I accidentally discovered Derek Bailey twice. The first time was in the late 90’s, when a fellow musician told me I should drum more like Paul Wertico. Today I know better than to listen to stupid, even potentially devastating advice such as this, but at the time, as I had never heard of Paul Wertico before, I sheepishly went out and bought some of his albums. By “some,” I mean ten or so. Possibly because of the circumstances under which I was coerced into listening to him, I found Paul’s drumming to be excruciatingly uninspiring. He played on a lot of tedious albums with the soulless guitarist Pat Metheny. Of all the albums I bought, the only one I didn’t almost immediately sell back was a creepy and seemingly anarchic album that I bought not only because Paul Wertico was on it, but also because it was an incredibly cheap 3 disc set that had a Sherlock Holmes theme. The Sign of 4 could be considered a double duet, with Pat Metheny and percussionist Gregg Bendian in one channel and guitarist Derek Bailey and Paul Wertico in the other. Paul occasionally uses egg beaters on it, and that inspiration (egg beaters sound cool!) made the brief study of him worth it, even if it was the only thing I stole/learned from him. The Sign of 4 recordings are bizarre and obnoxious, and I’ll often play them on Halloween to freak out the trick-or-treaters (in honor of one of my earliest memories of refusing to ask for candy at a house because creepy music was emanating from it).
Approximately two years later, shortly after I had moved to the San Francisco bay area, I was rifling through the “experimental” section at Amoeba Music and discovered an album with an intriguingly sparse cover of a naked man leaning on a wall with the title Music and Dance. The name of the artist mentioned on the spine, Derek Bailey, sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
I immediately put Music and Dance in my car’s CD player (actually a discman hooked into the cassette deck) and listened to it as I drove home. Suddenly, I was having an experience that I’ve had while driving a couple times before, such as when returning from the movie theatre after watching The Matrix and Fight Club, whereby everything becomes blurry, surreal and confused. My entire psyche was being disoriented by this acoustic guitar solo. But it wasn’t a solo, it was a duet with the butoh influenced dancer Min Tanaka, and his presence is very much felt on the audio recording. The disc consists of two live performances inside an abandoned blacksmith forge with a glass roof, and a brief downpour occurs in the middle of the first one. Derek’s interaction with the downpour is probably the most sublime thing I have ever heard.
My life’s trajectory has been altered a few times by chance encounters such as these; accidental discoveries which can never be predicted. There is no way to describe Derek Bailey; one can only listen to his music. He was an absolute master at finding the perfect balance between listening to his environment and ignoring it while playing. Many of his recordings (he was a co-founder, along with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker and Michael Walters, of the Incus record label, which has put out arguably the greatest European music of the twentieth century) are in a duo format, and he preferred spontaneous meetings with truly improvised playing to rehearsed groups. He was an uncompromising explorer of microtones, harmonics, extended technique and discontinuity. He occasionally used sparse electronic effects, such as running a guitar through two speakers and using a volume pedal for swells, and occasionally experimented with “prepared” guitars, affecting the sound of the guitar with tools such as chains and paper clips, but I am partial to him simply playing a hollow-body electric or acoustic guitar with his bare hands or a pick. Derek also started the highly influential improvisational collective Company and wrote an enlightening book entitled Improvisation.
Today, when asked about my influences, I always mention Derek Bailey first, and sometimes exclusively. For a time, my principal goal in playing music was the hope that one day I would be able to play with Derek Bailey. I was crushed when he died on Christmas Day of 2005.
8 comments:
Here's a good collection of Derek's performances. Once in a while, I find some splendid entries on MySpace. Derek was a music innovator; a master of the polytonal guitar.
A number of years ago, I reviewed a CD that he made with Carlos Bechegas, who lives in Portugal. That review may still be posted on the internet, somewhere.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=300702526
cool, thanks for that. this myspace account acts as a good introduction, but remember, derek bailey actively recorded for 40 years with hundreds of musicians, so this is hardly all-encompassing.
in my posts, i try to find a balance between informing and encouring readers to discover for themselves. specifically, on this post, i decided against compiling a list of derek bailey albums i like (I own about 25). it's better for others to discover him for themselves over time than accept my or any one else's recommendations as definitive.
You're welcome. I can't speak to the poster's intentions, but that documentary short featuring Derek's music is highly instructive; the straight dope, in the composer/performer's own words.
We're losing too many of these senior-level musicians. I used to scramble out to shows here, once upon a time.
in my previous comment, i typed a fragment from an internal dialogue which i now regret. i was not intending to comment on the myspace posters intentions, simply explicating my own and choosing a poor time to do so, as it was entirely irrelevent to everything.
i haven't watched the documentary but will do so shortly....
okay yeah, a couple brilliant statements in that documentary, well insofar as they echo my own, ha ha.
first, i am firmly interested in PLAYING, and not at all interested in performing or (he doesn't say this part) practicing.
second, improvisations are interesting not necessarily because of the resultant music but for the process of the interactions themselves.
Exactly! The processes are very important. Compare Derek's work with someone like Chick Corea. Now, Chick is someone I can respect; a veteran of multiple scenes, across several decades.
Earlier, I was listening to one of Chick's newer trio pieces, which is in a complex, rhumba style; two-beat, with an emphasis on eight-note lines.
The other members of the trio were ticking right along with the piano, with slick, surgical precision. This is the sort of music that might be heard at places like Yoshi's.
However, I got the sense that if any of these detailed rhythms were missed, someone wouild bring the proceedings to a grinding halt. Of course, this is supposition on my part.
By way of contrast, I don't think Derek would have haggled over these things. It wouldn't matter if something got riffed out that sounded jagged or dissonant. His forms exist to serve the musical content. Does any of that make sense?
Perhaps there's a tendency to lose track of this "ugly beauty", for lack of a better term. Bartok's music is full of extreme dissonance and contrasting, atmospheric effects. Which is why I can continue to work on his scores after so many years.
yeah, it's a good example of intent. are you hoping to entertain an audience through the implementation of hypnotic distraction or explore the potentials of musical creativity and interaction?
those two interests will yield very different results. it's not just about ability- chick corea is an extremely adept improvisor and musical explorere when he wants to be and derek bailey recorded some superbly precise interpretations of overtly entertaining traditional european classical works.
off topic re: that infamous rehearsal group at San Jose State, circa 2001
I kid you not -- one evening, a bona fide surf guitarist sat in with the group; Dick Dale meets Cecil Taylor. The proceedings were taped on the leader's micro-cassette recorder.
I pray that master tape never sees the light of day.
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