Thin Cats, Fast Cats...

NebulaSearch for Free-improvisation. Check it out.



Good morning Mr. and Mrs Canada and all ships at sea, and all ships in the air too. We are suddenly more important way out here on the left coast. Five, count ‘em, 5 out of 38 "Outstanding Canadians" named in the latest cabinet. Outstanding.... Heh. Out standing in a field of SOMETHING. Don’t get any on your shoes. Ujjal gets the health portfolio. Say.. didn’t that guy used to be Premier of BC? An NDP premier? If you’ve been reading this blog long enough you already know what I think of that guy and his buddies.

Ferries contract goes overseas. WTF? An order for a half a billion dollars worth of ferries will be awarded in the fall to a European shipbuilder. Why? They say the local shipbuilders can’t handle it. Not enough buildings, cranes and people. There was enough "infrastructure" in 1990 when the Spirit of Vancouver Island and the Spirit of BC were built here. Now they say the industry that did the work has shrunk to 20% of it’s capacity.

I was thinking this would happen when the NDP forced the industry to build those idiot fast cats. I thought "Who the fuck would ever buy ferries from these guys again?" I don’t think it’s the builder’s fault.

They built woefully inadiquate ships for way too much money, and the ships were almost immediatly sold for 1% of their cost. Real bad planning all around, but a stench of an idea in the first place.The government shot the industry in the foot and is now about to kick it in the ‘nads.

They say the vessals can be built cheaper in GERMANY. Ya, sure. German stuff has always been known for it’s LOW COST. Heh. (Hey... trade ya that Beemer for this Valiant!) Their wages are actually higher than ours. BC cancelled an earlier bidding process for a smaller ferry, where BC wages were lower.

The most annoying thing is there is no mention of the 25% FEDERAL DUTY ON IMPORTED VESSELS. The feds will scoop $125 million out of YOUR pockets just to avoid the local unions.

A disaster for the local shipyards? Duh.

Your attention please...

Bob from accounting

Pookums Place

Booble

Wes on Zed Jump Link

That is all...

Non-idiomatic improvisation

A dear friend of mine and a major musical influence and booster has seemingly fallen into the pit of weirdness that is free-form improvisation. This guy is a GREAT player though and can make this music sound good. The examples I heard were based on throwing the I Ching for the years 1958 to 1997. Here for instance is 1962.

Now compare that to one of the old guys Derek Bailey. This is from his 1975 piece "First". Okay, that was weird, but you can see the guitar is a great thing for this kind of music. Listen to how it's used in this piece by Caroline Kraabel, Burkhard Beins and John Bisset. 13 musicians/3 venues. At 2:13pm three trios started playing - one in a Tent, one in a Gallery and one in a Church Hall. After ten minutes the remaining musicians set out, and when one of them entered a venue they ousted one of the trio playing there - who went off to another venue and displaced another musician - and so on...

Sounds like fun, but would I want to listen to it? ALL of it?

The point of "freedom" in improvisation is to eliminate chords entirely. Depending on how far you are willing to go, you can chuck traditional melody, rhythm, timbre and form too. There are many different approaches to free playing, but free is "no rules". Dereck Baily calls it "non-idiomatic improvisation - more possibilities per cubic second than any genre ".

When playing free music in a solo setting, you can change the directions of the music at any time, and are accountable only to yourself. You can change tempo, you can play without tempo, you can vary the intensity of your performance as you see fit. When playing music with no set form in a group setting, communication becomes especially important, because there is no automatic frame of reference to keep everyone together. Hard and easy all at once.

Am I excited by this? I think so. Sure is fuckin' nutty though. Guess I'll have to try some.

Send me money Jesus.

So my old MP is 55 and didn't get re-elected. He can retire with a pension of $52,000 a year. When I first voted for him he said he wouldn't collect his pension. I wonder what he thinks now.

I need to get a job working for these guys. Or these guys. They must have great drugs.

Send money. If you can. Just send it to my house. Small bills. As much as possible. 'Nuff said.

Happy Canada Day

Canada, a great place that should have the rest of the world by the balls, but just dosn't want to.