heavenly breakfast

Bloomsday
A Performer's Objective Is To Put Everyone To Sleep
You Never Want To Tell People You're A Scent
Le Petomane
Detritus or Treasures
Death Pledge
Glenn's Conducting

Rich West, drums, accordion, pieces
Dan Krimm, electric bass
Bruce Friedman, trumpet
Emily Beezhold, electric piano, korg ms2000
Lynn Johnston, saxophones, clarinets

All compositions by Rich West, 2006 richwest recordings (bmi)

Design and Layout by Jeremy Drake
Recorded April 18th and November 27th, 2004
Mixed March 24th, June 2nd, and June 10th, 2005
Mastered August 2nd, 2005
All at Catasonic Studios by Mark Wheaton

"Heavenly Breakfast is a novel/autobio by Samuel Delany about communal living but it reminded me about how happy I was when I would visit my friends' cooperatives in Santa Cruz. The food was vegetarian and excellent. The meal would cost a dollar and I'd help either in the kitchen or at the dining table. And then the circular massages. It definitely takes a certain type of person to be involved in those things on a day-to-day basis.

I was not one of them."

BLOOMSDAY
I could say I based the form of this tune on the structure of James Joyce's book Ulysses - but I didn't. It's more about getting progressively more wasted on an eventful Bloomsday (June 16th) on the UC Santa Cruz campus in 1984. I came to a classroom full of joyous Ulysses fans drinking Irish whisky, enjoying another full-length all-night reading of the tome. Brendan, in his tenth year at the university as an undergrad, was trying to finally finish a B.A. in philosophy, preferably before a heroin overdose. He was sitting front and center, absorbed. He got up and read for about a page.

A PERFORMER'S OBJECTIVE IS TO PUT EVERYONE TO SLEEP
"Come to my gig," I tell my girlfriend. "You can take a nap."

YOU NEVER WANT TO TELL PEOPLE YOU'RE A SCENT
Right?

LE PETOMANE
I've thought of dedicating a whole cd to him. I would be the stand-in for the famous actor who would play him in the full-length movie. I'd need a voice-over, though, as I'm really an unpracticed amateur. Did you know I was once the model for a Butthole Surfers concert promo poster? Taken by Steve Callis, the police were looking for the photographer and producers who put out this smut, this photo of a woman's groin. Ah, pride.

DETRITUS OR TREASURES
In chipping away, a fantastic and unfortunate thing happened. A 20,000-year old fossilized bug came loose as Mr. Big was digging. It lodged in his corneal area. A trip to the hospital and some tweezers later, his eye was red for several weeks.

DEATH PLEDGE
See the Latin word "mortgage."

GLENN'S CONDUCTING
There was a great series at the Kabuki Theatre in San Francisco in 1983 on Fridays. The first one I went to was Glenn Branca when he had his big guitar group with the sympathetic vibration string instruments and the drummer played an anvil. You really couldn't hear those sounds on recordings, not the way he intended anyway. I noticed that if you mixed peach brandy and sat in the front row you'd have involuntary regurgitations. It was LOUD, and freaky because of all those sympathetic vibration highs. Mind-blowing, psychedelic, and he had a program so you could read about it in very academic language. Right?

From from "All About Jazz" by Rex Butters, August 2006--

"Drummer/accordionist Rich West returns for a second pfMENTUM release, Heavenly Breakfast. This dangerous quintet includes Emily Beezhold's keyboards, Bruce Friedman on trumpet, Dan Krimm, electric bass, and reed renegade Lynn Johnston. West's compositions lend themselves well to the ambitextural potential of this electro acoustic ensemble, providing both points of departure and reasonably safe landings.

Beezhold shimmers electric piano on the opener, "Bloomsday," with Friedman's trumptet circling Johnston's sax with a late '60s Blue Note looseness. Krimm steps up with his bass set on "Funk," West beat busy, fanning the flame. Friedman offers crisp variations. Combining some old time phrasing with multiphonics, Johnston's veers between Webster and Brötsmann. "A Performer's Objective Is to Put Everyone to Sleep" flies in on Beezhold's space sounds and West's light varied percussion, with the other players orbiting. Krimm restores brief order, Johnston switches from Bb to bass clarinet, and West tickles surfaces on his drum kit. Friedman sounds an understated sanity, as Johnston pushes his reed into edgy territory.

"Le Petomane" begins appropriately with a long release of wind. Friedman introduces a charming figure that echoes through the ensemble. A frenzied group improv ends with throbbing flatulent synthesizer tone, then with West tumbling the toms, Johnston blows wavering multiphonic bubbles on bass clarinet. Beginning with an ascending phrase swarmed by bass clarinet, "Detritus or Treasure" works into rolling rhythm section groove with Beezhold's fat electric piano clearing the path. West's accordion fanfares "Glenn's Conducting." Pitched electric wind blows from the synth, and minimalist sounds emerge. Johnston burns blue on clarinet with delicate support from Beezhold, then a building momentum takes it home.

Heavenly Breakfast offers a menu guaranteed to pop your eyes and ears open, especially if heard upon waking before coffee."

from Touching Extremes--

"Lively, ironic, nicely executed music from a quintet including leader Rich West (drums, accordion), Bruce Friedman (trumpet), Lynn Johnston (sax, clarinet), Emily Beezhold (electric piano, Korg MS 2000 synthesizer) and Dan Krimm (electric bass). One expects a cross of technical dexterity and sarcasm just by reading West's comments about the tracks, not to mention titles such as "A performer's objective is to put everyone to sleep" or "Le petomane".

But the simple, yet very effective Stravinsky-tinged themes surrounded by gruelling improvisational sketches, the quest for non-conventional rhythmic patterns in constant superimposition, the pensive piano chords adding a sort of nostalgic aura to the furious exchanges of epithets between Friedman and Johnston, all of the above is serious musicianship, not some kind of joke for dilettantes. Without jumping the fences of acceptable complexity, West's compositions offer intelligent wit in abundant doses, with a few welcome pinches of boisterous fun that, like the carved smile in a Halloween pumpkin, sounds wickedly malicious in its just apparent ingenuity."

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