a scene where nothing shines.

Kicking off new music series

Well, after a few years' hiatus, I am back in the music booking and promoting business. I'm excited to be doing this again, but I think I learned some lessons from when I was promoting a lot of shows in the earlier part of this decade. This time I'm starting simple and hoping to keep it simple.


At the end of the summer, I approached the OSU Urban Arts Space about hosting an electroacoustic music series and they seemed genuinely excited at the idea. They were willing to give me a six-month trial run. There are already plenty of noise shows in Ohio, and the noise folks have always been very willing to let me be the guy with the conventional instrument on the bill. But I wanted to do something a bit more subtle, with more of an emphasis on free improvisation, acoustic instruments, and quieter electronics.


The series was named by the space: The Marotta Hour. It will be the third Thursday of each month from 6:30-8 p.m., so it is definitely more of an after-work thing. The series is mine to curate, so I get to make decisions like who gets to play and who doesn't, although the gallery, being associated with the university, wants me to give special consideration to OSU students. Fair enough.


For my first show, I invited one of my favorite musicians, fluxmonkey (aka Bob Drake) from Cleveland. We actually go back quite a ways. He booked me in Cleveland a couple of times in the early 90s, but then we lost touch until about two years or so ago. Then he totally blew everyone away when he played at the Ohio Experimental Music Festival at Skylab in Columbus last fall, performing a completely devastating set on his homemade analog electronics. Not only was there a constantly shifting palette of surprising sounds, but there was also the sheer spectacle of wires, knobs, and flashing lights, reminding me of some of those 1970s Tangerine Dream concert photos.





More about fluxmonkey at http://www.fluxmonkey.com/ or http://www.myspace.com/monkeyflux.



So here are the details:


Thursday, October 16

6:30-8 p.m (music MUST be over by 8, so do not arrive fashionably late.)


fluxmonkey with J-Guy Laughlin (oldschool analog electronics and drums)

Larry Marotta and Ryan Jewell (acoustic guitar, percussion of many sounds)


OSU Urban Arts Space
downtown Columbus in the former Lazarus Building, 50 W. Town Street.


Admission is a suggested $5-$10 donation with proceeds going to the performers.


The gallery has a deal with Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails on Gay Street, who will be offering a special drink for people attending the performance.