Free Jazz in Cleveland, Free Jazz as a Major Proto-punk Influence, and a Contemporary Tape Encompassing All of the History!!!!!!!!

Sounds Coming Out of the Land #6: The Blast Beat Belongs to Jazz now available, review of the latest Burning Plastic Blues Band tape, fall 2023//new harm(ony) in very active gestation

Attention: Northeast Ohio is beautiful. The leaves are starting to change, everything is bathed in a golden light, today there was a monarch butterfly in my backyard, and we finally got the fence up I ordered in May. Importantly, I found new jobs that I’m hoping will better enable me to actually write the book I relocated here to create! I’m planning to be working a lot more steadfastly on that this fall and winter, now that I am feeling settled in here and don’t constantly have way too many immediate and stressful or exhausting things demanding my attention. When I told Robert Kidney of 15-60-75 (The Numbers Band) that I was moving here to research and write this book, he was like: “but uprooting your whole life is a lot of work!” Tell me more. ;)

There’s a new episode of Sounds Coming Out of the Land, which you can download more directly here. I think it’s the best episode yet! It’s about the history of jazz in Cleveland, with specific spotlight on the sixties avant garde jazz scene here, as well as free jazz as a central common influence of all major foundational proto-punk bands. It will also drop on Echobox Radio tomorrow—10:00 Land Time and 16:00 ‘Dam Time, for those who wanna hear it as “live” as it can be as a pre-recorded show—and if you wanna tune in, I’ll also be on Bluesky Social doing live commentary related to the show from Albert Ayler’s grave. (This is my way of getting around the time limitations of broadcast radio; please come to my special lecture.) I bought some sax reeds to bring to him.

I’m planning to finally get down to the real work of my oral history of Cleveland record stores for Maggot Brain, which was due in May for the Fall 2023 issue and which I have written multiple emails about and never heard back from, so (joys of freelance writing) I will proceed writing it (??) assuming that it is still actually commissioned (??), knowing I will have literally endless possibilities for what I can do with this information as long as I get it while people are still here to provide it. It’s the same philosophy that undergirds my approach to the book, which I’m working on without getting a publishing deal first due to limitations of time and also complete boredom and furrowed exhaustion with the music journalism industry. I’m also planning to devote more of my time to applying for grants to fund working on my book and less time to freelance music writing offers. I have to focus what I am doing to accomplish an undertaking of this magnitude, particularly with the clock ticking so seriously. I’m pretty sure the next episodes of the radio show will be on the founding of Mr. Stress Blues Band and the Numbers Band and the Kent State Massacre, so we’re like…maybe done establishing background for the real focus of the show, which is really cool. There was a lot to cover in order for people to understand what comes next, which I feel is a sure signal of the richness of our legacy. There could be so much more—and there will be. I feel like I’ve grown so much through every episode of the show and it’s kind of wild to listen back through them, honestly. Thanks to everyone who has been following it and giving it praise.

One of my music writing victories recently, though, was convincing the editor of what is probably the most important outlet for coverage of electronic music online to let me review the latest tape from Noah Depew’s Burning Plastic Blues Band project, Spiritual Latency. It’s the one year anniversary of Noah captivating me so tremendously with his Peculiar Refractions in the Fullness of Time tape on Jayson Gerycz’s unifactor label and me being so frustrated by my inability to find coverage for it or even get someone else to cover it. Like, I liked it so much, when I couldn’t find coverage for it myself, I was literally pitching it to other writers to pitch to their editors. Rejection and things just not working out in pretty random ways are a really shitty and constant experience of being a working artist, but all of the best pieces I have written that I am the most proud of are pieces where I had to fight for them, or fight for my specific choices within them, and care enough to win. And when you win those struggles, it feels amazing. Burning Plastic Blues Band really kind of synthesizes the musical legacy and overall spirit of Cleveland through the past, present, and future in a way that I’m really into and feel specifically honored to be chosen to describe. And now Noah’s self-released tape is getting an “RA Recommends” spot alongside the last album I reviewed for them, which is on (the very established independent label) kranky! I scream for Cleveland.

I was telling my mom about my new jobs and my mom said, “you need your jobs now, so I hope you like them. It’s a balance with multiple jobs, but don’t give up your writing. That’s your gift.” All of the groundwork I’ve been laying all for the past year is to have the foundation secured for extended work on a project of this magnitude. I’m used to working more in like states of rapture late into the night on short-term assignments that are due soon or overdue, so it requires major changes to my process and how I work. I have to become very disciplined. But it feels really good to finally be in a place where stability is even possible in my life, as well as to be so close to the level of it that I need to truly embark on what I consider to be the real work of my life.

In other news, I’m finishing up the Mercury retrograde mixtapes. It’s been an extremely retrograde retrograde: I had to replace my car, a stereo amplifier, find new jobs…had a budding romance explode all of my patterns of codependency in my face…but I also got a lot out of this ass kicking, and I think I learned that they work in your favor if you really lean into them, rather than fighting them. I feel very strong and confident and I just went to the store and bought like every fresh vegetable, which is the most supreme mental and emotional health indicator for me. The new stereo amplifier is here—I just bought a cheap one for working on these tapes until I can get the $1200 Marantz I bought in the spring investigated properly, so hopefully it doesn’t sound like total horse shit—and I’m about to sign off here to get to work on the last of the tapes, which are studies for the fall 2023 seasonal mixtape I’m writing presently, called new harm(ony). Expect it to land in the next week or two.

I wrote a whole fall mixtape and had to rewrite it, but not entirely. The core idea is still the same, just a very different twist in how it does what it does (and what it means). It’s the conclusion of three years of this project and I’m planning to end it with a very big bang. I feel like when I face a lot of challenge and turmoil in creating the tapes and when I have to rewrite them after I think they are done, they are always stronger. Just like arguing with editors. I like the local Cleveland band, Swisher, so much that Side C has been all of Side A of their double cassette It’s Back on both versions!!!! They are kind of a secret Cleveland band like the Easter Monkeys, so it will be most of y’alls first opportunity to hear how sick they are. They are the opening band of the Cleveland Renaissance for sure. The turning point in this mixtape was when I changed the direction it went in entirely with the addition of “Get Thy Bearings” by Donovan, a track I am only familiar with because of a track list to a mixtape Jim Jones sent Pere Ubu on tour in 1990 then sent to me many moons ago by Allen Ravenstine…and that seems very fitting with being truly ready to settle into this work.

I have to go work on tapes before bed. Thanks for reading this if you did.

Yours in music,

EMD