Anthony Braxton vs. Vaginal Itch

No.174 – this is the two-hour episode I ran from 9 to 11pm on June 13, immediately after No.173 below. Zappa tracks were from Make A Jazz Noise Here. Anthony Braxton's ersatzi cosmic profundity was delicately balanced with Shrimp's cunt-in-your-face girl-group profanity.

Part 1

1. Mister Pink – Glueleg
2. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
3. Lot Lizard – Shrimp
4. Composition No.173 (Opening Music – Introduction) – Anthony Braxton
5. Wiped Out – Off!
6. I Saw You Joja – Glueleg

Part 2

1. One Thousand Hands – Tangiers
2. Composition No.173 (Scene One – Interlude Duo) – Anthony Braxton
3. I Got News For You – Off!
4. Black Napkins – Frank Zappa
5. Meditation I – Pericardium

Part 3

1. Crackwhore – Shrimp
2. Composition No.173 (Scene Two (A) – Interlude Ensemble) – Anthony Braxton
3. Show Me On The Doll – Shrimp
4. Big Swifty – Frank Zappa

Part 4

1. Bitchslut – Shrimp
2. Composition No.173 (Scene Two (B)) – Anthony Braxton
3. Vaginal Itch – Shrimp
4. King Kong – Frank Zappa
5. King Kong Brigade – Off!
6. Composition No.173 (Closing Music) – Anthony Braxton

Notes made during Braxton’s “Opening Music” from Comp.173: See-saw season wrenches slack ink from free-fall stone position, jagged effort affect slantwise receding intricate amplitude oiling artifact, pen-poise upfront for calamitous telling. Toil, boil, bother, stagger, wither, fail. Bells climb down climb up folded towers, moaning, moon and might, solicitous scramble among cheese-traps, how they flounder. They found you too in there, at spun landing flung vertigo measure compiling uniform direction measureless flailing. But I am absent, perplexed in mock abyssinia but floating chaotic squirm, bleeding rapid scripture assembly, in voluntary compact bible-contraption for inventing inverted utility, unscreened at solar entry but grit-soaked & settling for sentimental compilation as moist oyster rolling in rich silt.

Notes made during Braxton’s Scene One from Comp.173: They are trying to find sonic solutions, sonic utility. I first thot they were in a utopic communal space trying to find solutions to some cozmik puzzle using sonic structures ... The sinister thing happens about 7 minutes in, and now they seem confined, paranoid, trying to pick a sonic lock, a way out of their audio prison. The environment they are in is forcing them to act this way – the voices are enacting Braxton’s thot process in composing, Braxton’s compositional thots are dramatized – and are thus revealed as having far-reaching historical significance, his music is a model of political planning, a science fiction movie set in the present-day psyche, society shrunken to a neurological anti-opera.

Notes made during Braxton’s Scene Two (A) from Comp.173: The embellishments become more elaborate as it goes, more urgent, more ridiculous, break decorum. As the predicament becomes seriouser, the search for solutions gets rediculouser. Further & further committed to the lengthening of their descensions, do they falter in their comments? Never. Lost in the swirl? No, there is a force that brings things back to the central axis – the sound is raining on us every day, swirls the experience into the wall of the experience. Scientists & engineers, or prisoners? I can’t decide, and is there a difference in Braxton’s universe?

Notes made during Braxton’s Scene Two (B) from Comp.173: Nonsensical scatting with horns with technical description, astronomers describing a star from the inside, an updated paradiso, sort of, minus the moralism, upped the vortex contemplation. Then cosmic awareness segues into Shrimp’s Vaginal Itch ...