Recorded live at Vancouver Community College, May 2, 2012.

Dave Chokroun - double bass
John Mutter - guitar
Kevin Romain - drums
Jonathon Wilcke - alto sax
Darren Williams - tenor sax, bassoon

Programme notes by Dave Chokroun, Jonathon Wilcke, and Darren Williams:

Three Brecht songs (Hanns Eisler)
Bertolt Brecht is best known for his work with composer Kurt Weill; Hanns Eisler was his other main collaborator. “Als ich dich in meinem Leib trug” is a narrative by the mother of a soldier. “We are the scum of the earth” is an anthem from the 1930 agitprop play The Measures Taken. “On Suicide” condenses the despair of poverty and fascism into barely a minute. Brecht and Eisler’s work was banned by the Nazi regime in 1933; both men fled Germany and eventually continued their collaboration in the United States. After being blacklisted during the post-war Red Scare, they both emigrated to East Germany. (DC)

Snow from Canada
In 2005, Vancouver mining company Placer Dome was named in legal action by Phillipine authorities over environmental damage to the island of Marinduque. An Oxfam report describes toxic metal tailings from the Marcopper mine site becoming airborne and blowing onto fields, housing, and into wells; the contamination was dubbed “snow from Canada” by local residents. Placer Dome is now part of Toronto’s Barrick Gold. (www.miningwatch.ca) (DC)

Chiasma (Yosuke Yamashita)
Pianist-composer Yamashita was one of Japan’s first wave of free jazz and improv musicians. “Chiasma” appears on an awesome 1976 live album of the same title with Akira Sakata (alto sax) and Takeo Moriyama (drums). The same trio makes a pivotal appearance in Koji Wakamatsu’s film Ecstacy of the Angels (1972), just before the bombs go off. (DC)

Splitting Maul
Named for a type of axe used in splitting wood. Splitting mauls are excellent for cutting opposition down to size, enabling their use for fuel. (DW)

Absorption / Nonabsorption
This is how we enter the social sphere: open, clean-slated, curious, and spongy, ready to take in everything around us, to absorb and be absorbed by the field of values programming our every interaction. And then the inevitable disgust response of the person who’s had enough: “This is crap! What a bunch of garbage! Where did this shit come from?” that leads to dissidence, deflection, recalcitrance, and the stubborn non-absorption that results from being utterly fed up. (JW)

Doot Doot Doody Doot Doo Doo (It’s Jazz)
Don’t worry - this is jazz! And you’ve almost made it to the intermission! (DC)

Choke Pear
Named for a medieval torture device that is indeed pear-shaped. The “pear” would be inserted into the mouth (or other orifice) of the unfortunate victim and then the pear would be slowly expanded, its outer longitudinal segments cranked outwards. (DW)

Orientalism Dance
Imagine the trappings of a fine Japanese restaurant in New York City circa 1977. Sharing a table on the floor with you are Alvy Singer and Annie Hall, who are too engrossed in the obsessive-compulsive strains of their conversation to notice the authenticity of the decor around them: paper screens, tatami floors, the waitresses clad in their fine kimonos waiting outside the door of the private rooms on their knees, and the gentle plucking of the shamisen. Suddenly, the shamisen morphs into a banjo and a nebbishy, vaudevillian opening musical statement throws the American patrons into a fit of eclectic ragtime dancing on the table tops in stocking feet. Not even the calming notes of the Iwato Scale disrupting the frenetic melody can calm their frenzy! Each shuffle-step exclaims “Look at us now! Look at us enjoying AND participating in a culture! HOW much is the bill again? For RAW fish!!!????” Yay culture! (JW)

The Hand Sanitizer Commercial
Just remember, anti-bacterial soap breeds superbugs. (DC)

Whistleblower Syndrome, Part 1
A famous and possibly true story about Henry Thoreau says that he refused to pay a poll tax in protest against the Mexican War. As a result, he spent a night in jail, where he was visited by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Henry, why are you here?” Emerson asked. Thoreau, of course, replied: “Why are you not here?” (DC)

The Magnificent Realtors
The melody here is an ill-advised mashup of Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home” and Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven. What happens when we combine the music of dispossession with an anthem for defending your property? Are the bandits really just out-of-control capitalists? Is development frenzy turning urban Vancouver into Marlboro country? This tune will answer all these questions and more! (DC)

Machine Gun (Peter Brötzmann)
Robots on Fire has a long history with this piece. Composed in 1968, “Machine Gun” is emblematic of all the conflicts of that year as an anti-war piece, as protest music of the jazz world, and as art manifesto. Brötzmann’s original session remains one of the most powerful and aggressive musical statements on record. I first heard this in the 1990s and had to share it with the loudest tenor player in school; we’ve been doomed ever since. (DC)