Label: Skirl Records
Catalog#: Skirl CD 002
Format: CD, Album
Country: US
Released: 2006
DISCOGS
1 Every Man To His Own Taste 6:31
2 Peace Father 4:36
3 I Know Nothing About It 8:52
4 Nun 5:54
5 It Is Almost Sacred 3:09
6 Come To Jesus 7:24
7 My Ears Are Bent 8:21
Ted Reichman - piano, electronics, guitar, bass, percussion, pump organ
Mary Halvorson - electric guitar
John Hollenbeck - drums
There is almost no accordion on My Ears Are Bent. Can you find the accordion? My Ears Are Bent is a New York record in the sense that it was partially inspired by musical traditions that I associate with New York for various, mostly non-literal, reasons: stride piano, the softer side of free jazz, downtown no-wave improvisation, dub, hip-hop. I originally named names: Nat Cole, Big Maceo, Paul Bley, DNA, Augustus Pablo. But that’s kind of gauche, right? It‘s also a New York record in the more literal sense that after a few years of somewhat nomadic existence, I was once again living in New York full-time and was re-encountering the people, places, literature, and history of the city. Marc Ribot once told me that living in the East Village was like “living in a personal mythology.” I agree. Which is one of the reasons why I left Manhattan and settled in Brooklyn, a place where one can patch together one’s own personal mythology, rather than one worn by previous generations of bohemia. That’s probably not really true on any level, but it felt nice to write it. Anyway, from the 1920’s until the 1960’s, a much better writer than me named Joseph Mitchell wrote many excellent newspaper and magazine articles on New York City and other related topics, some of which are collected in a book called “My Ears Are Bent.” It was originally published in 1938, and reissued in September 2001. Nobody I know seems to have read it, but it contains many nicely hewn observations of this city. I don’t think the music on this record has very much to do with the stories of Joseph Mitchell, except for the fact that he documented his experience of this teeming, lonely, moronic, brilliant, exalted, abject, youthful, ancient, cockeyed, sincere, sanctified, hell-bent city and in my own way, I attempted to do so as well. - Ted Reichman ▲
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