Blurt Night vs Wreck This Night
@ the OCCII / November 16 / Amsterdam
by Bart Plantenga
"Practice letting go"
o Down in the Argentine
Impossibly intense and yet flippant charm of Blurt carried the night.
Everyone I talked to was ignited, warmed over, thrilled, and glowing by
the end of the night. The trio of Ted Milton (sax, vocal, violin), Steve
Eagles (guitar), Paul Wigens (drums) reinvented old chestnuts in a way few
bands can: tunes sound simultaneously familiar and totally new, simple and
incredibly dense, chaotic meanderings within a very tight pop song
rhythms, extrapolatory jagged conniption sax solos that had one jazz
saxophonist rhapsodizing that Milton was touching on tones never touched
by jazz musicians except maybe Albert Ayler. Wigens was perfectly subdued
- no flashing bombast while Eagles played rhythm and lead guitar that
sometimes sounded somewhere between bagpipes, prepared strings, and a
joint strike fighter taking off from a wet runway.
"How does a dog die? / Roll over like Bartok / wag his legs in the sky?"
o Poppycock
Milton's adlibbed extemporaneous poesie, the babblings, the jabbering all
have that wonderful quality of finding the muse in the rubble. Brilliant
jags of word-smithing in this context be it Mark E. Smith or Lee "Scratch"
Perry or Tom Waits or Lord Buckley or Shelley Hirsch has always left me
fascinated by the power of nurtured improv. I am someone who carries a
piece of limp damp paper on stage and then have trouble reading my
scribblings without stumbling into some state of utter
misremembering.
I was honored to be asked to open for Blurt and love this place.
Inexpensive, informal, good sound system, close to home, and a gezellig
[convivial] atmosphere, the OCCII remains an important venue for bands who
want to book at the last minute. With a minimum of red tape, an
interesting night can most likely be arranged.
"Dumb flags at the whim of every little whip of wind /
they bounce in the breeze / it all ends in tatters"
o The Flags
It was a really perfect night: I finally got to meet Ted Milton, my DJ
colleague at Patapoe who co-hosts Boys from the Flatlands program and does
sound for a host of musical units including the Ex, Geert-J. brought back
a gift for me from Austria, a lederhosen-wearing teddy bear that when you
press his/her belly yodels! This is absolutely perfect because I am about
to embark on a promo "tour" [basically NY] for my new book on yodeling, Yo
De Lay EEE OOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World
[Routledge]. Inevitably at readings people will ask whether I yodel [I
don't] and so now I can just hold this Teddy Bear up to the mic and
lip-synch the bear's yodels!
I also invited an artist-jazz saxophonist friend to the gig and he was
jostled off his moorings and he was totally inspired by the evening. The
crowd was an intimate + or - enthusiastic listeners and I even got some
compliments on my DJ-ing [I'm a thin skinned DJ who is highly
club-crowd-ophobic, which depending on the club - not here - can be as
consumer demanding as McDonald's customers waiting in line for burgers].
AND I met a couple who are interested in yodeling - I had
secretly/subliminally tossed in some yodeling into the mix. And the beers
were good and cheap.
And there were a fair number of fellow Patapoe DJs on hand, some of whom
even stretched a huge banner across the OCCII front that shouted out for
more support for FREE radio. There was a sense that Patapoe could really
develop into something through sheer enthusiasm. Ted Milton had originally
even offered to do the gig as a benefit but we kindly declined.
Wreck This Mess played [not in this order]:
DJ Cor Blimey / Black Dog vs Black Sifichi vs C-Pij Obscura / Grand Mal /
Shelley Hirsch / Christine Lauterburg / Norscq vs Tempsion / A Certain
Ratio / Trip Do Brasil / Nat King Cole / Lizzy Mercier Descloux / Queen
Juliana / Mose Allison/ Headphone Science / Heaven 17 / Jonah Jones /
Superstoned / Voodoo Trance Music of Haiti / Jon Hassell / Gas-Wolfgang
Voigt / "La Paloma" by Fischer Chöre / Relax with Puck van Waveren / Gnawa
Joum Experience / Niobe / The Seven Sages of Mesopotamia / Rogue State /
Manasseh meets the Equaliser / Adrian Sherwood / MC Paul Barman / DJ Wally
/ Mossman vs the World Bank / the Lost Patrol / Twilight Circus / True
Tone / Aube / Ben Neill vs DJ Spooky / Twilight Circus / Andrew Duke /
Glen Brown vs King Tubby vs Leftfield / Bad Card / Sophia Loren...
With the rerelease and reappreciation of much No Wave material from New
York and Ze Records and the film "24 Hour Party People" focusing attention
on Factory Records and the recent "Wild Dub: Dread Meets Punk Rocker
Downtown" on Select cuts
Their set stuck somewhat to songs featured on their new "Best of Blurt -
Volume 1: The Fish Needs a Bike" on Salamander Records
© 2003 Bart Plantenga with permission