In counter-counterculture films of the ’40s and ’50s, staunchy adults with pasted looks of worry and fear would lecture a colorful crowd from their black-and-white pulpit. They would give the camera a death gaze, square their jaws, and preach the immorality of sex, drugs, and bebop. They would chastise Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. They would shun the melting pot culture of Puritanical idealism blending with immigrant and alien influences. From soundstages firmly rooted in the ideals they were raging against, they would dare scare the youth away from anything remotely different or pleasurable. What hell we would cause if our youth were to wear the clothes they wanted, experience the life they needed, and dabble in arts of creation. It was all enveloped in a smokescreen, one that those pompous windbags would bargain was the beginning of a life of drugs, promiscuous sex, and meaninglessness.
In the new counter-counterculture, we are met with similar obstacles to melding art with fun. No one is asking to perpetuate an America built on sloth, greed, and lust amidst our youth, but even the most straight and narrow of us all can just flip on the TV, grab a newspaper, or check a blog and see that those once-pious figures are engaging in activities that propagate the very negatives they have deemed morally abject. Any fan of C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) or Paul Flaherty could tell you that neither looks the part of a modern counterculturalist, and, frankly, neither really strives to achieve the lofty title tied therein. But to guess who could lay down the soundtrack of a Reefer Madness: Redux better than Yeh and Flaherty would prove futile; New York Nuts and Boston Beans is as maddening as it gets.
Squalls of violin strings and saxophone burst from the silicone grooves of the duo's latest live incantations. During the breadth of five untitled tracks, Yeh and Flaherty dissect and destroy their instruments of choice, throwing in a bit of frazzled gibberish from the lips and tongue of Yeh, spewing forth nothingness like the good-boy-turned-bad from the anti-drug filmstrips that stoners now laugh at with their glazed glee. Capturing the crazed soundtracks of old and combining it with modern bustling cityscapes, New York Nuts and Boston Beans transcends the temporal while simultaneously thriving contextually.
The album's first two tracks find Yeh and Flaherty performing live as a duo in — where else — Brooklyn, New York. The seemingly impromptu jams are scatterbrained, flittering from one garbled noise to the next. It feels like a hot summer evening as you pass Greenwich jazz clubs in a hurry to find your hook-up and the nearest tall, cool drink. Late August's heat is relentless, and so too is Yeh and Flaherty's assault on violin and sax. Trumpeter Greg Kelley (nmperign) joins the fray during the album's final three tracks, recorded in Boston. Flaherty and Kelley draw from the mellow side of frenzy, choosing longer, more controlled stanzas and drawn-out brass drones to complement the vocal stylings and violin screeches from Yeh. These pieces are composed, setting aside the spur-of-the-moment for bits and pieces of actual jazz composition
While it would have been more effective if each live setting claimed a side, both concerts contrast each other very well and borrow similar elements considering the players at hand; the Brooklyn pieces mimic the hustle and din of the city that never sleeps, while the Boston performance with Greg Kelley captures the old world flair of a city that has seen it all and now just wants to live out its days in peace. All that is missing are zoot suits, flappers, and maniacal grins from a lost stoner generation.
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More about: C. Spencer Yeh / Paul Flaherty / Greg Kelley
