Design in Time
ASIN: B00002CF13
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
"Give the drummer some," James Brown once commanded. MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Ken Vandermark takes this directive to heart on his trio's debut recording by playing with not one but two drummers. In the past, the Chicago-based clarinet and saxophone player has made it a point to work with inspirational elders like Peter Brötzmann, Fred Anderson, and Joe McPhee; this band is an ongoing collaboration with drummer Robert Barry, who recorded extensively with Sun Ra in the 1950s. The third point of this perfectly balanced musical triangle is Vandermark 5 drummer Tim Mulvenna, an occasional student of Barry's. Although the band does justice to gorgeous melodies written by Ra, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Vandermark himself, rhythm is the thing here. The drummers' individual parts mesh into dense but carefully sculpted patterns, and Vandermark reins in his often-energetic attack to dig deep into the percussionists' grooves. --Bill Meyer
Design in Time,Ken Vandermark's Sound in Action Trio,Delmark,Avant-Garde,Avant-Garde Jazz,Free Jazz,Jazz,Jazz Music,Modern Creative,Pop,Post-Bop
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Complete Flanders & Swann
Manufacturer: EMI Int'l ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000006T4S Release Date: 1997-04-30 |
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Album Details
Fantastic Triple CD Box Set of the Recorded Works of One of Britain's Most Popular Comedy Duos. Their Keen Observations of Everyday British Life and Abilities to Exemplify them in Song Made them the Darlings of the UK. Cleverness, Wit and Absoute Hilarity were the Order of the Day, in Just About Any Style of Music. Pure Comic Genius on Three Discs!Customer Reviews:
Return to Sanity.......2005-07-27
Have Some Madeira.......2005-07-06
British humour at its best.......2003-03-15
If you haven't heard this..........2003-01-16
After being told to take up singing as a means of strengthening his polio-weakened lungs, the wheelchair-bound Flanders teamed up with pianist Swann and proceeded to write such classic songs as "The Hippo Song (Mud Mud Glorious Mud)", "The Gasman Cometh", "The Gnu Song", "A Transport of Delight" and many others. As well as a gently satirical spirit, all these songs feature the sublime wordplay and interplay of both men.
The first two discs of this box set are actual concerts - "At The Drop Of A Hat" and its successor "At The Drop Of Another Hat". Recorded at the height of the duo's popularity and form, the sound quality is surprisingly good for recordings this old.
"At The Drop Of A Hat" opens with three of the Flanders and Swann classics. "Transport Of Delight", a song in praise of the "97 horsepower omnibus" features the wonderful harmonies of the duo on lines like "any more fares" and Flanders' dead-on impression of a London busdriver "Geddardait, we're full right up inside". "Song of Reproduction" deals with the new, as it was then, stereo technology and features Flanders delivering an incredible monologue using every conceivable piece of audiophile jargon. "The Gnu Song" (in which "gnu" is pronounced phonetically) is a real treat. The audience's reaction to the reappearance of the gnu is superb.
As well as this opening trio, the disc features Flanders' snippets of "Songs For Our Time" (in which he experiments with conventions of hit songs), "Song of the Weather" (a rundown of English weather throughout the year), "The Reluctant Cannibal" (featuring Swann in the tititular role and the chorus "I can't eat people/I won't eat people/eatin' people is wrong"), Swann's foray into Greek folksong "Kokraki" and the justifiably famous "Madeira M'Dear". The performance ends with a rousing version of "The Hippo Song".
Flanders is in fine voice throughout and his comments introducing each song are delivered with deadpan accuracy. The story behind "The Gnu Song" is an absolute masterpiece. Flanders' monologue about the creation of "Greensleeves" is also superb - "'Greenfleeves'. That's an interesting name for a fong" (referencing old English script) being just a taste.
"Another Hat" begins in equally fine form with "Gasman Cometh" and "Ill Wind". "Gasman", presaged as "a tale of unending domestic upheaval", is sure to have most people who've ever dealt with unreliable tradesmen nodding in agreement, while "Ill Wind" is Flanders' attempt at setting words to a French horn concerto featuring the immortal lines "I lost that horn/lost that horn/lost that horn/found that horn/gorn". The performance continues with Swann's Russian/English song "In The Desert", the ending of which is truly side-splitting. "All Gall" (a reinterpretation of "This Old Man" to fit then-French President Charles de Gaulle) is a little dated but very cleverly done. "Song of Patriotic Prejudice", with its introduction and opening lines grabbing the audience's attention is another triumph, while the "Hippo Encore" is a great end to the performance.
Again Flanders is at his peak. His loving description of the Spanish olive-stuffers ("Olividados") and his superb story about flying ("By Air") are both brilliant examples of the shaggy dog story.
My favourite from both of these discs would have to be "First and Second Law". Flanders decides to educate Swann in elementary science and picks on the first and second laws of thermodynamics ("heat is work and work is heat" and "heat cannot of itself pass from one body to a hotter body") and the repetition of these phrases in time to Swann's barely-there piano accompaniment is one of the finest moments in British comedy.
The third disc is largely forgettable. It begins with a series of animal-related songs performed in a studio and without much of Flanders' rambling introductions. "Warthog" has its moments, while the others were clearly not performed in front of an audience for a reason. "Wompom" is also mildly diverting, presenting a story about a made-up substance which is the answer to everything.
The rest of the disc is then filled out with much earlier material in a rather poorly-recorded concert. "20 Tons of TNT" (related to the calculation the pair had done which gave that as the amount of TNT per person on the planet at the time) provides food for thought, but little more.
Is this box set for everyone? No. Much of the humour both within and without the songs does require a bit of background knowledge to what was going on in Britain and Europe at the time (1960s), John Profumo is referenced a few times as well as Charles de Gaulle and the Common Market, while a smattering of classical music knowledge can help out a bit with Swann's work and "Ill Wind". The fact that my grandfather (who's in his late 70s) recalls hearing these songs and laughing may give an indication as to the age of some of the subject matter. Equally the fact that "First and Second Law" references an awful lot of physics might do the same.
Nevertheless, for anyone who loves British humour done in a gentle manner or who is interested in the source of "mud mud glorious mud/nothing quite like it for cooling the blood", give these CDs some serious consideration.
Gentle Satire.......2002-04-03
Here are some samples of Michael's verbal wit.
Wordplay:
- "A Transport of Delight," their song of the pleasures of the double-decker bus "has recently been adopted as the theme song of the Underground resistance movement."
- Speculating that Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves: "and the royalties go to royalty."
- About a tennis referee late in the day: "the umpire upon whom the sun never sets."
- Explaining how he was hoisted in his wheelchair onto airliners by a fork lift: "Why they need a great machine like that to lift forks I do not know. Well, they're only plastic, now, aren't they?"
- On status symbols: "The object is to Gunga Din your neighbor: 'I'm a better man than you' is the acid test," and, "let's bang our status cymbals with the best."
- To a disenchanted cannibal: "You used to be a regular anthropophagi."
- Of a lecher: "And he said as he hastened to put out the cat, the wine, his cigar, and the lamps," while the girl "lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes, and his hopes."
- At the corrida d'olivas (the Andorran festival of olive stuffing, not to be confused with the Spanish corrida de toros, or bullfight): "And a great cry goes up of Ole! He has made an 'ol."
- "It's no good going up to a scientist and saying to him like you would to anybody else, 'Good morning, how are you, lend me a quid, and so on.' He'll just glare at you, or make a rude retort."
Throw-aways
- During the height of the cold war the Soviet Union sent the Moscow Ballet on a world tour. Donald sang one chorus of the Hippopotamus Song "mud, mud, glorious mud - nothing quite like it for cooling the blood" in Russian. Michael: "That should improve our cultural relations."
- During the 1963 Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler scandal: "None of that going around saying no smoke without fire. Nil cumbustibus, Profumo." Also, from "Friendly Duet," "such models of friendship are precious and rare, while the friendship of models is not."
- "Now if you're writing a musical, as I'm sure practically all of you are, . . ."
- Of Donald: "You know that no one has a higher regard for your music . . . than you do yourself. I merely meant that you are not great because you are not dead. If you wish to be great you must stop composing and start decomposing."
- "We never found a rhyme for (Soviet Premier Nikita) "Kruschev" until he was dead: Did he die or was he "pushed off"?"
- "We spent two dreadful, uh, delightful years, entertaining the Americans whose need, let's face it, is greater even than yours. Of course, when we're over there we say that the other way 'round."
- "No matter what you may say about the Germans, and who doesn't . . ."
- "Some of the songs that have made our names a household word, like slop-bucket . . ."
- "They've started testing cars now. They started at 10 years, then 5, now three. There's even some talk of having them tested before they leave the factory."
Absurdities
- "I'm delirious about our new oven fitted with the eye-level grill. This means that without my having to bend down the hot fat can squirt straight into my eye."
- A spectator during the construction of Stonehenge: "So, it's not going to be lived in. Well, that's something anyway. So what is it, then? It's a what?! A calendar?! A bit big for a calendar isn't it? You'd look pretty foolish with that on your desk."
- "Donald knocked himself out this morning. Got one of those new pop-up toasters. Nasty things."
Incredible multiple rhymes:
- "The fair hippoptama he aimed to entice from her seat on her hilltop above, as she hadn't got a ma to give her advice, went tip-toeing down to her love."
- Of Josephine: "Nonsense, said Bonaparte. She lives on her own, apart, in her own apartment."
- "Oh let us be married if our parents don't mind. We'd be happy and inseparable. Inextricably entwined. We'd live happily every after, said the Honeysuckle to the Bindweed."
- "And you'll always see a single lace-less left-hand leather boot. A bootless British river bank's a shock. We leave them there at midnight, you can track a member's route by the alternating print of boot and sock."
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Beecham Conducts Handel
Manufacturer: Video Artists Int'l ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Similar Items:
ASIN: B000003LJG Release Date: 1995-11-06 |
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Blissful music.......2006-04-12
Great music--poor quality recording!.......2005-01-25
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Design in Time
Ken Vandermark's Sound in Action Trio Manufacturer: Delmark ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Similar Items:
ASIN: B00002CF13 Release Date: 1999-10-26 |
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Amazon.com
"Give the drummer some," James Brown once commanded. MacArthur "genius grant" recipient Ken Vandermark takes this directive to heart on his trio's debut recording by playing with not one but two drummers. In the past, the Chicago-based clarinet and saxophone player has made it a point to work with inspirational elders like Peter Brötzmann, Fred Anderson, and Joe McPhee; this band is an ongoing collaboration with drummer Robert Barry, who recorded extensively with Sun Ra in the 1950s. The third point of this perfectly balanced musical triangle is Vandermark 5 drummer Tim Mulvenna, an occasional student of Barry's. Although the band does justice to gorgeous melodies written by Ra, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Vandermark himself, rhythm is the thing here. The drummers' individual parts mesh into dense but carefully sculpted patterns, and Vandermark reins in his often-energetic attack to dig deep into the percussionists' grooves. --Bill Meyer
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Notes Along the Way
Hank Schwartz Manufacturer: Hank Schwartz Design ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD ASIN: B000CA9KF4 Release Date: 2003-09-02 |
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Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love
The Free Design Manufacturer: Light in the Attic ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD Similar Items:
ASIN: B0002C9ZC0 Release Date: 2005-08-09 |
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Album Description
Remastered reissue of the soft-psych vocal band's fourth album, first time on CD in the U.S., features 13 tracks including 2 bonus tracks, 'To A Black Boy' (unreleased studio session circa 1970) & 'Butterflies Are Free' (single version). Includes 16-page color booklet with unseen photos & new liner notes. Light In The Attic. 2004.
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Beauty & Affliction
Raheem Manufacturer: Raheem ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD ASIN: B000CA3MA8 Release Date: 2004-04-21 |
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