Microgroove

John Corbett is a music critic, record producer, and curator. He is the author of Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein, also published by Duke University Press. His writing has appeared in Downbeat, The Wire, the Chicago Reader, and numerous other publications.  He is the co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago.

• Preface: Tympanum of the Other Frog  xvAcknowledgments  xixIntroduction  1One. On The Road, Into The Cul-De-SacJoe Harriott and Bernie McGann: Flying without Ornette  15Michael Hurley: Jocko's Lament  21Mayo Thompson: Genre of One  33John Stevens: Unpopular Populists  36Peter BrÖtzmann Tentet: Freeways  40Steve Lacy: Sojourner Saxophone  49David Grubbs: Postcards from the Edge  57Voice Crack: From Nothing to Everything  67Two. Exigeneses Of Creative MusicMilford Graves: Pulseology  71Out of Nowhere: Deleuze, GrÄwe, Cadence  79Carla Bley and Steve Swallow: Feeding Quarters to the Nonstop Mental Jukebox  85Misha Mengelberg: No Simple Calculations for Life  93Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink: Natural Inbuilt Contrapuncto  109Form Follows Faction? Ethnicity and Creative Music  116Anthony Braxton: Ism vs. Is  123Anthony Braxton: Bildungsmusik-Thoughts on Composition 171  129Paul Lowens: Lo Our Lo  132Clark Coolidge: The Improvised Line  136Nathaniel Mackey: Steep Incumbencies  142Sun Ra: From the Windy City to the Omniverse-Chicago Life as a Street Priest of D.I.Y. Jazz  153Fred Anderson: The House That Fred Built  162Three. Ululations And Other Vocal StimulantsSun Ra: Queer Voice  169Jaap Blonk: Uncommon Tongue  170PJ Harvey: Mother's Tongue  179Aural Sex: The Female Orgasm in Popular Sound (coauthored with Terri Kapsalis)  182Liz Phair and Lou Barlow: On Music, Sex, TV, and Beyond  194Liz Phair and Kim Gordon: Exile in Galville?  205Koko Taylor: The Blue Queen Cooks  212Brion Gysin and Steve Lacy: Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permuted  217Four. The Horn SectionOrnette Coleman: Doing Is Believing  233Roscoe Mitchell: Citizen of Sound  244Fred Anderson and Von Freeman: Tenacity  250George Lewis: Interactive Imagination  258Mats Gustafsson: MG at Half-C  264Ken Vandermark: Six Dispatches from the Memory Bank  270Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee: Mutual Admiration Society  278Peter BrÖtzmann and Evan Parker: Bring Something to the Table  285Five. Track MarksOncology of the Record Album  297Discaholic or Vinyl Freak? Mats Gustafsson Interrogates John Corbett  301Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session  308A Very Visual Kind of Music: The Cartoon Soundtrack beyond the Screen  313R. L. Burnside and Jon Spencer: Fattening Frogs for Snake Drive  322Before and After Punk: The Comp as Teaching Tool  331Raymond Scott: Cradle of Electronica  336Six. Melodic Line and Tone ColorPeter BrÖtzmann: Graphic Equalizer  343Albert Oehlen: Bionic Painting  347Albert Oehlen: Mangy-A Conversation and a Playlist  352Christopher Wool: Impropositions-Improvisation, Dub Painting  359Christopher Wool: Into the Woods-Six Meditations on the Interdisciplinary  366Sun Ra: An Afro-Space-Jazz Imaginary-The Printed Record of El Saturn  371Seven. The Texture Of RefusalHelmut Lachenmann: HellhÖrig, or the Intricacies of Perceptiveness  379Guillermo Gregorio: Madi Music  387Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others  391Afterword: A Concise History of Music  417Grooving On: Selected Listening  423Credits  443Index  447

"Corbett has just published a terrific new anthology of his writing called Microgroove, the long-delayed follow-up to his 1994 book Extended Play. . . . There's a lot of great stuff in the new book-which went through multiple iterations over the years, scrapped and revisited several times-but in his introduction to a piece called 'Twenty-Seven Enthusiasms: A Spontaneous Listening Session,' Corbett expresses a major part of what makes his work so special. 'Show-and-tell was always my favorite part of school,' he writes, eventually explaining that 'you accumulate things not to own them, but to share them.' It's what he's done as a writer, a music presenter, and, in recent years, a gallerist, at Corbett vs. Dempsey." - Peter Margasak (Chicago Reader) "One of the more interesting features of Microgroove is the inclusion of multiple pieces on some of the artists. This allows Corbett to consider them from different angles or over time, providing a fuller picture of their art in the process. That, combined with the eclectic scope of Corbett’s interests, makes of Microgroove a rich, multifaceted survey of some of the more challenging artists of the last two decades." - Daniel Barbiero (Avant Music News) "The far-ranging scope of the 53 essays and interviews collected in these nearly 500 pages, dating from 1993 to just last year, reminds us that even within music’s commercially neglected fringes complex gradations of sub-genre exist, separating the hardcore avant-garde devotee from one who thinks they’re down because they own a copy of Space Is the Place. ... But first and foremost [Corbett] is a devotee of challenging and outrÉ sounds, and his essays are most compelling when he dives headfirst into his chronicles with a fan’s enthusiasm and verve. ...These pieces beautifully balance serious musical scholarship and critical analysis with the kind of collar-grabbing, “give-this-a-listen” excitement that draws us all to music in the first place." - Matt R. Lohr (JazzTimes) "Corbett, like the best kind of record store crate digger, pinpoints the association between acknowledged innovators and the achievements of lesser-known figures. . .. [T]he book’s key achievement is how Corbett’s psychiatrist-like probing questions elicit the most definitive and/or instructive statements about their art from certain musicians." - Ken Waxman (MusicWorks) "John Corbett is a smart guy who really, really loves music, and his intelligence and enthusiasm come through in every one of the essays and articles in this volume of his collected writings.... Anyone interested in what was happening on the cutting edge of music during the years these articles appeared needs to read this anthology of John Corbett’s writing." - Ed Hazell (ARSC Journal) "John Corbett's singular critical voice is wildly alive in his latest book, a compendium of previous writings, sober reflections, clever visuals, idiosyncratic interviews, and post-genre insights into the thriving ecology of knowledge that is the contemporary music scene. At once this is a book that takes its place alongside other distinctive voices in the pell-mell topography of recent musical criticism, from Greg Tate and Lester Bangs to Nat Hentoff and Nate Chinen, and the work of an itinerant witness bearing testimony marked by a vast respect and love for improvised musicking and musical diversity.... Microgroove is an eloquent, readable, playful testimony to the otherness of music as an allegory for creative freedom and as a generative social practice that refuses limitations." - Daniel T. Fischlin (Journal of Popular Music Studies)