Fit for a King
John Hartley Fox's new book looks at the history of King Records
By Steven Rosen
(This first appeared in Cincinnati CityBeat, Oct. 21, 2009)
As Jon Hartley Fox made his scheduled appearance at a Books by the Banks event at the Duke Energy Center Oct. 17, the many years the Dayton native had spent writing the just-published King of the Queen City: The Story of King Records had finally paid off.
Just the day before, in a major coup, he had been on NPR’s Fresh Air talking with Terry Gross about the Cincinnati-based record company, founded by the colorful Syd Nathan, that had been one of the nation’s biggest and most influential independents from the 1940s through the mid-1960s.
On Oct. 18, he would be doing a signing at Shake It Records in Northside. And after his panel discussion at Books by the Banks with Randy McNutt — author of a recent photo-oriented book on King — he would be appearing on Mr. Rhythm Man’s popular show on WNKU (89.7 FM).
It’s been a long time coming for Fox, 56, a Sacramento-based freelance writer and music aficionado who has long followed King and even produced public-radio documentaries about its history. This book was a daunting task.
“Part of what made King great was the staggering diversity of the things they did,” Fox says. “But there aren’t many people who like all the different kinds of music on King. That’s part of why nobody did a book earlier. I liked all the genres on King, and it took that mindset to tackle that project.”
King had Country, R&B, Bluegrass and Gospel records; its biggest act was James Brown. A two-volume discography, published in 1985, ran more than 1,100 pages and was incomplete.
Honoring the defunct label and raising its local and national profile has become a cause celebre in Cincinnati in recent years. There are economic reasons for this — other cities with historic “roots” labels have been able to build museums, sponsor large music festivals and attract cultural tourism because of their heritage. Examples are Memphis (Stax and Sun), Chicago (Chess), Detroit (Motown), New Orleans and Nashville.
King was bigger than many of the other post-war indie labels, but it's had far more trouble winning recognition. Fox has some thoughts on that. One reason is that after Nathan died in 1968 King’s assets wound up in the hands of a Nashville company — the Cincinnati connection was cut. But also there was no recognizable King sound; the company never became a recognizable brand.
“Syd Nathan let his artists do what they wanted to do,” Fox says. “He was working with artists who had a sound and were out playing gigs and road-testing songs, while Motown and some of the others were working with younger, untested talent who were being plugged into a formula.
“Each artist had a sound more or less consistent throughout their time on King. But if you listen, say, to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and Billy Ward and His Dominoes, both vocal groups of young black men, they sounded completely different.”
Fox is glad to be done with his writing.
“While I was working on this over the years, I heard of 15 to 20 purported books on King coming out,” he says. “I think as people started digging into its history, they realized what a huge story it is. I imagine a lot of people just got discouraged by the size of it all. I can’t say I did it as well as I wanted — the economics of publishing dictated the length of the book. The manuscript I turned in was probably twice as long as the book, but University of Illinois Press just didn’t want to charge $60 for a book. (His 240-page book retails for $29.95.)
“The good thing is there’s still room for somebody else to write a book about King.”
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Concert Review: Faust in Columbus
Faust
10-8-09
Wexner Center for the Arts · Columbus, OH
From Blurt Magazine (www.blurt-online.com)
BY STEVEN ROSEN
Krautrock, art rock, indie rock, psychedelic rock, folk rock, cabaret rock, punk rock, progressive rock, experimental rock...all the terms fit and, at the same, are rendered irrelevant when Faust plays.
The band, which formed in Germany in 1971, has evolved into still-vital elder statespersons of "new music" that defies easy description but is enormously innovative and inspiring.
Faust - along with Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk - is classified as "Krautrock" because of their rock tastes and avant-garde sensibilities. Faust early on mixed experimental forays with noise, improvisation, drone and repetition that showed a Velvet Underground/Grateful Dead influence while also being as attuned to European modernist traditions, especially Stockhausen, as American blues and folk. It was a 1974 Faust song, actually, that gave the genre its name.
If you're curious where that aesthetic has taken Faust after all these decades, the answer is it's given the band a relaxed curiosity for trying anything.
At Columbus, Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts - a contemporary art center/performance space on the Ohio State University campus - the current Faust line-up, on its first U.S. tour in about a decade, gave a concert both enormously friendly and constantly musically stimulating. Plus, it's not everyday you can see a band that uses a cement mixer and a wastebasket as musical instruments.
The long-haired Jean-Herve Peron, a bassist and one of the two original members in Faust, took the stage alone, right on time, with a polite "Thank You" and began with some improvisational sounds: A few trombone notes here, a tape-looped, echoed spoken recitation of "Is this music? No, this is not music." It was short and sweet.
With that over, he introduced the others - original member and percussionist Werner "Zappi" Diermaier; guitarist (and Thurston Moore look-alike) James Johnston, who has played with Lydia Lunch and Nick Cave; and singer/synth player/poet Geraldine Swayne, who offers elements of Sally Timms and Patti Smith in her relaxed, art-conscious performance.
Together, they played songs old ("So Far," "Jennifer") and new ("Fresh Air," about Tokyo). Singing in French - Peron's native language - as well as English and (maybe) German, they constantly encouraged close listening. There were controlled guitar freakouts where Johnston, his back often to the crowd, played into his amps to get a textured, uncontrolled noise.
There were also times when Swayne, center stage, might chant in French or recite a poem to Buddha or a monologue about an old "English Woman" who saw her paintings. And Peron often picked up acoustic guitar for a gentle passage. There was fairly minimal visual accompaniment, although scenes from Murnau's silent-era "Faust" played at one point.
There were plenty of times where the various elements collided and coalesced. In one of Faust's prettiest songs, "Jennifer," a ballad begin as a duet between Peron and Swayne, there was somehow an instrumental detour that involved Diermaier taking an electric sander to a long, thin metal sheet and letting the resultant sparks fly where they may.
On "So Far" (I think, I'm relying on the band's scrawled playlist for song order), Peron not only sang in French and played trumpet, but he also held the microphone to a churning cement mixer for a solo. And, for variation, he shook a wastebasket over it, letting some particles appear to fall. Swayne added a solo on a small squeezebox that appeared to make no sound whatsoever. Yet, the effect wasn't pretentiously dadaesque - it all seemed to fit into the context of recognizable song structure.
And it was fun. This was not a confrontational show. Peron is friendly from the stage, describing songs and introducing performers. The crowd, which numbered around 100, was hardly a bunch of passive art--watchers, either. There was quite a bit of swaying and outright dancing, especially during the poundingly rhythmic encores "Teutonen Tango" and the wonderful "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine."
The last combined bright, innocent "ba-ba-ba-ba" vocals to commanding guitar work in a way that suggested Sonic Youth and Stereolab. Since the song dates back to the Faust So Far album, from 1972, one might say Faust prefigured them. But it still sounds new. And Faust has plenty of new tricks.
10-8-09
Wexner Center for the Arts · Columbus, OH
From Blurt Magazine (www.blurt-online.com)
BY STEVEN ROSEN
Krautrock, art rock, indie rock, psychedelic rock, folk rock, cabaret rock, punk rock, progressive rock, experimental rock...all the terms fit and, at the same, are rendered irrelevant when Faust plays.
The band, which formed in Germany in 1971, has evolved into still-vital elder statespersons of "new music" that defies easy description but is enormously innovative and inspiring.
Faust - along with Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk - is classified as "Krautrock" because of their rock tastes and avant-garde sensibilities. Faust early on mixed experimental forays with noise, improvisation, drone and repetition that showed a Velvet Underground/Grateful Dead influence while also being as attuned to European modernist traditions, especially Stockhausen, as American blues and folk. It was a 1974 Faust song, actually, that gave the genre its name.
If you're curious where that aesthetic has taken Faust after all these decades, the answer is it's given the band a relaxed curiosity for trying anything.
At Columbus, Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts - a contemporary art center/performance space on the Ohio State University campus - the current Faust line-up, on its first U.S. tour in about a decade, gave a concert both enormously friendly and constantly musically stimulating. Plus, it's not everyday you can see a band that uses a cement mixer and a wastebasket as musical instruments.
The long-haired Jean-Herve Peron, a bassist and one of the two original members in Faust, took the stage alone, right on time, with a polite "Thank You" and began with some improvisational sounds: A few trombone notes here, a tape-looped, echoed spoken recitation of "Is this music? No, this is not music." It was short and sweet.
With that over, he introduced the others - original member and percussionist Werner "Zappi" Diermaier; guitarist (and Thurston Moore look-alike) James Johnston, who has played with Lydia Lunch and Nick Cave; and singer/synth player/poet Geraldine Swayne, who offers elements of Sally Timms and Patti Smith in her relaxed, art-conscious performance.
Together, they played songs old ("So Far," "Jennifer") and new ("Fresh Air," about Tokyo). Singing in French - Peron's native language - as well as English and (maybe) German, they constantly encouraged close listening. There were controlled guitar freakouts where Johnston, his back often to the crowd, played into his amps to get a textured, uncontrolled noise.
There were also times when Swayne, center stage, might chant in French or recite a poem to Buddha or a monologue about an old "English Woman" who saw her paintings. And Peron often picked up acoustic guitar for a gentle passage. There was fairly minimal visual accompaniment, although scenes from Murnau's silent-era "Faust" played at one point.
There were plenty of times where the various elements collided and coalesced. In one of Faust's prettiest songs, "Jennifer," a ballad begin as a duet between Peron and Swayne, there was somehow an instrumental detour that involved Diermaier taking an electric sander to a long, thin metal sheet and letting the resultant sparks fly where they may.
On "So Far" (I think, I'm relying on the band's scrawled playlist for song order), Peron not only sang in French and played trumpet, but he also held the microphone to a churning cement mixer for a solo. And, for variation, he shook a wastebasket over it, letting some particles appear to fall. Swayne added a solo on a small squeezebox that appeared to make no sound whatsoever. Yet, the effect wasn't pretentiously dadaesque - it all seemed to fit into the context of recognizable song structure.
And it was fun. This was not a confrontational show. Peron is friendly from the stage, describing songs and introducing performers. The crowd, which numbered around 100, was hardly a bunch of passive art--watchers, either. There was quite a bit of swaying and outright dancing, especially during the poundingly rhythmic encores "Teutonen Tango" and the wonderful "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine."
The last combined bright, innocent "ba-ba-ba-ba" vocals to commanding guitar work in a way that suggested Sonic Youth and Stereolab. Since the song dates back to the Faust So Far album, from 1972, one might say Faust prefigured them. But it still sounds new. And Faust has plenty of new tricks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Follow this Blog!
Follow by Email
