DVDs available in my store

Makes a fine holiday gift!

Starting today, you will now be able to buy Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema from 1928-1954 at my online store at www.larrymarotta.com/store.html. This is a neat little set and features my scores for the films The Cage (1947, Sidney Peterson) and Christmas, USA (1949, Gregory J. Markopoulos). There's also a lot of other movies included. Check it out at http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=865.



The Cage is a re-working of a score that I first performed live at the Wexner Center here in Columbus in 1997. It's a fun movie with a good sense of humor, something you don't often see in avant-garde stuff. Christmas, USA is a newer score for lap steel guitar, which also appears on my first collection of film scores available on Amazon and iTunes through Pimalia. It's the first recording I did on the lap steel, so it was a real challenge.

Indie Capital of the World

Saw this very cool card at the second annual Tiny Canary indie design market here in C-Bus this past weekend (www.tinycanary.com). I've lived in Columbus since 1990, and this sentiment might finally be close to being true if it isn't already.

Of course, I already knew that Columbus experimental/noise/extreme music is world class: Mike Shiflet, Envenomist, Sword Heaven, Environmental Control Committee, Rocco Di Pietro, Ryan Jewell, Twink Bully, Ben Bennett, Dead Sea, Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, Face Place, Lambsbread, and lots of others that I'm probably forgetting. Let me know if I forgot someone. 

Another cool thing is this blog post: http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/how-a-professor.html. You remember that dense, chimey chord that appears at the very beginning of the Beatles Hard Day's Night? Well, it is one of the more mysterious sounds in modern music since no one is quite sure how it was played (a runner up is the sludgy "wunk wunk wunk" chords in Neil Young's Hey Hey, My My). Well, a crafty professor used some computers and some complex math to figure out this chord. The results are sort of neat. Maybe it's a foolish academic exercise, but I think it is still kind of interesting. 

The working musician

Played a paying jazz gig last Friday. This is the third year that we've played the same fundraising event for the same civic organization so they like us and treat us pretty well--they actually let us graze from the buffet tables on our breaks. For anyone hiring musicians, take my advice: the music vastly improves when you feed the musicians. And it has to be the food everyone else is eating -- none of that "we got you guys turkey and mayo sandwiches from Kroger" kind of crap.

It was a fun group -- Steve Perakis on bass, Shane Willis on drums, and Mark Donovan on tenor. The music is definitely Real Book jazz, although we did play some Brian Casey compositions to mix things up. The event was super crowded, so any trips to the buffet table or the rest room took about three times longer than they would normally. Eventually, I found myself sitting in a chair on the band stand (actually, it was on the floor in a corner in the room) just so I could feel like I had my own space.

I did not go to music school, but I know one of the things they do not teach there is how to play a gig under real world conditions. Jamey Aebersold -- the jazz play-along records guy -- should make a CD that gives you the experience of playing a real gig. You know, Ron Carter could lose the form of the tune for four bars, or Kenny Barron plays the wrong changes under your solo, or the drummer stops playing for several seconds while someone approaches him with a request for Zoot Suit Riot during There Will Never Be Another You. Then there could be moments where Jamey overdubs a track of talking, eating, and drinking noises so you can't hear anything but the drummer's hi hat. 

Much of our gig was like this hypothetical Aebersold record. The acoustics of the room were terrible. You know the sound of a room is lousy when you can't hear your own guitar while you are standing two feet in front of the amp but the guitar is loud enough so the open strings start feeding back. There's also plenty of times where I couldn't hear the bass at all, so when I was soloing, I was having to keep the harmonies in my head and hope that Steve and I sounded synchronized.

I often wonder why anyone really wants jazz around at these events anyhow. I don't think anyone really likes jazz all that much, but people still insist on hiring us and having us. I think most people would rather talk without having to compete with music. And I think most people find jazz aimless, rambling, and hard to follow. And the tunes are tunes that were hits like 50-70 years ago. People don't generally listen to hits from two years ago let alone They Can't Take That Away from Me. I think it is a prestige thing; jazz just seems fancy and it belongs in the same venue as delmonico steaks, cocktail onions, and leather booths. But even in this context, I think most people find live music distracting and unwelcome.

A delmonico steak in its larval stage

I know sometimes people wonder why I devote a good portion of my musical life playing really unpopular stuff like experimental music. But honestly, audiences are typically no more interested in gigs where I play conventional jazz or rock. I admit I'm not famous, but I think the same holds true for well-known artists. I think people enjoy the communal experience of listening to familiar music by a popular musician in a concert setting. But if Neil Diamond spent two hours singing songs they never heard before, I suspect his audience would get as distracted as ours.

Back to the gig -- it was fun in any event since everyone in the group is a competent musician and has a good sense of humor. It's fun for us to play and improvise on the old tunes, crappy acoustics aside. It's a pretty good supper-club jazz group. Maybe we can get some more gigs for people in ties eating steaks...

Marotta Hour continues

Next Thursday, Nov. 20, is the second installment in the Marotta Hour series at the OSU Urban Art Space. I'm a little less nervous this time since the reaction to the first show was so positive from the performers, the audience, and Eva and Kelly from the space. It's great performing around so much great art in such an architecturally interesting room. Although I was warned that the acoustics were terrible, I found the space to be amazingly resonsive and intesting.

The next show will feature Marina Peterson, a cellist from Athens, OH, who I first found out about at the ISM Conference in Evanston, IL, in December of 2007. Marina was presenting a paper at the conference (which I missed) and was playing a concert in the space upstairs from Eric Leonardson's space in Wicker Park where I was staying (which I also missed). When I was told she lived in Athens, OH, I knew I'd have to look her up. There is a definite dearth of non-idiomatic acoustic improvisers in Columbus (a fact which I know has been keeping you up at night). Since then, we've been playing in a trio with Ryan Jewell on drums. It's a nice little group. You should check us out.



Here are the details:

Marina Peterson: cello
Ryan Jewell: drums
Larry Marotta: guitar

6:30-8 p.m. Thursday, November 20

OSU Urban Arts Space
50 W. Town Street, Columbus (in the old Lazarus building)

Admission is by donation (suggested $5-$10)

More info is here:
http://arts.osu.edu/3news_events/i_uas/uas_programs.php

Here's a bio:

Marina Peterson, cello, plays primarily new and improvised
music. Collaborations with a range of media such as radio,
electronics, dance, painting, and film expand the sonic and
performance potentials of the cello. Her discography ranges
from solo work (Striking Mechanism) to recordings with the
daKAH Hip Hop Orchestra (Kufala) and Yum Yum (Tag/Atlantic).

She has received funding from Meet the Composer and the
Ohio Arts Council and produced performances in Los Angeles,
Chicago and Athens, Ohio. Artists with whom she has worked
include Gene Coleman, Mike Cooper, Luc Ferrari, Geoff
Gallegos ("GG"), Mariella Greil, David Grubbs,
Mazen Kerbaj, Werner Moebius, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ossatura,
Rahzel, Domenico Sciajno, Christine Sehnaoui, Sharif
Sehnaoui, Fabrizio Spera, Chao-Ming Tung, and Taku Unami.

She currently is a member of Ensemble Noamnesia,
experimental pop duo Red Betsy, and a trio with Ryan Jewell
and Larry Marotta. With a PhD in Anthropology from the
University of Chicago and a Performer's Certificate from
Northern Illinois University, she is currently Assistant
Professor of Performance Studies in the School of
Interdisciplinary Arts at Ohio University.

Hugo Largo!

YouTube is one of the things in the universe that is so good that I can't believe that human beings are allowed to have it. What can I compare it to? When we got MTV in 1982 and I no longer had to stay up to watch Don Kirshner's Rock Concert or Midnight Special to see music on TV? When my friend Dennis Marks turned me on to the Casio SK1 sampling keyboard in high school?

There is so much music accessible now. Everything is accessible, and we musical omnivores are elated.

And I was thrilled to find that one of my all-time favorite bands is represented there: Hugo Largo. Their album Drum might be my favorite album of the 80s (and there's a ton of contenders: Evol, I Against I, Sign of the Times, Fables of the Reconstruction, Up on the Sun, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, etc.). It represents for me what was so good about being a music fan at that time. In the pre-Nirvana era, punk bands had no real pretentions of success, so people took chances with instrumentation and song structures and created some really sublime things. With two bassists, a violin, and Mimi Goese's heavenly vocals, Hugo Largo seemed to epitomize this attitude.

Your homework is to check out these wonderful videos of these amazing songs:

1. EUREKA: Michael Stipe sang on this one originally. I am not too proud to admit that I swoon each and every time I see Mimi take off her dress.

2. FANCY: A much more ripping version than the one on Drum, but still an absolutely gorgeous song. I still can't believe how good a song this is, and it brings me back to my 20-something self and how exciting the punk/underground scene was at this time.



I'd love it if someone would post a video of Second Skin or The Eskimo Song. Boy, I'm suffering from a bad case of punk rock nostalgia, here.

I could go on and on, and I might. Of course, if I keep blogging about Hugo Largo, maybe Mimi will find out about it, and then her guitarist will die in a Keith Relf-like guitar electrocution accident, and then she'll need a guitarist, and...

Halloween Freakout

This Halloween, I had a fun idea. I would set up my keyboard outside and run it through my amp, put on the cathedral organ patch, and play scary music for the trick-or-treaters. The weather was unseasonably warm, there were hundreds of kids out, and the trees were in full fall color. I wore my trusty black, thrift-store tuxedo I bought for a society gig that never happened, borrowed my daughter's Dementor mask she wore last Halloween, and wore the black, gold-fringed pirate jacket Becky wore for her office party. Fun, right?

Wrong.

I proceeded to completely freak out most people. Many people were okay with the creepy music until they realized that there was a real live person performing it. Then they looked at me really suspiciously. I did make at least two very little kids cry (way to go!), but mostly it was parents who seemed really, really disturbed. Becky was sitting right next to me sans costume handing out candy, and I think that helped people feel a little more comfortable, though. As Becky pointed out later, there is a reason why the Phantom of the Opera is scary. Someone in a mask playing pipe organ music (except maybe John Paul Jones in The Song Remains the Same movie -- "tour dates!") is one of our cultural archetypes of fear, like spiders or bats.

It is also interesting to me how music like the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D-minor (which I could fake about 25%) -- music that the devoutly Lutheran Bach created to glorify his god -- are now associated with darkness and evil. It would be interesting to study how that happened through the years. Did the Phantom make this glorious music now seem evil, or did people suspect it was kind of evil for a while and the Phantom helped them decide that this was indeed music of darkness? I can't imagine what would have happened if I had the technique to play Messiaen.

Of course, the other answer is that I might just be a freaky-assed musician, even in full costume, and can alienate people with my music, no matter what I happen to be playing. I might just emanate some weird-assed musical chi that people can just feel.

However, there were a few people who really liked the music. Some people laughed and clapped, and some kids danced. I did quote the Neil Hefti Batman theme whenever there was a kid in that costume, and that got a few laughs. I even threw in some Einstein on the Beach quotes for my own amusement.

It's just odd because I thought people would really enjoy hearing some live creepy music, but not be creeped out and disturbed by it.

Will I do it again next year? Maybe. I still think it was kind of cool to play a concert on my own front lawn.

Anemic Cinema preview

You can check out the full video and music for my score for Marcel Duchamp's film Anemic Cinema on YouTube. Note that the film music is attributed to composer Donald Sosin. That's not true; it's me and my trusty Telecaster in the studio on a very, very cold February night in the Midwest.

Mr. Sosin is a pretty serious composer and accompanist of silent film scores, and I encourage you to check out his site at http://www.silent-film-music.com/.

I see from the reviews that people either like this score or really, really hate it. That's good -- I like a strong reaction. It's actually one of my prettier scores, but the meter is constantly shifting, so there is a weird element buried under all the pretty notes. I just think a dadaist score (whatever that is, but I suspect it is supposed to be more jarring or dissonant or Cagean) wouldn't work for this film. I get the feeling of something unraveling slowly over a series of several minutes, and that was what the music was trying to capture. The nice thing about writing scores is that I get to frame the film in a completely different way.

For those of you who care about such things, this soundtrack was very much influenced by the opening guitar part of "River that Runs with Love Won't Run Dry " from the Swans Burning World album. I think that album is out of print, but it is worth hunting down.

If you want to buy the score for Anemic Cinema, go to my store at www.larrymarotta.com/store.html.

Let me know what you think!