Bernie Worrell 1944-2016
I saw Bernie Worrell twice, and both occasions were memorable. The first time was with Talking Heads at Hammersmith Palais in 1980: after starting the set as the basic four-piece with “Psycho Killer”, they added musicians at regular intervals until they’d become (I think) a 10-piece and were whomping out a kind of supercharged avant-funk. The second was at the Knitting Factory in NYC sometime in the mid-’90s, soon after the club had moved to Tribeca, with Third Rail, a band featuring Bill Laswell on bass guitar, James Blood Ulmer on guitar, Worrell and Amina Claudine Myers on keyboards, and — on this night, as I recall — Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums.
Like everyone, however, I’ve listened to Worrell on countless records. And the one that always sticks out is Parliament’s “Chocolate City”, which he co-wrote in 1975 with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins, and to which he contributes absolutely superlative gospel-funk piano. It’s among the most powerful records of its era, not just musically — taking that fractured funk pioneered by Sly Stone to a new level — but in its message, both tough and witty, about the potential upside of “white flight” from the cities (specifically Washington DC) to the vanilla suburbs:
“And when they come to march on ya, tell ’em to make sure they got their James Brown pass / And don’t be surprised if Ali is the White House / Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasury / Richard Pryor, Minister of Education / Stevie Wonder, Secretary of Fine Arts / And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady…”
And this, of course: “They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition, too.”
Listen to it again, and marvel at the sheer creativity involved in piecing the whole thing together. And then listen once more, this time just for the piano, the binding ingredient of the track, digging in against the guitars of Garry Shider, Eddie Hazel and others, and the trumpet and tenor of Randy and Mike Brecker, then dancing free in the last minute and a half. Hard to believe that it’s more than 40 years old.
When the Great Director pulls back to frame the ultimate long shot of Bob Dylan’s career from start to finish, it will be interesting to see what the perspective tells us about his two albums of standards associated with Frank Sinatra. My suspicion is that last year’s Shadows in the Night and the new Fallen Angels will be seen as parallel works to the pair of albums, Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong, with which, in the early 1990s, he revisited the blues.
During a public conversation at the ICA a couple of weeks ago, Brian Eno mentioned his interest in churches as potential performance spaces. After all, he pointed out, they were built with the idea of providing an environment for reflection. The truth of his words was evident in London last night, when the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen presented the music from his 2014 album Places of Worship in the Jerwood Hall at LSO St Luke’s, the deconsecrated and repurposed Anglican church built in Clerkenwell by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James in 1733.
Little Richard is said by his attorney to be “annoyed” at the rumours of his death which spread this week. He survived a heart attack in 2013 and underwent a hip replacement operation more recently, but apparently he’s otherwise fine at 83. Let’s hope so.
Somewhere in West London, there is said to be a dealer in second-hand hi-fi equipment whose face lights up every time Brian Eno walks in. Eno’s interest in speakers of all types and sizes was on show this morning in his Notting Hill studio, where a small audience gathered to listen to a 15-channel 3D mix of his new album, The Ship. After the playback, I took the photograph above in order to give a partial sense of the configuration.
They were only invited at the last minute after their compatriot Mette Henriette had been forced to withdraw from the Jazzahead! festival in Bremen, but the women of Trondheim Voices provided me with what is likely to be the most lasting musical memory from this year’s event. Based in a city famous for the open-minded young musicians produced by the jazz courses taught at its adventurous and well resourced music conservatory, they have been going, with various changes in size and personnel, since 2001. Over the past year they’ve begun to explore the possibilities of individual sound-tailoring devices created by the mixing engineer and sound designer Asle Karstad: the singers wear discreet wireless boxes on their belts, with controls enabling them to modify their own output in real time.
The beautiful Union Chapel in Islington proved to be the perfect final stop for the Necks’ short UK round of pipe organ concerts last night. They were sharing the series, titled The Secret Life of Organs, with James McVinnie, who opened the evening with two pieces by Philip Glass and two short suites by Tom Jenkinson (better known to electronica fans as Squarepusher).
It’s 30 years today since Richard Manuel took his own life in his room at the Quality Inn motel, Winter Park, Florida, a few hours after a gig. Born 42 years earlier in Stratford, Ontario, Manuel was both the owner of one of the most emotionally direct and affecting voices in the history of rock and roll and a member of what had been, by common agreement of most of the people I know, its finest band.
Applewood Road, a trio of female singer-songwriters, recorded their first album around a single microphone. Last night they went one better, clustering around an upright piano at the side of the stage in the Exmouth Market Centre to perform their encore with no amplification whatever.
