Twitter + Improvised Music = ♥?

If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.

Chancellor Gorkon, Star Trek VI

The Beast made up for missing the Michael Formanek Quartet at the Blue Whale a couple of weeks ago by getting back into the “live music” swing o’ things. (Ironically, tasking the “L.A. New Music Dictionary” turned us into a near-hermit without us realizing it.) While not up yet for another L.A. Relay, we caught three different shows last week: The Brad Dutz Quartet/Kaoru/Alex Cline/G.E. Stinson bakeoff on Sunday, Elliott Sharp & Motoko Honda butting tricked-out instruments on Thursday, and the debut of The Decisive Instant mini-orchestra (with more musicians than we could name) last night. The main thread running though all of this was, of course, the freeness of the improvised moment, and it put a reluctant Beast in an unfamiliar mindset: that Twitter and jazz improvisation go together better than we might admit.

Although the Beast is not a Tweet Twit per se, we’ve been twittering one way or another since 1989, when we started throwing scraps of notes and thoughts and other brain effluvia into an old shoebox. (This seemingly futile practice was inspired by reading an interview with Woody Allen.) We have been taking notes at live performances in L.A. for close to 15 years. Twittering for the Beast is simply taking notes on what might make it to the finish line in some (hopefully) published and award-winning article/short story/essay/evil ad campaign. Now, that shabby little Mead pocket notepad in your back pocket has simply gotten a massive upgrade in both sleekness and cost; the shoe box is now the entire planet. Now, a book critic can tweet a Q&A with a famous author while it’s happening. Now, a fashion critic can tweet reactions to every dress on the red carpet as they float by. Now, a restaurant critic can tweet her reaction to every individual morsel of food as she digests it. Now, a music “critic” (a four-letter word for the Beast) can tweet every thought and reaction in untrammeled “Live At 5!” fashion. To a journalist, our notes have now graduated to actual “finished” text. We thought, “God, that’s so annoying”; now, we’re not so sure.

We’re not gonna get into the whole unresolved “how can you actually enjoy or even absorb the music if you’re taking fucking notes?” (Short answer: you develop your own shorthand) A lot of the more old-school live music reviewers I’ve seen in the audience sit intently with hands folded over their chins, watching very carefully and take no notes except for in their minds. Maybe that’s what we don’t like about the Big T: It invades the sancrosanct mind.

Yet why not an in-the-moment style for an-in-the-moment music? Why not go deeper into previously unwritten or unrecorded moments? What follows are our recorded reactions to the three shows we watched as they happened, in breezy, 147-character-or-less tweet style:

BRAD DUTZ QUARTET (Eagle Rock Cultural Center, 6/05/2011):

@TheBeast
#st song: “biff the salesman” – bdutz known for his zappaesk song titles!

@TheBeast
bd seems to be playing a marimba-based set of chamber suites – “this is weird, wild stuff, ed”

@TheBeast
dutz hits shifty mysterious chimes on marimba over the slooooboe and cello. Soundd like: “cat paws slinking across a listing ocean liner.”

@TheBeast
2econd song: “spies vs. actors who play spies (wilderness survival challenge)” (smiley emoticon)!!!

@TheBeast
dutz sits on one of those peruvian cajon (“box”) box drums and also fuggles several frame drums. so many toys to play w!!

@TheBeast
cellist chris votek, who also wrote this song, turns cello into a funk-pluck bass…say boosty, say bootsy

@TheBeast
mre awesome song titles: “the intricacy of prairie life”; “the lack o quality programmming.”

@TheBeast
“if i only had a brain” yes the one from oz! sounds out of place after the multiculti weirdness. oboist paul sherman looks like he’s about to burst out lauighing.

@TheBeast
Guy next to us: “expect anything from a brad duz set!”

ALEX CLINE/KAORU/G.E. STINSON (6/05/2011):

@TheBeast
kaoru is a quiet & unassuming woman who sings modern takes on japenese folk lullabis. she rarely performs so this s/b a treet

@TheBeast
alex c working from skeletal drum set up incl large bass drum flipped sidewys & chassis of variouys sized gongs behind him

@TheBeast
for 1nce he is standing and not completely engulfed by his traps!

@TheBeast
sitting behind a desk of electronic gadgetry & singing into a table mike, karoru resembles a librarian givig avant-garde testimony

@TheBeast
stinson has at least 20 stompboxes set up on tables & roates his instruments frequrntly!

@TheBeast
ac begins with wind-chime texturs w/no pulse or beat; kaoru chants & manipulates w/ electronics; ge’s guitar turns itall into a wind tunnel

@TheBeast
ge messes aronud w toy piano; ac hits bass drum and then immediately claps off sound with little hand cymbals, wow!

@TheBeast
ge straps on 2neked guitar; switches to a japanese instrument that looks like portable keyboard worn by 80s bands. wtf? it also has strings!

@TheBeast
3io ascends 2 rolling thunder: turgid, tribal alien drumbeat over ge’s melted-guitar wash and karou’s conjured monk chants in japanese and english

@TheBeast
kaoru multirakcs her voice and then sings back over the mix

@TheBeast
ac lays 7 cymbals on bass drum and hits them with brushes, they bobble like metallic lyly pads

@TheBeast
what if ge’s stompboxes become selfaware start to communicate with each other and revolt?

@TheBeast
karou reminds me of bjork and yoko ono – latter inevitable comparison I guess as we are not well schooledon japense vocalists. must investuiagete!

@TheBeast
FIERCE final section!! escalating hysteria on all instruments. a hellish doomladen ecstasy. a slow industrialized leekage.

MOTOKO HONDA/ELLIOTT SHARP (The Blue Whale, 6/09/2011):

Motoko & Elliott

[Photo by Peak]

@TheBeast
see ge again at the bar in his bono galsses wolfing down tuna sliders. confirms the weird isntument he played as a “taishogoto.” thxs, uncle g!

@TheBeast
esharp, whom we have seen play a variey of guitars, has constucte dhis own for this evening’s jounrney

@TheBeast
it looks like an ouija board crossbread with a lute…

@TheBeast
or that awesome google icon that popped up this morning where you could play/record your own songs. motoko’s piano is festooned with orange clamps

@TheBeast
esharp plays first set & brings th pain with hits n pops all over the isntument (like kaki king he uses the body as much as the strings)

@TheBeast
esharp really gets into the crystalline multitracked les paul frippery; strange, as this is les pauls’ birthday

@TheBeast


@TheBeast
im sorry, what was i saying?

@TheBeast
orange clamps revealed: hold harp strings btwn lid and piano. honda plucks and warps with her e-pad. our friend joey is blown away

@TheBeast
esharp & honda go 2&fro w/ disconcerting pulses and makes us worry about things like “ss our oven on?”

THE DECISIVE INSTANT (The Blue Whale, 6/12/2011):

@TheBeast
have nvr seen jeff schwartz or charles sharp (whom i interviewed back in febraury) play!

@TheBeast
young scholars of jazz as much as players and itll b interesting to see how they ‘shed it

@TheBeast
i am NOT a jazz critic. i describe whats happening onstage but I don’t attempt to explain/editorialize. oops, 1st set starting…

@TheBeast
“worthy constituents”: csharp begins as conductor. 12 p band sounds like rush hour if all the drivers had insttuments

Charles Sharp (no relation to Elliott)

conducts The Decisive Instant

[photo by David Adler]

@TheBeast
interesting klezmer-inlfected clarinet by alicia byer

@TheBeast
“taylorism.” jschwartz plops his upright bass front&center and digs into it arco-style. epic piece ends on a membrane-like breathing drone

@TheBeast
coming back from men’s room, we first think someone is leading the band in frank zappa’s the blue light.

@TheBeast
an older gneltemen in a flowerprint shirt sings it like a cheesy love song over a collpasping & ornery group-skronk

@TheBeast
It’s not he blue light, it’s the dangerous kitchen! “Who the fuck wants to clean it?!”

@TheBeast
The older gentlemen is billy harrington, who was a former zappa keyboard tech. apropos!

@TheBeast
opposing forces in this tune: a simple 4/4 beat fighting to get past a cacapohy of shit. la in a nutshell.

@TheBeast
my hand is getting tired

@The Beast
"decisive instant"...twitter...hmmm

@TheBeast

the kitchen appears to be closed

[We apologize profusely to trumpeter/composer Bruce Friedman, who led the band in the 2nd set in a variation on his ongoing and fascinating O.P.T.I.O.N.S. project. We were so hungry we had to go grab some grub nearby and when we returned the set was pretty much over. Sigh. Next time, sir!]