12/5/17

The first Balkan Brass Band I ever encountered

Long ago, around 1991 or so, I was in my most obsessive "must learn everything about everything" stage and on the constant lookout looking for music to play on my radio show. A friend handed me a cassette he had made from another cassette that another friend had brought back from Germany. Yeah, that was how it was back in the Dark Days prior to the Internet and easy access to anything. If you wanted to learn anything other than what was fed you you really had to get your hands dirty and work hard to uncover gems at all.

What he gave me was this dub of a dub of famed Serbian trumpeter Svetozar Lazović 

Found the original eventually
 with no song titles or any info, just the cassette with a strange name on it. Needless to say, I was entranced. Hadn't heard anything remotely like it and as a life long brass bandsman I had heard plenty up to that point, Mexican Banda on the radio and NOLA street bands on the corner to name but a few. But this was just a revelation. It lead to basically everything else I ever discovered since.

Then just this week I find this amazing live recording from Amsterdam in 1989 where they are pretty much playing down the same tunes as was on my battered cassette (which I passed along to the next soon to be fan.) There's the Eastern Orthodox hymn at the start into the standard showpiece "Ciocarlia." Next jumping into a set of the lively "kolos" that earned him and his band several "Golden Trumpet" awards at the prestigious Guca Festival, basically a mark of the best in all Serbia. And unlike many of the bands popular with Western fans,  Lazović  is just playing the standard ethnically Serbian material, devoid of the sexy "coceks" of the Rromani bands. This live recording captures what I've been told is the standard of their form, in it's best presentation. Along with the awesome sound the brass is making, I've always been taken by the strong clear vocals, by who I am not sure, with the rest of the band in full chorus behind him. Of note towards the end of the concert is a tune called "Mesciccina," Not the highly stylized version made famous by soundtrack producer Goran Bregovic, but he original and much much different.

Note the traditional garb

By soaking in these tunes for literally years, I was in a good position to join the famed Boban Markovic Band onstage as second bass tuba when Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars toured with them. It came in REALLY handy when we played in Chicago and were met with a huge audience of Serbian ex-pats who weren't really interested in the Rromani tunes and Boban played an hour long set of kolos for the drunken Serbs (who threw literally thousands of one dollar bills at us as the danced around the hall.) I tag teamed the tuba with my teacher Sascha Alisinov, tapping in and out when we each needed a break. 


If anyone wants to embark on the rough journey of imitating Rromani Brass traditions, I'd humbly recommend to start here and master the Serbian form, which is the basis to the more lively and sexy Rromani bands like Boban. I posit it would be like trying to learn Black American music as starting at Ornette Coleman, ignoring Ellington and Charley Patton, devoid of the context in which the music was created and how it lives as an expanding and progressive tradition to the community who regards it as it's own soundtrack. It's a vibrant tradition carried on today by Lazović's son Dragan and Boban's son Marko.  What they do today would make little sense if you hadn't understood where they came from and what it's function is. Well, that's my opinion for what its worth. You're welcome to do as you like, ultimately.


But for any casual listener I feel you would be rewarded by attending to these 45 minutes:


For reference, American Serbs dancing the kolo:

8/8/17

Rubin's Rotator Recovery Fundraising Sale!


Hello friends!

So you might have heard that I had to have major shoulder surgery back in May. Good news is that my surgeon says he's happy with my progress and only only now am I cleared for PT. However he reckons I'll be unable to perform until at least November. That means I haven't had an income for months now and won't see one for a bit! I have an understanding landlord and social services to kept me fed, but the bills are stacking up and I need to hustle!


So as a fundraiser, here's a 3 CD set of my most recent material, 2011-2016. I'm very proud of these releases and I'd love for you to have one. I'm including a poster of Howard Rains controversial cover art for "Southern Discomfort," along with full liner notes. These are lovingly handmade discs, each individual and unique. (If you kick another $10, I'll include a copy of the Bad Livers UK only release 12" gold vinyl EP.) Only a limited number available


I've got auctions up on eBay including my collection of Flaming Lips memorabilia dating 1982-84 and a few selected Bad Livers items as well.


If the recovery goes well, I plan on a a trip up to the Seattle area, so if you have or know of a house concert or venue between NOLA and there, please do be in touch!


Thanks again. I appreciate you.


Simply send $25 PayPal for the 3 Cd's and Poster. $35 to add the Bad Livers EP
PayPal address: texasrubinchik@gmail.com

Be sure to include your address!!

1/21/17

OK. So here we are.
There's confusion, sadness and even despair going around and I get it. Some of us are old enough who remember what the "back" in taking the country to actually means and its not pretty. In fact, it represents all that my generation, and marginalized generations before, had railed against our whole lives. And for 8 years we were sure we would enter our dotage having had done our job by pushing the monolith of democracy every so slightly to Justice. That our efforts were amazingly becoming meaningful and productive. Alas, as the Sages remind us healing the World, Tikkun Olam, is a daily struggle and many of us look out today with a despondency I can scarcely describe.
What to do? I want you to do me a favor, try this. Seek out local artists, poets, writers, dancers, craftspeople and journey people, your neighbors and by extension your community. Find them and do what you can make them part of your everyday life. No need to look far, you'll find them. Find your tribe in other words. Not in the ether, on these false platforms which only trick the mind into believing things to be real. Go out and touch the real. Make the real. Put some art on your wall made by a face you know. Eat food from your local garden down at the local farmers market. Make a connection, in that place where art, science and culture all intersect. It's VITALLY important that we look to each other now, and realize as someone noted 8 years ago, you are the people you've been waiting for.
Cover art by Howard Rains
Here's the link to donate my project, which I'm very proud of. But be sure and donate to somebody's efforts either by simply buying what they make or hiring them to do what they do. We'll only progress if we support each other, not by tweets and posts, but by our budget choices. Resist and Peace, MR

*(I've been advised by my mental health professionals to avoid all social media and I'm following their advice. No joke and I'll bet you can relate.)

1/9/17

Tenor banjo master Eddie Davis teaches you all he knows

He just sits there in front of his camera at his little NYC apartment and regularly plays down his versions of the great American Songbook, sharing it for free and to all.

Want to know how a song goes? Check in with Eddy as he's heard almost every classic recording and filtered it thorough his years of playing to give us all this gift. 

Subscribe and be enlightened.



More info on Mr. Davis can be found here.