Street art on the cover

lastname:nguyen
Originally uploaded by svennevenn

Sometimes, and perhaps more often than I'm aware of, I shop music because I like the cover. Monday I fund this mini CD in a shop called Robot in Bergen. The stencil art on the cover is made by MIR, and the music isn't bad either! Will I ever shop music files because they have nice web sites?

When Jazz Cats Meet Rockers

Jazz.com list a dozen surprising combinations of jazz musicians and rock artists. You get Sonny Rollins with Rolling Stones, Chick Corea with Rick Derringer, Ornette Coleman with Yoko Ono, Stan Getz with Huey Lewis & The News and more.
One day I might look through my own record collection to see if I find som wild combinations, but at first glance, most cooperations seem quite natural. Robert Wyatt's fond of jazz as we know, and has worked with among others Evan Parker, Gilad Atzmon and Gary Windo, and let's mention one more with John Surman guesting on "Point Scarlet" on Christine Collister's "The Dark Gift of Time".

In Norway we have the band Datarock, and it seems like saxman Kjetil Møster is a regular member of the band, red tracksuit and all! The video is a cover of Devo's "Mongoloid".

More on the Molde Jazz Festival

The program for the Molde Jazz Festival 2009 is looking better and better (only in Norwegian so far), and I just want to mention that Arve Henriksen will be "Artist in Residence" and Atomic will do a club concert.
Let's look at some old stuff from the festival too. The video is from the Molde Cinema 5 August 1967, and show Cadentia Nova Danica. The musicians are: John Tchicai (as), Karsten Vogel (as), Hugh Steinmetz (tp), Kim Mentzer (trb), Finn Edler von Eyben (b), Piet Kuiters (p), Giorgio Monsoni (perc) and Bo Thrige Andersen (dr) (according to books on the festival by Terje Mosnes).

The Dark Stuff

I've been a sucker for novels most of my reading life, and I might be a bit behind schedule with a lots of other stuff. These days I'm reading Nick Kent's "The Dark Stuff". Originally it's from 1994, but my edition is an updated version from 2007 (Faber & Faber). Nick Kent wrote for NME in the 70s and later for Melody Maker, so i've probably read parts of this earlier. Several of the pieces are from The Face.
You get a good mix here, with artists like Iggy Pop, Roky Erickson, Miles Davis, Roy Orbison, Syd Barrett, The New York Dolls, Sid Vicious, Johnny Cash and lots of others. Kent is writing from the inside of the cirkus, he is not an outsider describing what he sees. My favourite piece in the book is the longest one, on Brian Wilson ("The Last Beach Movie Revisisted: The Life of Brian Wilson"). Not only perfect waves, sunshine and California Girls there.
If you are as slow as me on reading up on your "must read" music books, this is a good one for Easter.

The Wyatt Variations autumn 2008

At the 39. Deutsches Jazzfestival Frankfurt in 2008, an evening was dedicated to "The Wyatt Variations - An Evening curated by Robert Wyatt".
It's now possible to get a listen to this happening, all legal I presume. Just look over at "Live Jazz Allowed".

Los Bastardos

- "The Worms Will Get In" by Jazkamer is on the soundtrack of Amat Escalante's "Los Bastardos".
- Spunk's "Kantarell" is out on Rune Grammofon 20 April.
- Three new albums I'll have to get my ears on:
Brötzmann/Kondo/Pupillo/Nilssen-Love: "Hairy Bones" (Okka).
Grenager/Hegre/Fetveit/Olsen S.: "Ute" (AIM Sound City).
Zu: "Carboniferous" (Ipecac).

Shindig!

Shindig! (vol 2, no 9, 2009) run a six pages long piece and interview with Kevin Ayers. It's on the usual stuff from the Canterbury days with Soft Machine and Robert Wyatt and onwards. Ayers, not the man to promote himself in any way, deserves every journal and newspaper article he can get. These days you may also buy new editions of "Sweet Deceiver", "Yes we have no Mananas" and "The Confessions of Dr. Dream", all of them with bonus tracks (EMI).
Shindig! was unknown to me until yesterday, when I found it in the Apollon record store in Bergen. Psychedelia and garage rock seem to be their main stuff, and here's what they say: "Psych, Garage, Beat, Powerpop, Soul, Folk... For People Who Want More!" Sounds good.