Got Myself Together: Danny Barnes Ten Years Later.

I pre-ordered Danny Barnes' new album as soon as it was announced. Got my CD in the mail, signed by the man himself. As expected, this is a great album by the fellow who is in my judgement the most exciting musician alive today. All the tracks are great. 

As it happened, I was flying to Seattle with my wife to pick up a truck and drive back home to New England, and took the opportunity to attend a house concert with Mr. Barnes in Portland Oregon. I had seen him twice before with JAB, but this was the first chance to see two full sets of his own songs. It was wonderful. 

So I bought another copy of the CD at the show, to listen to in the truck. We have been listening to it for over a month, making our way across the states. Within the first week, my wife was singing along to "The Cat To The Rat"; by the second week we both were singing "Lighthouse" together in the truck, singing harmony with Danny Barnes. 

That's the first time we ever sang together. I'll tell you something: if you never sang with your wife or husband, it's really worth a try. Makes you closer. People who sing in church already know this, it was new to me. 

We are still some thousands of miles from New England (taking a very indirect route) and if the truck holds up as well as this album, we should arrive in good shape by spring. 

So I am writing this not so much as a review, but as a thank you card.  I want Danny Barnes to know that his music has added something sweet to our trip and to our lives. 

Mark Rubin's Southern Discomfort

Anybody that follows me on this blog (and I think one person does) knows that I am now for some years a Danny Barnes fanatic. So, it may come as no surprise to you that I am also a huge fan of the bass player from the Bad Livers, Mark Rubin. 

Mark is a virtuoso musician who can tear up some bass. He also plays pretty much every instrument, and has recently released an album, Southern Discomfort, where the variety of acoustic instruments are so well played and so well recorded it's beautiful to hear. 

Mark sent me a download of his record with the understanding that I would write him a review. I would have done so in a timely manner but there was a hitch. The album cover art is a really punk rock picture with a confederate flag and a bunch of Jewish symbols and KKK hoods and a noose.  It's disturbing; but the song about the lynching of Leo Frank (true story of an innocent Jewish man taken and killed by a mob in 1915) is what made me stop and think. 

The thing that got to me was that although we all have a lot of reasons to want to pretend that it's not so, not so much has changed, since then. It was not even that long ago. How much has the moral character of our fellows been uplifted in so short a time, or has it at all?

What people are capable of as individuals or as representatives of groups is daily on display, and from what I've seen I would be pressed to say what they are not capable of. In the context of this record, it's a sobering thought. Point being, if this crowd turns ugly, it's a mob. 

So that truth, a heavy one, is to me kind of the point of the album. The ease of research in these days will quickly reward an inquiry into the past and recent history of hate crime. For a general discussion to begin on the culture of racism and violence, in this country and in these times, the time has come. 

We have to thank Mark Rubin, an artist very busy perfecting his art for taking the trouble for bringing up this subject which I, like most, from fear have long sought to avoid. 

http://www.cdbaby.com/m/cd/markrubin3

test apes by the test apes

Here is another great record from Danny Barnes, this time with Max Brody, the drummer from Ministry. I am a huge fan, and this is making my day, to be sure. Even more, I feel like the last three records were kind of setting up for this one, stretching out the sonic limits of my expectations. I now have four new recordings from Danny Barnes and they just keep getting better and cooler. Ok, and weirder; but this is the reason I keep listening to this stuff. A lot of people talk about art, but when you look at what they're doing, all you see is technique. Not that it is a bad thing to be, a technician. But what art is supposed to do, the art that I like anyway, is to challenge and broaden the mind of the audience; to create something new. So where I might have been comfortable just hearing more of any of the things he does so well (ambiant, folktronics, acoustic banjo etc) Danny Barnes just keeps mixing it up and tying it back together with what Zappa used to call "conceptual continuity". These are more than just banjo records: they are re-framing the question of what can be done with music itself.

Junior Sampled, a great new album from Danny Barnes!

http://dannybarnes.bandcamp.com/album/junior-sampled

I finally got my pay-pal account working (seems they want you to have money in the bank) and bought both "Ambient Works Vol 1" and "Junior Sampled" after listening to both of them for free on Bandcamp whenever i had wifi signal on my phone. Initially, I thought this was another Ambient Work because of the black and white cover art and the title, and because after the last one I'm ready for as many more of those as I can get. However, it was instead another great album of songs like Shri108. Great social commentary lyrics, great beats, and plenty of bass and banjo.

Scott Thunes

This weekend I got to meet the great Scott Thunes. I had wanted to see this cat for such a long time. In 1988 I took a trip to California and found Zappa's album "Guitar" on cassette in a little gas station convenience store and played it on the car deck all the way up route 1 to Big Sur.

I was already a big Zappa fan, but this record was clearly better than all his others and it didn't take me long to figure out the reason was the new bass player, Scott Thunes. That tape was the mainstay of my playlist for years, I made duplicates so I wouldn't wear it out. I still have it.

It has been said that Zappa band members have often done their best work in Zappa's band and then done nothing noteworthy after. Well, here is an exception to that rule: Scott Thunes is doing his best work now. I caught his set Saturday night with the Mother Hips at a little music festival at Big Sur called the Hipnic. This is a great jam band setting to see Scott just shine.

His awesome command of the instrument and great taste brings funk, punk, jazz and rock to a point of just blowing my mind. I have not seen bass playing as good as that since I saw Mike Watt playing with Firehose in 1991. Part of what makes it so good is that the band is obviously in the process of growing musically into new and farther out spaces. So, that makes it sound really fresh. They are playing on the edge.

I am going to catch the Mother Hips show any time I can; they are a solid act, and a great way to see one of the world's best bass players at his best.

Here's the link to Ambient Works Vol.1

https://dannybarnes.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-1

New Danny Barnes record: Ambient Works Vol. 1

Things just keep getting better for me as a Danny Barnes fan. This new release continues on in the direction of Shri 108, but with an ambient bent. It has plenty of awesome banjo. 

Danny Barnes is the top philosopher in banjo music today. If you read his written pieces, he is just spot on about everything. He has in this ambient work created a sonic expression of his positive understanding of the world. 

This is a lot to ask of a musical piece, but he has done it here. Now granted, I have been doing my homework. Following up on his references, I have been reading Buddhist and other spiritual and philosophical material, Maher Baba, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama. This sort of thinking flows along well with ambient banjo music. 

I hope the implication in calling this work Vol.1 is realized in many more volumes to come. This recording creates peaceful space for my mind to wander around in. Just what I needed.