Knoxville Again

 

Pushback against the future "public safety training facility" in Dekalb County, commonly refered to as "Cop City," is growing after protestors held a town hall in Southeast Atlanta on Tuesday night at the Park Avenue Baptist Church. 

Hundreds of people packed the pews to voice their opposition. “More police will not keep us safe,” Community Movement Builders Spokesperson Kamau Franklin said.

Many at the town hall said they feel like the site is going to be a place of terrorism and a place where police will learn harmful tactics. They also said it’s a horrible use of tax dollars. “Some police are good and some are not, there’s good and bad in all, but we don’t need that crap in our neighborhood,” one attendee said.

The town hall comes after DeKalb officials said they had to close down part of the forest because they allegedly found booby traps, Molotov cocktails, and fentanyl syringes on the property. The officials said they are not done with the clearing and claim there’s no timeline on reopening the forest.

However, protesters said county officials closed the forest for a different reason, “That’s a tactic and a strategy that’s meant to make people think this movement is a criminal movement, which it is not. . . as opposed to an opposition movement and a protest movement to stop Cop City,” Franklin said.

Despite voices of fear over the future of the training site expressed during the town hall, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said that the site’s purpose is to enhance public safety. “We need training facilities for our police and our firefighters. The training facilities that we have in place now have been long condemned. That’s why we are building the state-of-the-art Atlanta Public Safety Training Center,” Dickens said.

While police advocates are asking for social training (de-escalation techniques and community involvement), not militarized training, an entire mock city is being proposed to teach SWAT-style combat techniques.  De-escalation techniques can be taught in classrooms and a mock city isn't needed for that kind of training.  There are plenty of other viable locations for both classroom and field training that already have existing infrastructure in place and aren't currently greenspace. 

In addition to an apparent cover-up of the murder of an environmental protester by the Georgia State Police, nearly every other aspect of this project has involved a cover-up of some sort or another. The facility is being built outside city limits next to neighborhoods where the residents can’t vote against the officials greenlighting this project. Police from all over the state will be using a facility funded in part by Atlanta taxpayers. This is just a waste of taxpayer funds to placate the Atlanta Police Foundation, to benefit contractors, and to burnish the "anti-crime" credentials of elected officials.

Residents near the proposed facility are understandably upset about the noise (sirens, gunfire, helicopters) disrupting their lives while the police train on military tactics that will most likely be used against them, or people who look like them. 

Ultimately, the project's not going to do anything to improve policing because it's not addressing any of the actual deficits. The biggest issue the APD faces right now is understaffing, and another training facility isn't going to fix that. If the development money was used instead for sign-on bonuses and benefit boosts, they could partially solve that issue. 

Protesters at the town hall said they are not going to stop protesting and they are organizing another week of action against the site.

According to an incident report obtained by the UK's Guardian, police fired rounds from a pepperball gun into the closed tent of 26-year-old Manuel Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, before an exchange of gunfire that resulted in the death of the environmental activist and the injury of an officer. Previous statements by the police suggested that Tortuguita had been the first to fire and that they killed Tortuguita in self-defense.

Armed police in tactical gear killed Tortuguita on the morning of January 18 as they swept through an Atlanta forest to clear activists who were camping there to prevent construction on a $90M police and fire department training facility known as “Cop City”.

The death of Tortuguita – the first time an environmental protester has been killed by police in US history – created headlines around the US and the world and further galvanised a protest movement against the huge project amid accusations of heavy-handed police action and some local Georgia politicians eager to depict the activists as “terrorists.”

The incident report reveals that police were the first to discharge a weapon on the scene when they fired the pepperball gun into Tortuguita’s tent, which was followed by gunshots they believed were coming from inside the tent. That lead officers to fire a barrage of shots blindly into the tent, killing Tortuguita inside. It also reveals that, while they rendered medical assistance to an injured officer, they did not immediately do the same for Tortuguita.

There are nine mentions of the phrase “domestic terrorist” or “domestic terrorists” used by officers in the 20-page police incident report, which Tortuguita’s family said showed the attitude they took towards anyone they encountered in the forest. The family said the reports “reveal that officers were fed a steady supply of hearsay and vague generalities about ‘domestic terrorists’ before entering the forest. It is clear that all law enforcement regarded any person in the forest as guilty of being a domestic terrorist.”

The police were told by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that the demonstrators might possess various weapons, including rifles, pistols, improvised explosive devices, and molotov cocktails. It warned that protesters had set “booby traps” in the forest, including trip wires and sharp nails and stakes that officers might step on, that “were designed and employed to seriously injure or kill them”.  The GBI also said that protesters in the trees might throw feces and urine on officers, and “it was known that some trespassers carried STDs” and this tactic might infect officers with STDs.

The clearing operation began before 9 am on January 18.  There were three search teams of officers deployed into the forest, and Team 2 was a SWAT team that included bureau agents, officers from Atlanta police department, and rangers from the Department of Natural Resources who had police dogs. Team 2 planned to enter their “area of operation” from Constitution Road, moving from south to north on the west side of the forested property. They encountered several demonstrators in tents, but said they were not aggressive.

They then approached a larger encampment. As they approached Tortuguita's tent from behind, one officer said he could see movement inside the tent, although the door flap to the tent was closed. Officers said they identified themselves as police and ordered Tortuguita to exit the tent, but they stayed put. One officer said he told Tortuguita they did not want to cause them harm and would guarantee their safety if they complied.

After the pepperball gun was fired, the gunfire started. Police believed the shots were coming from inside the tent. One officer pulled another out of the way, causing the other to lose his balance and fall to the ground. Another officer wrote that he believed the fallen officer had been shot. The officers returned fire into the tent. 

Officers said they heard a bang and saw a white cloud of smoke, which they believed to be an explosive device detonated by Tortuguita. They believed Tortuguita “was still an active threat.”  After the shooting stopped, an officer wrote that he heard a voice call “cease fire, cease fire” and then heard a voice from his left side say, “I’m hit, I’m hit.” Police believed that Tortuguita shot the officer. Medics immediately provided medical care to the injured officer, but medical care was not immediately provided to Tortuguita. An independent autopsy released by Tortuguita’s family showed they were shot at least 13 times.

The Team 2 officers were not qearing body cams and no video evidence of the shooting is available. Body-cam footage from a different team shows officers discussing the audible shooting minutes later, with one officer asking, “Did they shoot their own man?” 

 

Forget basketball. Forget all team sports like football and baseball. Even forget soccer and hockey. The real sports heroes aren’t on teams. They’re the extreme athletes tackling the planet’s highest mountains and deepest oceans, often alone.

For example, Erden Eruc has been trying to reach all the Seven Summits (except Vinson in Antarctica) by human power, and then climb them. He got the idea in 2002 after the death of his friend Goran Kropp, who was best known for cycling from Stockholm to Nepal to climb Mount Everest. The two had been climbing together in Washington State when Kropp suffered a fatal fall. On the plane returning home from Kropp’s funeral in Stockholm, Eruc decided to reach the highest summits on each continent by human power, in honor of Kropp.

He first climbed Denali in Alaska in 2003. Four years later, he started his human-powered circumnavigation of the world. He climbed Mt. Kosciuszko in Australia in 2010. Then he rowed alone across the Indian Ocean and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his father in 2011.

Everest, Elbrus, and Aconcagua remained, but financial issues and visa problems began to impede his plans. Eruc decided to bypass the summits for the time being and continue with the circumnavigation. By 2012, he completed his human-powered trip around the world.

After more years of planning and saving, he decided to finally tackle the remaining three summits. Eruc left California in the spring of 2021 and began to row to Hong Kong. He estimated that it would take 10 months. On reaching Asia, he was going to cycle overland to Everest.

In September 2021, he stopped in Hawaii so he could repair his boat and try to resolve his visa problems. The weather was also becoming an issue. If he rowed straight to Hong Kong, he would have to resupply at sea, a difficult feat, so he rowed to Guam.

When he landed, he became the first person to row from Hawaii to the Marianas. He became the first person to notch 1,000 days of rowing alone across the world’s oceans, besting the previous record of 937 days, set by legendary British rower Peter Bird in the 1990s.

Eruc re-launched from Guam in February 2022, hoping to avoid tropical depressions and storms, but he started a few weeks too late. Weather forced him to stop in the Philippines. He left his boat there, waiting for him to return and restart in February 2023. 

Sadly, it was not to be. Lack of sponsorship, and mounting visa issues made passage through China to Everest difficult to impossible. Russia’s war with Ukraine made even Elbrus questionable. This month, Eruc announced the end of his self-powered Six Summits project.

None of this was covered by ESPN. He may be one of the strongest, bravest, most determined athlete these days, but chances are you never heard of him, and he’s probably fine with that.

 

 

A second autopsy of 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who was shot and killed by the Georgia State Patrol on January 18, shows their hands were raised when they were killed.

Terán, who went by the name Tortuguita and used third-person plural pronouns, was killed in an Atlanta-area forest while police cleared an encampment of activists who oppose the construction of Atlanta's "Cop City," a planned Public Training Safety Facility. The facility will cost $90 million and take up 85 acres of land in the South River Forest, which is an important area of green space. The City of Atlanta has described the forest as one of the city's four "lungs." 

Activists have cited a number of concerns, from environmental protection to confronting police power. They contend the project will jeopardize the forest, which is surrounded by mainly Black and Hispanic communities. Most protests have been peaceful, but some have attracted media attention and several dozen activists have been arrested for damaging buildings and cop cars in opposition to the project. Tortuguita was one of the forest defenders camping out on the site to prevent its development.

"Both Manuel's left and right hands show exit wounds in both palms. The autopsy further reveals that Manuel was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged when killed," lawyers said in a press release. Last month, Tortuguita's family said they were shot at least a dozen times.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says officers killed Tortuguita in self-defense after Tortuguita shot a state trooper, but the City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire.

The Atlanta Police Department said that the "officers had no immediate knowledge of the events at the shooting site" before making their comments, and the GBI said that officer's speculation is not evidence.

"Imagine the police killed your child," said Belkis Terán, Tortuguita's mother. "And now then imagine they won't tell you anything. That is what we are going through." 

The GBI hasn't released the government's autopsy report or met with Tortuguita's family, and it blocked the City of Atlanta from releasing more video evidence. There's no body camera or dashcam footage of the shooting, according to the GBI, and they claim that ballistics evidence shows the bullet that injured the trooper came from a gun belonging to Tortuguita. The Terán family has sued for the release of more information under the Georgia Open Records Act.

Those who knew Tortuguita say the details offered by authorities don't match the person they knew. In interviews, while they were still alive, Tortuguita expressed a commitment to nonviolence.  Tortuguita's mother remembers them cleaning beaches in Panama, where their family is from, and of them feeding and sheltering people everywhere they lived.

"I'm suffering," she said. "But this suffering is giving to me power — power to fight, power to stand."

Oscars Preview

Not that anyone cares, but here are my Oscar picks for this year:

Best Picture

All Quiet on the Western Front - Good war movie. I like war movies. 

Avatar: The Way of Water - Didn’t see it. Thought the original was good, but over-rated.

The Banshees of Inisherin - Too slow and it took me half the film before I could understand the Irish accents. Also, I like dark comedies but this one got a little too dark in the end, what with all the cutting off fingers and all. But I liked the donkey. More movies should have donkeys.

Elvis - Didn’t see it. Why do we need an Elvis movie in 2023? Is there anything we don't already know about him? Also, no donkeys.

Everything Everywhere All at Once - That was a fun ride, and I never expected a movie that weird to be nominated for Best Picture. For all I know, there might have been a donkey in the film, but I don't remember. As the title implies, so much happens in the movie and so fast, too, that a donkey might have flashed by at some point without my noticing it. 

Top Gun: Maverick - Another fun ride, but too derivative of the original to win Best Picture IMHO.

The Fabelmans - Didn’t see it, but it will probably win because it’s Spielberg. 

Tár - Didn’t see it.  

Women Talking - Didn’t see it.

Triangle of Sadness - Didn’t see it. Didn’t even hear of it.

The Oscar might go to The Fabelmans because of Spielberg, but all the press and all the buzz seems to be about Everything, Everywhere, so that’s my prediction. My personal vote if I were one of the judges would be for All Quiet because I like action movies or for Banshees because of that donkey.

Best Actor

It will probably go to Brendan Fraser for The Whale because Hollywood loves it when actors play people with disabilities, but my vote is for Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin, not because I liked the movie but because Farrell seems cool and the kind of person I’d like to do have a Guinness with. And also because of the donkey. I loved that donkey.

Best Actress

The award should go to Ana de Armas for Blonde because she’s a total babe. Did you see her in the Blade Runner remake? Damn! However, the award will probably go to Cate Blanchett for Tár and to be honest, she deserves it - I didn't see the movie, but she should get an Oscar as some kind of lifetime achievement award. The woman's a national treasure - an Australian national treasure, to be sure but still a treasure, nonetheless.  In a perfect world, though, the award would go to Jenny the Donkey for Banshees. 

Original Score

My vote’s for Everything Everywhere All at Once because I saw the band who did the soundtrack, Son Lux, at The Earl a couple years ago (pre-covids) and they were pretty good. John Williams didn't play The Earl even once, ever.

Outstanding Mule

Easy one. The award for the mule outstanding in her field goes to Jenny the Donkey in The Banshees of Inisherin. There were horses in the calvary for All Quiet on the Western Front, but they didn't have that on-screen charisma of Jenny. 

Okay, the hard work's just about done - I've finally made my selection for the fourth and final day of Big Ears. 

12:30-1:30 - Martin Subotnik: As I Live and Breathe

2:30-3:30 - John Zorn: Bagatelles

5:15-6:15 - caroline

7:00-8:00 - John Zorn: Painkiller

8:45-10:00 - Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos

10:00-11:00 - John Zorn: Cobra

Yes, there are tradeoffs and missed opportunities, but I won't go into them here.  Instead, let's focus on the positive, what I will actually see and hear.

As I Live and Breathe is an interactive light-and-sound work created by the 89-year-old electronic music pioneer Martin Subotnik with the Berlin-based video artist Lillevan. Subotnik said, “As I Live and Breathe features live and sampled vocalizing along with some of my most advanced electronic performance techniques. . . It starts with my breath, moves through a vocalizing cadenza of vocal gestures, and ends with a tender and simple use of gentle rhythms and melodic fragments."

Sunday's set of Zorn's Bagatelles will be performed by the Brian Marsella Trio and the John Medeski Trio. Pianist Marsella will be performing with the bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Organist Medeski (of Medeski, Martin & Wood) will be performing with guitarist David Fiuczynski and drummer G. Calvin Weston.  Should be great.

I've only recently discovered the British post-rock band caroline, and I'm intrigued to hear them live.  On their self-titled, debut album, they sound so ethereal and dissolute that at times it seems like they forget they're in mid-song, allowing "uncomfortably" long stretches of near silence, or odd passages that sound like someone tapping uncooked macaroni on a metal table.  Or something.  I'm intrigued to see how they translate that ambient energy to a stage setting.

Painkiller is John Zorn at his most punk rock and confrontational - an ear-splitting assault of noise and free-jazz energy in a no-wave setting.  He doesn't seem to perform his Naked City songs much there days, but this is as close to that as he gets, except perhaps even a bit more intense.

For this year's Big Ears, guitarist Marc Ribot is reviving his Los Cubanos Postizos (the Prosthetic Cubans) project from a nearly 20-year hiatus. He first formed the band to salute (and mutate) the compositions of the Cuban bandleader Arsenio Rodríguez, whose recordings from the 1940s modernized the classic Cuban sound. 

It will be tricky to get from Ribot's set at the Mill & Mine, which ends at 10:00 pm, over to John Zorn's Cobra set at the Tennessee Theater, which begins at 10:00.  I'm going to have to assume that after four days of drone and free-jazz with little sleep and even less food, I'll have mastered the mysteries of quantum entanglement and the time-space continuum and be able to instantly teleport myself from one venue to the next, or perhaps be able to be at two separate locations at the same time.  Either solution will work, or I will have to reconcile myself to leaving Ribot just a little bit early or arriving at Cobra just a little bit late.  

And then I'm done. Then I can spend one last night at my hotel to sleep, perchance to dream, and then drive back home the next day until Big Ears 2024.

The End of the World News

NASA is monitoring an asteroid that could collide with Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046. NASA claims it has a “1 in 400” chance of hitting Earth, and even if it did, it would be more likely to strike the ocean than a highly populated land area.

The asteroid in question, 2023 DW, registers as a 1 on the Torino scale; that is, NASA does not consider it dangerous.

2023 DW is between 1/5 of and 1/160 the mass of Dimorphos, which was successfully deflected by a NASA probe last year. Its largest dimension is 154 feet, while Dimorphos was 380 feet by 580 feet. Since NASA has shown it's able to deflect larger objects, it's considered small enough not to pose a hazard. And NASA would have about a decade to basically build a copy of the DART probe and throw it at 2023 DW.

Even if the asteroid did hit Earth, its impact would be equivalent to about 185 megatons of TNT. It would basically be like a gigantic strategic nuke aimed at a random part of the planet; humanity has already detonated nuclear weapons with about 1/3 that power. Further, the atmosphere would slow it down, so it likely wouldn't come in at a high speed.

Bottom line is I’ll probably already be dead by 2046 anyway so who cares? And even if I wasn’t dead, I’d be so old that I’d probably be cheering for an asteroid to hit me anyway. And it’s more likely to miss the Earth than hit it, and even if it did hit it’s more likely to splash into the ocean than slam into land. And even though a land strike would be pretty fucked up, it wouldn't be the literal end of the world.

All the above sounds like something the dinosaur would have said to Chicken Little just before the K/T Extinction Event.

Saturday presents the toughest scheduling decisions for Big Ears this year.

The main event is at the premier venue, the majestic and lovely Tennessee Theater.  Saturday is Day One of a two-day John Zorn residency, and just like Friday at The Bijou, I could do worse than spend all day in the plush velour seats of the Tennessee. 

In fact, that's my initial plan:

12:00-1:00 - John Zorn: Nove Cantici per Francesco d’Assisi

2:30-3:30 - John Zorn: Suite for Piano

Nove Cantici per Francesco d’Assisi is the guitar trio of Bill Frisell, Julian Lage & Gyan Riley. If you're at all familiar with the genius of Frisell and Lage you already understand why I chose that set, and Gyan is the son of legendary minimalist composer Terry Riley and a great musician in his own right.  The piano in Suite for Piano will be played by Brain Marsella, backed by Jorge Roeder on bass and the great drummer Ches Smith. The only real tradeoff in picking these two sets is that it means missing Christian McBride's New Jawn (1:00-2:15), although it is technically possible to dash from the Nove Cantici to catch McBride in progress and then make it back for the start of Suite for Piano in 15 minutes. It will also mean missing Sam Gendel's Concert Group, but if I've stuck to my schedule, I will have already seen Sam twice that weekend, and, well, enough is enough. 

After Suite for Piano, the Zorn residency will present a set of a capella vocal music. While in sure - positive - Zorn will come up with something more than interesting with that format, I'm going to head up to The Mill & Mine instead for my next set.

4:45-6:00 - The Bad Plus

The Bad Plus were a popular piano trio for years, but have recently shaken things up.  The pianist left, and the remaining two artists brought in a sax player and a guitarist to replace him.  I like what I've heard from the new lineup and look forward to hearing them live.  But good lord!, what a price I'll have to pay.  Hearing The Bad Plus means not only missing Zorn's vocal ensemble, but legendary and revered jazzman Charles Lloyd (who I've always wanted to see and, let's face it, at 84, I may not have many more chances).  It also means missing William Parker's Mayan Space Station - a bracing and exciting free-jazz electric guitar trio.  It also means missing avant-garde musicians Jeff Coffin at the Old City Performing Arts Center and David Virelles at The Point. If I decide to pass on The Mill & Mine and The Bad Plus but still forego Zorn's vocal ensemble, I'll probably head to The Standard for Mayan Space Station.

Things don't get any easier after that.  The Zorn residency at The Tennessee continues with Incerto, which is basically the Suite for Piano lineup (Marsella, Roeder, and Smith) with the addition of the sublime guitarist Julien Lage.  Meanwhile, the Sun Ra Arkestra takes the stage at The Mill & Mine, and electronic musician Kali Malone has a drone set at the Old City PAC.  

If I'm at The Mill & Mine anyway for The Bad Plus, the easiest thing would be to just hang around and catch the Sun Ra Arkestra. But I've seen Sun Ra countless times since the 1970s, and Sun Ra himself has returned to the astral plane. The Arkestra is now led by the great alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, but at 98 years, that may not continue much longer.  I'll probably pass on Sun Ra because a) I've seen them so many times, and b) I don't want to blame Allen's eventual passing on my "Big Ears Curse" (many artists I've seen at the festival - Alvin Lucier, Harold Budd, Jaimie Branch, Mimi Parker - have died within a year of me seeing them at Big Ears).   

I can't think of a single reason not to see Kali Malone at the Old City PAC, but all other things being equal, just to hear guitarist Julien Lage a second time that day, I'll probably go with:

7:30-8:30 - John Zorn: Incerto 

Surprisingly, as we head toward the headliner sets, the decisions are less difficult.  The next Zorn residency set is from his Bagatelles compositions and features guitarist Mary Halvorson.  But I'll already have heard Halvorson the day before, so after Incerto, it's most likely:

9:30-10:30 - Zoh Amba

12:00-1:15 - Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul

Zoh Amba is a young tenor saxophonist who plays furious free jazz in the Albert Ayler tradition. Adigéry and Pupul are just plain fun. Easy decisions, and the only thing I'll be missing would be the Zorn/Halvorson set.  

So that's the plan for another day at Big Ears.  But who knows?, part of the joy of the festival is throwing your schedule to the wind and catching something you've never even heard of before but becomes your new favorite thing. Or at least entertains you for an hour before you get back on with your life.

Rabbit Holes and Wormholes

Astute readers will already have noticed that I've apparently lost my goddamned mind.

It probably happened back in 2020, during the covid lockdowns and the Georgia Floyd demonstrations. For solace, I started listening to vast discography of the French long-form folk-drone band, Natural Snow Buildings, and their side projects, Isengrind and TwinSisterMoon. Hours and hours of drone, while the world was falling apart outside. But I was deep down a rabbit hole, and I'm not sure my sanity has completely emerged.

Second rabbit hole: the unclassifiable (jazz? ambient? improvisational?) Australian trio, The Necks. Another vast discography, and to these guys, a 25-minute track is a short piece.

Third rabbit hole: so-called "Windmill," sprechgesang bands (Black Country New Road, Squid, Dry Cleaning, Yard Act, etc.).

Now I'm falling down rabbit holes on an almost daily basis. Phil Niblock. Elaine Rodrigue. Angus MacLise, This weekend it was Charlemagne Palestine and Robert Ashley.  

It appears that there are connections between these rabbit holes, and one artist leads me to the others.  They may be rabbit holes when I first fall in them, but once deep down inside they reveal themselves to be wormholes, leading me from one on to the next.

I fear there is no escape.  I fear I have lost my mind.  

Friday

 

In a Facebook post promoting the festival, Big Ears humbly offers the following schedule of indie folk-rock bands for one's Friday consideration:

2:00-3:!5 - Bonny Light Horseman

4:30-5:45 - Calexico

7:00-8:15 - Iron & Wine

9:30-11:00 - Andrew Bird

A fine line-up, indeed, and they're all at one seated venue, the Knoxville Civic Auditorium, so no skulking around from venue to venue.  A fine lineup, but I don't plan on seeing any of them. For the record, other than Horseman, I've seen all of these bands at least twice, if not more.

The fact that I've seen these bands before and will likely have plenty of opportunities to see them in the future is part of what makes them "not-schedule-worthy" for my Big Ears lineup.  That, and the sort of predictable (although pleasant) and mannerly nature of thier music puts them outside of what I go to Big Ears to hear.

If I had to pick a single venue for Friday (not a bad strategy, by the way), it would be the lovely Bijou Theater.  Here's the Bijou schedule for Friday:

12:30-1:45 - Gatos Do Sul (Brian Marsella)

3:00-4:00 - Mary Halvorson performing Amaryllis

4:15-5:00 - Mary Halvorson performing Bellabonna (with the Mivos Qquartet)

6:15-7:30 - Tyshawn Sorey Trio

8:45-9:45 - William Parker: In Order To Survive

11:00-12:15 - Tarbaby, featuring David Murray

A great lineup of experimental, avant-, and free jazz, and all located in a single, seated venue a short walk from my hotel.  However, spending the day at the Bijou and sitting through that entire schedule would mean missing out not only on those indie-folk bands at the Civic Center, but other worthy sets as well.

My plan, at least for now, is to start the day at the Bijou with Gatos Do Sul and Mary Halvorson. But while I consider Halvorson to be one of the most original and creative guitarists in jazz, as well as a great composer, of the two albums she's released in 2022, I prefer Amaryllis over Belladonna.   So after she's performed Amaryllis, I'm going to head in an uptown direction to hear guitarist Shane Parrish at the Jig & Reel. Parrish's discography is highly varied, covering everything from folk to punk, but I'm hoping he primarily performs pieces from his most-recent, all-instrumental Liverpool album, a great collection of innovative compositions for solo guitar.

After Parrish, it's back to the Bijou for Tyshawn Sorey. Nothing against William Parker, but after Sorey's set I'm off to the nearby Tennessee Theater, a majestic venue, to hear Pino Palladino and Blake Mills (who will be playing here in Atlanta the Sunday after their Big Ears set). I enjoyed their unclassifiable Notes With Attachments LP, but the main draw for me is another chance to hear Sam Gendel.  "Another" because I plan on seeing him with Sam Wilkes on Thursday night at Big Ears, but if I decide on Thursday that I've had quite enough Sam for one weekend, then I'll just stay at the Bijou for William Parker.

Another reason to see Palladino and Mills over Willaim Parker, though, is that due to scheduling quirks, the former lets out early enough to let me sneak in another set. So if I'm not overdosed on Sam Gendel and go to the Palladino and Mills set, then after that I'm heading to the Standard to see the debut of Marc Ribot's new organ trio, The Jazz Bins.      

The Standard isn't my least-favorite Big Ears venue (that would be The Mill & Mine), but I don't like their admission methods, which favors General Admission ticket holders over VIP.  I know how elitist that sounds, but damn it, I paid big bucks for early admission so I could be near the stage, and The Standard makes that way too difficult.  But despite my reservations, Ribot is the kind of talent that warrants the hassle.

Finally, for my Friday night headliner and as long as I'm uptown anyway, I plan on heading next to Jackson Terminal to hear Irreversible Entanglement, a "liberation-oriented, free-jazz" collective fronted by poet and spoken-word artist Moor Mother. I had wanted to see Irreversible Entanglement at a previous Big Ears (2018? 2019?) but somehow managed to miss them, and I want to make up for that loss this year.

All of these choices have tradeoffs, of course.  Not only will I miss the indie-folk bands listed at the top of this post and the latter half of the Bijou lineup, but I'll also be missing jazz artists Antonio Sanchez and Makaya McCraven, electronic musicians Grouper and Caterina Barbieri, and rapper billy woods, among many others.

These plans are all subject to change, but as it stands right now and for the reasons described above, here's my tentative lineup for Friday:

12:30-1:45 - Gatos Do Sul (Brian Marsella)

3:00-4:00 - Mary Halvorson performing Amaryllis

4:30-5:30 - Shane Parrish

6:15-7:30 - Tyshawn Sorey Trio

7:45-9:00 - Pino Palladino & Blake Mills (with Sam Gendel)

9:15-10:30 - Marc Ribot: The Jazz Bins

11:00-12:00 - Irreversible Entanglement 

That's a pretty ambitious schedule and I don't leave a lot of time between sets (when will I eat?), but hey, this is my big annual outing and I want to make the most of it.

Decisions

 

After 24 excruciating hours of decision making and "if/then" logic, I think I have come up with a tentative schedule for my first night of Big Ears 2023. Without further ado, here are my Thursday choices:

7:00 - 8:00 pm - Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes

8:00 - 10:00 pm - Phill Niblock

11:00 pm - 12:00 am - Rich Ruth

Seeing Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes means passing on Lonnie Holley, King Britt, and Allison Russell.  There are always tradeoffs.  I can justify missing Lonnie Holley as he's based here in Atlanta and I've seen him many times before (including once at an earlier Big Ears) and I'll have many chances to see him in the future. Hell, he's probably even playing additional sets at this year's Big Ears if I'm overcome with remorse about missing him. 

King Britt is a hip-hop producer best known as the live DJ for the band Digable Planets, but his output is extremely diverse and it's hard to predict just what he will be presenting at Big Ears this year. According to the festival website, he'll be joined onstage with the cellist Seth Parker Woods and the bassoonist Joy Guidry, who doubles on electronics, as the latest version of his musical project Moksha Black. This particular incarnation of Moksha Black hasn't released any music yet, so it's difficult to say what they will sound like. It will almost assuredly be interesting, but given the choice between taking a chance on King Britt and the opportunity to hear the two Sams, that particular decision was easy.

I enjoyed Allison Russell's 2021 album, Outside Child, but her set is at the Bijou Theater, a marvelous venue but on the southern side of the festival area, and the other sets that I want to see on Thursday are almost a mile away on the northern side of the area. That's a long walk, mostly uphill, for an old man, and besides, I'd prefer to see the Sams anyway. To be sure, though, if not for the temptation of the other sets, a night at the Bijou seeing Allison Russell, followed by the Joe Lavino Trio followed by the Vijay Iyer Trio, would be a perfectly pleasurable experience. But choices must be made and I've come to my final decisions (at least for now).

I only became aware of Sam Gendel's work last year, and I've been looking forward to seeing him perform.  His set with Sam Wilkes is one of the reasons I'm going to Big Ears this year and one of my justifications for shelling out the big buck on a ticket.  Where else am I going to get to see Sam Gendel? But then, just this week, I saw that on April 2, Atlanta's Terminal West will be presenting Pino Palladino & Blake Mills, "featuring Sam Gendel." I could catch Gendel at Terminal West and leave my options open at Big Ears, but April 2 is a Sunday, the final day of the festival. I'm not bugging out early on Sunday to make my Thursday scheduling easier.

The avant-garde composer Phill Niblock has two hours set aside for his Big Ears performance, the longest, I think, of any performer there this year. Niblock specializes in long-form drone pieces of monumental proportions, played at surprisingly loud volumes ("If neighbors a mile away aren't complaining, it's not loud enough"), often accompanied by his own film and video projections. His Big Ears set looks like an epic, once-in-a-lifetime event, and I don't want to miss it, but I do have one reservation.  Many performers I've seen at Big Ears - Harold Budd, Alvin Lucier, Jaimie Branch, Mimi Parker of Low - have all died within a year of seeing them at the festival, and Niblock is 89 years old.  Rationally, I know his life expectancy has nothing to do with whether or not I attend his set, but I also know that eventually, someday, he will pass (impermanence is swift) and when that happens, I will blame it on myself as part of my "Big Ears curse." But what can I do? On a long enough time scale, every performer I've ever seen on any stage will eventually die, many well after me. It just seems sometimes like my seeing them at Big Ears accelerates the process.      

Niblock's set starts at 8:00, the same time that the Sam Gendel/Saw Wilkes set ends. Assuming that the two Sams play the full 60 minutes of their set, that means I might miss the first few minutes of Niblock's performance.  But that's okay - he has 120 minutes to work with, and his drone sounds are often so static and unchanging that I probably won't miss hearing anything in the first five minutes of his show that I won't hear in the next 115 minutes. 

 

Catching Niblock will mean that I'll miss the Joe Lovano set at the Bijou Theater I already mentioned, as well as the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet (9:00 - 10:00 pm).  Orcutt's set will be a bracing performance of loud, confrontational guitar noise (right up my alley) but it's at The Standard.  I don't like The Standard because of their admission policy.  I paid the big bucks for a VIP pass to Big Ears and The Standard, like the other venues, admits VIP pass holders first. Early admission is what you pay for with the premium price.  But The Standard puts the VIP patrons into a "holding area" away from the stage before the performance begins, and then lets the General Admission crowd enter directly to the stage area.  The result is that although the VIP crowd gets to come indoors first, they wind up in the back of the venue, away from the stage. You want early admission so you can be near the stage, not to escape the weather and other outdoor elements of the Tennessee night. It's frustrating, and makes me feel ripped off. Unfortunately, many of the best jazz performers are often scheduled for The Standard.

The Thursday-night headliners come on after Niblock's set.  Some don't interest me (e.g., Los Lobos, Liturgy), and some I like (The Mountain Goats) but aren't the kind of unique "Big Ears" bands I came to see.  I would like to have seen the Exploding Star Orchestra, but they're playing quite a distance from Niblock's performance. Kali Malone will be playing a drone set on the pipe organ of St. John's Cathedral, but after two hours of Phill Niblock, I think I'll have heard enough drone for the first night of the festival.

The process of elimination leads me, then, to select Rich Ruth for my headliner performance, but that's who I really would have preferred anyway.  Like the two Sams, Ruth's set was one of the draws for me to this year's festival, and - bonus points! - it's at the same venue as Phill Niblock, so no long walk required. The 60 minutes between sets might even provide a chance to get a bite to eat. I'm really curious to hear how Ruth sounds live, as I find his records, especially his most recent, I Surviived, It's Over, quite fascinating.  Like Sam Gendel, Rich Ruth is another artist I only discovered within the past year, and I'm pleased to see that he's reached headliner status, at least for this quirky festival.

This particular schedule - Sam Gendel/Phill Niblock/Rich Ruth - was not easy to arrive at, and I could easily come up with another slate just as satisfying, like a night at The Bijou.  Or Allison Russell/Bill Frisell Trio/Exploding Star Orchestra.   But my mind's made up, at least for now, but the hard part's still ahead - three more full days of Big Ears, not just the opening night's acts.      

Preview: Big Ears 2023

The schedule for the 2023 Big Ears Festival was released today. Damn, I'm gonna have to make some painful choices between competing set times.

The problem is an embarrassment of riches. There are so many interesting sets, so many terrific artists that are hard to hear elsewhere, that it's simply impossible to see everything that interests me. Simply put, they've done too good a job of curating a line-up of cutting-edge musicians.

A similar problem happened back in the Twenty Teens with a different type of music at Portland's Music Fest NorthWest. That indie- and alternative-rock festival got so big that it reached four days in length (Thursday through Sunday) at venues scattered across the City of Portland. Since it took some amount of time to travel from venue to venue, you could only take in so many sets a night. I managed to catch most of what interested me the most, but I could have scheduled a completely different lineup made up of bands that I had missed, and it's even possible that I could have made a third unique lineup.

I would say that if there were 100 acts scheduled, at best you might be able to catch 20 of them, 25 if you were ambitious. Eventually, MFNW got so large and bloated that ticket buyers started to complain, claiming "false advertising" since they couldn't catch most of the advertised acts. That and the mere logistics of managing a festival that size led to its collapse - I think the last MFNW was in 2013 (some day-long, single-stage events sponsored by an energy-drink company used the name "MFNW," but they weren't at all the same thing). 

I count 184 separate performances in this year's Big Ears. Some of the sets are by different lineups or arrangements of the same artists - John Zorn alone has some 10 performances. If you're a Zorn fan like me and wanted to catch all 10 of those performances, it would mean you couldn't see or hear anything else that Saturday and Sunday - you'd miss out on 83 other performances, ranging from the bluegrass of banjo maestro Bela Fleck to the outer worlds sounds of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Personally, I'm going to catch most, but not all, of the Zorn sets, and take in a few other things. One artist I regrettably will miss is Washington's Mourning [A] BLKstar, although you never know, new, surprise sets are still being announced, and once I'm actually at the Festival, I tend to throw my pre-plannedschedule out the window.  So you nver know.