Everyone's a critic....

Literally, according to Brian Raftery of Idolator.com, in an NPR story by Jacob Ganz from January 5 with the headline "Voice Music Poll Undermined by Internet":

"I feel like it makes a little more sense for an online property to be doing this," says Brian Raftery, an editor of Idolator.com, a blog in the Gawker media network. In November, Idolator announced a critics poll of its own, to be called Jackin' Pop. Raftery and his co-editor Maura Johnston -- like many bloggers -- both work from home. In a Manhattan cafe, just a dozen blocks away from The Village Voice offices where Harvilla will put together Pazz and Jop, Raftery argues that the web has changed the very nature of music criticism.

"I think right now the world of music criticism -- whether it's blogs or alt weeklies or newspapers putting their stuff online for free everyday -- the day to day, hour to hour metabolism of talking about music is only found on the Internet," Raftery says."

Of course the Village Voice poll referenced in the headline is Pazz and Jop, long the pet project of Robert Christgau, fired from the Voice after the paper changed owners. The article continues:

"Robert Christgau, who says he will vote in both polls this year, has been a witness to that change. He's seen the critical establishment grow from just a few dozen writers into a new world where everyone with an Internet connection can sample the music of the day and post an opinion on it. When everyone's a critic, what's the point of a critics' poll?

"Has the Internet made the rationalization of critical opinion easier? Not in my opinion. I don't think so. Because there's simply too much for anybody to digest. You need gatekeepers," Christgau says."

So on the one hand you have Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism" and on the other you have Christgau's "rationalization of critical opinion." (We'll ignore the "gatekeeper" comment.)

Never mind that the edge had long dulled for the Pazz and Jop poll, long before Al Gore invented that new fangled interweb thang. (Admittedly, last year's Pazz and Jop, topped by Kanye West, had a few curveballs, including both Astor Piazzolla and the Pat Metheny/Ornette Coleman reissue Song X topping Shakira's Oral Fixation Vol. 2.) Never mind also that Idolator's poll, oddly titled Jackin' Pop, is as dull and predictable as music polls in general are these days. If Jackin' Pop is supposed to represent some sort of blogger revolution, it's a dismal failure. The greatest thing about the music blog universe is the proliferation of unusual, outre, under-distributed and underground music. The Jackin' Pop poll reads pretty much exactly as one would expect any major media poll to read. (Although it is interesting to disaggregate Jackin' Pop's demographic, perhaps one very effective tool at the "rationalization" of critical opinion that doesn't require a "gatekeeper," just a pull down menu. For example, by age, the under 30 voters have Clipse, Joanna Newsome and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 albums, the over 40 voters pile it on for Dylan, Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, etc. Cross reference at a glance to media outlet: newspaper critics? There's Dylan and the Dixie Chicks again (admittedly with Clipse and Ghostface Killah in the top 5 as well). Alt.weeklies? TV on the Radio, baby. Finally, blogs? Almost identical to the top 5 albums selected by writers under 30. Draw what conclusions you will).

The point is that Christgau has a point. There is too much to digest, even poking around simply in the tiny internet realms of creative improvised and composed music, let alone the entire field of jazz. Entirely by accident, I've stumbled on orgasmic encomia about Chris Botti shows and strange claims referencing recently deceased Michael Brecker as the greatest tenor saxophonist since Coltrane. I've read essays by the children of jazz greats (Professor Darius Brubeck) calling into question the legacy and artistic integrity of geniuses such as Ornette Coleman. (Whose 2006 release, Sound Grammar fares thusly on Jackin' Pop: invisible except for voters over 40, who placed it at 16). I've waded through jaw droppingly passionate 60-comment firefights waged between musicians, critics and onlookers over the musical merit of figures like Bill Dixon, who, no matter his uncontestable brilliance is virtually unknown to the general public. The sea of words swells every day and it does sometimes feel...indigestible. Comment strings are howlingly funny sometimes, simply idiotic at others. (Witness someone named simply "jazzlunatic" responding with typical internet bluntness to Taylor Ho Bynum's guest post at destination-out, for example.)

On the other hand, I have grown fond of Raftery's "day to day, hour to hour metabolism." In the short time that I've been checking into jazz and so-called "free jazz" blogs, I've had many eye and ear opening experiences. But what the NPR article neglects to mention is the impact of the audio blog, the MySpace page, any and all internet outlets where the music itself is instantly accessible, without middleman and with a minimum (or complete absence) of critical opinion. The most amazing resource is the mp3, certainly. Who needs a music critic when you can download the music yourself and simply listen? This alone has changed the nature of music criticism. Let's say you've occasionally heard ecstatic murmurings about a legendary genius, but have never heard any music by him or her, maybe someone like Japanese madman Karou Abe He's out there (on the net I mean) and thanks to Web 2.0 you can hear him, see for yourself if the myths and legends are borne out.

Perhaps it's underground and already marginalized forms of music that ultimately will benefit most from the blogosphere. From this perspective, it's laughable that the NPR article makes a big deal out of a critic's poll on a blog owned by a media company challenging the supremacy of a critic's poll in the Village Voice.

The NPR article concludes:

"The Village Voice will release this year's Pazz and Jop in February. Idolator's list is scheduled to be posted today. Young acts like TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom are expected to do well.

But don't count out the veterans. Asked to predict a winner, both Harvilla and Raftery picked Modern Times, the 31st studio album from Bob Dylan."

Let me guess: both Harvilla and Raftery are, like yours truly, over 40.

composing

From Joe Phillips' Pulse, this interesting composer's symposium. (With my own attempt at lucidity interspersed...)

PULSE Composer’s Salon #1

The Audience

“The public is a thick skinned beast which must be continually beaten to let it know you are there.”—Walt Whitman

“Historically, the artist has been a slave, an unregarded wage earner, a courtier, clown and sycophant, a domestic, finally an unknown citizen trying to arrest the attention of a huge anonymous mass public and compel it to learn his name.” —Jacques Barzan from The Use and Abuse of Art


"I. In an interview (New Voices by Geoff and Nicola Walker Smith, Amadeus Press, 1995), Laurie Anderson says that her work/composition is not complete until it has been observed or heard [and subsequently] evaluated by an audience. She goes on to say that the measure of a good work of art is one that (as you experience it) “makes you want to jump up and get out of there” and go and create something yourself. How do you view this statement (especially in relationship toward how your own compositions are received by the public)?"

Anderson's first comment makes me think about completion more than anything else. My understanding is that Anderson is not an improvising artist. For me, as an improvising composer (not that I'm entirely satisfied with that phrase), my experience is that pieces emerge out of practice/rehearsal/performance opportunities, take a few different shapes, sometimes hang around as themes or get transfigured or transliterated into different formats and settings, and then mysteriously (either abruptly or slowly) disappear. The life of certain "composed parts" of an improvised piece peregrinates through many audiences, live and recorded. I just played some solo piano stuff I did in 1986 for the unnarrator and it had a completely different feel to it than I had ever heard before. So for me completion isn't really possible, at least not on my own terms. With this in mind, and remembering (for example) that a friend of mine has a huge box full of Cecil Taylor scores which have never been played or have only had performance in sections, I end up wondering about what Anderson means by "completion." On the one hand, there's a lovely aspect to performance, especially in composition with significant improvised sections and a huge amount of leeway even in the reading of composed sections. Performance always has mysterious energies. Things arise that were inconceivable in rehearsal. Energies are unleashed or redirected. My favorite phenomenon in live performance is the long silence after a piece is finished. If that's there, it feels that sound, space and time have worked themselves out into the mystery they are.

On the second comment, I generally agree that this interactive, inspirational muse experience, this sense of having a fire lit under one's ass to make something, seems common to my experience of many of the works I admire the most. But I wonder about it because I am also sometimes just a consumer. There are art forms that are good to be there for, like dance, but they don't always make me want to run out and make something.



II. One premise of the book Hole in Our Soul by Martha Bayles (Free Press, 1994) is that with the rise of modernism (in art) in the early 20th century, there came a disconnect with audiences—an “antagonism” between the artistic creator and the consumer of the art. Before this perverse (her words) turn of events, the relationship between creator and consumer was not so great. (At least in jazz) high art and the commercial and popular were not always mutually exclusive. As Gary Giddins states, people like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong had the “…ability to balance the emotional gravity of the artist with the communal good cheer of the entertainer…” However, with the advent of such movements as Dadaism or Abstract Expressionism in painting, the literary explorations of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Wolff, and James Joyce, and in music the dodecaphonic and serial explorations of Arnold Schoenberg, chance and aleatory music of John Cage and in jazz the rise of bebop and free jazz, large audiences mostly tuned out. Jazz critic Philip Larkin is quoted in Hole in Our Soul stating, “To say I don’t like modern jazz because it’s modernist art simply raises the question of why I don’t like modernist art…I dislike such things not because they are new, but because they are irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction of human life as we know it. This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by (Charlie) Parker, (Erza) Pound, or (Pablo) Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure.”

Do you agree or disagree with Bayles’ and/or Larkin’s statements/premises? How do you as a composer/performer, balance artistic and commercial viability in your own work? In the presentation (i.e. performances) of your works? What other composers/performers do you feel balance artistic and commercial viability well? Is this even necessary?

I heatedly, passionately disagree with Larkin. (I haven't read Bayles, but the way her thesis is stated here it sounds like a simple statement of fact, more an observation than a lament, with the caveat that the "antagonism" just arose and was not intentional in many cases). For those who are interested in more of Larkin's rant, his essay "All What Jazz?" is anthologized in Reading Jazz:A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage and Criticism from 1919 to the Present, an excellent if cautious and generally moldy-figgish collection edited by Robert Gottlieb. ("All What Jazz?" originally appeared as the introduction to Larkin's 1970 book collecting all of his jazz reviews that he had written for The Daily Telegraph). Larkin shows himself to be an insufferable idiot, willfully hoi polloi and proudly dumb as a box of rocks. His fetishistic fondness for Bix, Louis, that good old Nawlins jass, is revealingly framed as a nostalgia for his simple minded college days. There is great, acid, biting humor in Larkin's essay and one suspects that his queeny claws-out bitch-rant is meant at least partly ironically and definitely is suffused with his usual alcohol-soaked self-loathing. Not the best milieu for any kind of insightful criticism of Modernism, let alone jazz after 1938. His two central complaints about Modernism are worth spending some time with, however. The first, the "irresponsible exploitations of technique in contradiction to life as we know it" begs the question: who the fuck is Larkin's "we"? Perhaps more to the point, what would irresponsible exploitation of technique mean?

Larkin and other critics of Modernism (not to mention the avant garde, whatever that is) fail to talk about aesthetics. This is the fatal flaw in every critique of art that focuses on the moral character of the artist, or the solipsism or self-indulgent idiosyncrasy of the artist, or the "failure of the artist to communicate," or the favorite fallback for scared, murine little-eared reactionaries of all stripes, the "charlatanism of the artist." These critiques confuse initial shock or unfamiliarity with the presence of something wrong with the art or inherently suspect about the artist's methods or intentions. The height of irresponsibility is to ignore one's own taste.

Which leads me to Larkin's second major statement: "it (Modernist art) helps us neither to enjoy nor to endure." Again, who the fuck is "us"? And again, more importantly, I'm living proof that Larkin's wrong. An Art Ensemble of Chicago performance at the 9:30 Club in DC in 1982 saved my life. For example. So did ditching school my senior year in high school and staying home reading everything by James Joyce I could get my hands on.

General things to think about:
-As a composer and/or performer how do you generate audiences for your performances? How does audience reaction to a piece affect your future writing? your programming? Do you think about the audience when writing?
-Can you recommend any composer, group, or recording that balances the artistic with the popular (or at least commercial successful)?

I generate audiences by promoting my own shows. I have sometimes felt quite discouraged by lack of audience or poor audience reaction. Discouragement has sometimes taken the form of many months or even years of not performing. (This was of course my own choice in regard to the matter). I don't think about the audience, but I do think about a few admired people.

I can't find a meaningful way to respond to the last question. It sets up a false dichotomy to begin with.

Great questions, though...look forward to more...

RIP Turiya (and Brecker)

Sad to get the news that Alice Coltrane has passed. Surprised she was "{only" 69 years old.

Amazed by the following excerpt from an article on her on the AP wires:

"> "As fascinating — and influential — as her later music was, it
> tended to obscure the fact that she had started out as a solid,
> bebop-oriented pianist," critic Don Heckman told The Times on
> Saturday. "I remember hearing, and jamming with, her in the early '60s
> at photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft in Manhattan. At that time she
> played with a brisk, rhythmic style immediately reminiscent of Bud
> Powell.
>
> "Like a few other people who'd heard her either at the loft or
> during her early '60s gigs with Terry Gibbs, I kept hoping she'd take
> at least one more foray into the bebop style she played so well," he
> said.

Okay, Don Heckman.

My favorite Alice Coltrane performance is the live two album set with Reggie Workman and Roy Haynes, Transfiguration.

Just a few days ago I was listening to Billy Cobham's Crosswinds and said to myself, "Self, who is that on tenor sax?" It is, of course, Michael Brecker. Gifts come in all sorts of packages.

As for Alice Coltrane...imagine being John Coltrane's pianist after McCoy Tyner. Imagine carrying on a completely unique and immediately recognizable musical (and pianistic) style after John Coltrane's death. Yeah, Heckman, really too bad she didn't play that bop again.

year end frenzy

I notice many blogs, music and otherwise, engage in a year end retrospective. For some reason this didn't occur to me as something to do until I visited destination-out's "Top Downloads" and Mwanji's couple of posts of what grabbed him last year and the *unbelievable* list of live shows he attended.

On the playing side, the year began with Bing's work with Circus Luminous, followed by The Miles Davis Electric Project, followed by the Live Music/Silent Film Festival, followed by work with Chris Jonas in Rrake. As predicted, things came to a sudden halt after Rrake. There is no lack of interesting projects here in Santa Fe, but the issue is sustainability. The usual pattern is a high speed ramp up involving short(ish) notice, lots of rehearsals (when possible) and a high profile appearance or two followed by months of deafening silence and zero dollars. The lack of venues, the busy lives of all of us struggling to survive, the utter lack of funds for ongoing and remunerative initiatives all contribute to this vexing pattern.

In the offing: perhaps more silent film work? Perhaps another Miles Electric configuration? Perhaps a duets concert of improvisations? Who knows.

Listening has taken many fascinating twists and turns this year, spurred largely by the radio show and the imperative of developing a library. Rediscoveries abound with many thanks to destination-out and other bloggers. Huge swaths of music that were firmly in the center of where my ears were at various times in the past, but that I somehow missed, mix with constant revisiting of work that I am hearing with new ears.

Here's a top ten list for the past year:

1. Duke. Anything and everything. I never gave Ellington's music the comprehensive hearing it deserves. In fact, the only Ellington I owned for many years was Ellington '55, an attempt by Capitol Records to position Ellington as a more commercially viable option by having him revisit great compositions. The goal this year is to continue on the quest for anything and everything Ellington did.

2. Brotherhood of Breath/Chris MacGregor. I somehow missed MacGregor's work entirely. Destination-out posted a couple of pieces from the first album. I was already somewhat familiar with Dudu Pukwana and Mongezi Feza, but I look forward to hearing more.

3. Evan Parker. In general, the Euro free scene was only represented for me by a few FMP's of the Brotzmann/Van Hove/Bennink trio and the Globe Unity Orchestra. I am glad to get closer to Parker as well as Breuker/Schlippenbach/et al.

4. Andrew Hill. This seems to be Hill's year, what with the praise for his new recording and so on. I have long had Point of Departure but it's been great hearing much more of his other work.

5. Elmo Hope. The Blue Note reissue that includes dozens of tracks is definitely head turning.

6. Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley. This great trio recording is perhaps not warmly received by Cecil Taylor fans, but I am impressed by it. In general, rediscovering Bill Dixon has been a splendid adventure.

7. 1960s Blue Note and Capitol funky jazz. In my callow youth I always wrote this form off as "less than." In fact there is some great arranging, soloing, and a wonderful groove on much of it: Blue Mitchell, Stanley Turrentine, Cannonball, etc. Much of what passes for "contemporary jazz" is a pale and insipid imitation of this period.

8. Art Ensemble of Chicago's pre-Paris stuff. Again thanks to destination-out, Carefree, Tatas-matoes, etc. Great, funny, vital and groundbreaking.

9. Mal Waldron. A renewed appreciation for his architectural deliberateness, his note placement, his direct honesty. The duets with Steve Lacy are remarkable.

10. Randy Weston. The only exposure I had to Weston previously was African Cookbook. As is the case with many other musicians lately, the question is: How did I go so long without tons of Weston in my life?

A pattern: this seems to have been at least partly the year of the piano. Duke, Cecil, Hill, Weston, Hope, Waldron. Part of the fascination of the mid-60s Blue Notes is the pre-fusion appearances of Hancock, Corea, Zawinul.

Anyway I could list a top 100, given how much has opened up for me in music this year. I could also revisit the year's favorite rants (the jazz culture wars, for example). But I have to do the dishes.

como se dice?

More snow last night, admittedly not all that much but ridiculous. Side benefit: softens the bone jarring drive over ruts and mounds of solid ice sometimes a foot thick. I'd be more sanguine if my 1991 Honda Civic weren't randomly and quite mysteriously stalling. It's an avant garde stall, as it only occurs when the car is well warmed up, and seems usually to be when I go a constant speed in one gear for any stretch. I have vague hopes it's dirty fuel injectors or water in the gas or the old vapor lock phenomenon (about which I of course know nothing) but also vaguely suspect there might be a more serious problem.

The most serious problem is $5,000 in unpaid federal taxes, fines and penalties from two chaotic years, 01/02, when I lived in astonishing disarray and did not file at all. I have attempted a few times to settle the matter but the IRS decided to levy my savings account over the holidays. Pathetic, really, as it had less than a grand in it and I qualify for temporarily uncollectable status but just didn't jump through the necessary hoops to get that officially settled before leaving the country. The situation makes me regret that I returned. Is there anything more romantical than a tax exiled improvising musician living in Mexico? I'm sure Mexico needs another drummer, ex-teacher and sometime writer.

Speaking of Mexican music...I have to admit my almost complete bafflement at Mexican popular song. Well, the forms represented loudly by the employees or owners of Daggett's campground on Christmas Eve, by the Mexican patriarch who parked his family in front of our tent the night after Christmas (howling out of his tinny car stereo, complemented by the constant beep beep beep of his "door open" alert), by car stereos and stores/businesses with music blasting. Most of what I could place was indistinguishable from mariachi music to my ears. Brass was unrelentingly featured, usually with a front line and a second line underpinned by tuba or synth tuba. All of the singers were male. Tonally, the singing contrasts with the brass in several different inflections that are microtonally flat or sharp, giving the music a drunken, swaggering, jangling cast. Sometimes the arrangements seemed to have a New Orleans/Chicago jass influence, sometimes more clearly a US country music feel. But otherwise it was impossible for me to hear many other influences. The accordion was not as present in the mix as I would have liked, nor the drums. The overall tonally glaring and garish effect is highlighted by the music's unrelenting IV-V-I diatonicism. Also emphasized by the inevitably horrible stereos on which I heard it, often turned up to volumes that created searing distortion.

Admittedly, a small sample that was most often a sonic assault in otherwise quiet (sometimes mystically so) surroundings. And other than the way my interest was piqued-- tonal inflection, trying to catch lyrics with my abysmal understanding of Spanish, the very occasional switch up of the formula-- my impression was of a music absolutely lacking in any trace of sophistication, isolated from the past decades of musical and technological changes elsewhere, cloyingly pathetic (encapsulating some of the feeling of the blues but with absolutely none of that music's irony). It is rare, in my smoothed out so-called open-mindedness, for me to encounter music to which I respond with blind rage. But such was my feeling at times. It's been a while since music made me want to commit violent acts. Even when I hear the worst of "jazz" (syrupy, bland, limp garbage) I don't generally want to smash things, set fire to villages, bulldoze the world to rubble. But Mexican popular music eventually led me to these dark places in my soul.

The most generous place I was able to go was "how quaint." But that racist dismissal also rankles. It is all too easy for an American to view Mexican culture and people as "quaint." I could vaguely sense (was I projecting? of course) something strained and darkling in many interactions with hotel, store and gas station employees. I kept thinking that if I knew Spanish I would not stir up this oddly polite resentment, a standoffish mutual bemusement. No doubt US "tough on immigration" policies have provided Mexican citizens with additional reason to despise a bumbling Yankee such as myself, waving pesos around and obviously using their country as a playground.

One can be aware of these many layers of political and economic injustice and still think the local popular music is horrifying.

American popular music is horrifying too. That's fair. I remain politically correct. nyaa nyaa nyaa.

Relapsin' with the Miles Davis Quintet

The above blog header was the peak of hilarity while driving the sandy flats south of Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja last week, the eversnerkling unnarrator's splendid idea for a headline, blog post header, maybe even a CD title. But there was no relapsin' to be had on this miracle of excursions, a sojourn I was formerly in the habit of using as an excuse to marinate in a veritable Sea of Cortez of tequila and beer.

There will be more about The Baja Trip. For now, I figured I would just sort of...get warmed up. Only fitting considering that mere days ago the un and I were hot and sunscreened on the long hook of playa called La Gringa and we have returned to 2 feet of snow here in the City of Holy Faith. Que lastima.

I didn't feel like listening to a shred of music of any kind almost the entire trip. One goes through these things from time to time. Moratoriums. toria? Uh, silences.

Today's show was hilarious as I simply grabbed whatever came out of the CD case and tried to make some sense of it. It was a fine moment, finally playing The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Duffvipels (well, an excerpt anyhow).

Much Baja regalia and perhaps very little music to come.

vaya con dios

Off to warmer southern climes in a couple of days so Stochasticactus goes silent for about two weeks. I'll miss every single one of you with great pangs of sadness tempered by monumental denial and beachside gloating. Bennie Maupin's spacey Ensenada will be on the car's CD player. The un and I toy with outlandish fantasies of never returning. Sure, Mexico has stolen elections just like here, but think of the cache resulting from being the white guy who "launched the Mexican improvisational music scene." (i.e., *stole* from the many fine Mexican musicians who are no doubt already launching all sorts of shit about which we have no clue....)

Thanks to Bagatellen's alert, I've visited Church Number 9 and Nothing Is, amazing sites offering complete album downloads of hard-to-find improvisational music. The only item I took the time to snag, for now, is Andrew Cyrille/Milford Graves, Dialogue of the Drums. My late friend Greg Kidd (who played trumpet in the first group I was ever in, 33 years ago at age 12)had a vinyl copy of this that we listened to after sharing some "mind expanding" substance, 23 years ago on a hot summer night in south Philadelphia. Somehow the album led to a marathon walk involving the Mummer's Museum and the catwalk over the Ben Franklin Bridge just until the Jersey line. You know how it is: "hey, let's walk to New Jersey!" har har. It's good to hear it again.

In other news, the arts/music community (and the rest of the community as well) here pulls together to support vocalist/composer/improvisor and bruja, Molly Sturges, diagnosed with tongue cancer last week. She and her husband Chris and daughter Quinn are already in Houston seeking the best oncologists in the West. Prayers and energies (and money) are needed and emerging from this small town's circles. There's a blog that will have occasional updates. Also on the blog eventually will be ways to support Molly and Chris as they deal with the realities of Molly's treatment.

Not to change the subject, but happy holidays. Is there anything worse than Christmas "jazz," by the way? Don't go there! Nat King Cole, sure. And remember: the best things in life and art are free....

art of the imitators

The thought-provoking and unrelentingly honest blog, not mean if true continues to challenge my overly facile views regarding influence, imitation and originality, related to improvised music. One thing is for certain, and that is that I have long held an unexamined opinion that *originality* is the hallmark of worthiness (if not always "greatness") in improvised music. As a listener I'm constantly "measuring" originality by a very simple test-- can I tell who is playing and is it distinct? Simple on the surface of things. Listening to the radio Friday I heard some big band music, a really terrible arrangement of Old Man River, and I knew it was either Louis Bellson or Mel Lewis on the drums. Turned out to be Mel Lewis with the Bill Holman big band. Just terrible music. But I have a lot of respect for Mel Lewis. Is this merely because I can pick him out, and so I have the opportunity to reconfirm my "special knowledge" when I hear him?

One of the mysteries lately for me is finding that I can hear influences within the playing of the musicians I admire, but their playing is not flatly *imitative*. The generosity of spirit in great musicians is such that the influences are welcomed without resistance, it seems. Perhaps because there is the basic faith/knowledge that the kernel of individuality will not be tainted or sullied somehow by the embrace.

Also instructive was hearing Sonny Rollins with Donald Bailey and Pete LaRoca Sims instead of Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones, from the Night at the Village Vanguard sessions. I wanted to hear Ware and Jones throughout the version of Night in Tunisia. Typically we say something like "Jones/Ware was a "better" rhythm section on those dates..." and leave it at that. Lately I have been working at digging more. I was surprised also to find myself thinking "what a terrible choice of material for Rollins to try out in that trio format...Night in Tunisia is a total set up. Softly as in a Morning Sunrise and other tunes work much better." Still don't know where that came from, really.

Which also reminds me of unquestioningly embracing Money Jungle, the trio with Duke, Mingus and Roach, and later reading the Miles Davis Blindfold Test where Feather puts that recording on and Davis goes ballistic about what a ridiculous idea the whole thing was, and how record producers should be shot.

acquiring minds want to know

Been out and about too much lately to post, but there's been a certain amount of reflection, again spurred largely by Reading Jazz. My experience of almost the entire criticism section of that book was one of sustained outrage. More about that later.

On the recorded music front, a recent trip to the huge metropolis of Albuquerque resulted in my picking up the Arista Freedom double album by Dave Burrell, High Won-High Two, from 1968 with Sirone and Sunny Murray as well as Bobby Kapp on drums and Pharoah Sanders on...tambourine. Something odd about that. Anyway I have only listened to the West Side Story medley and I'm reminded again of how much is going on with Burrell, a player with whom I only have had passing familiarity. I saw him with David Murray and Andrew Cyrille and Amiri Baraka many years ago and was struck by the uniquely pianistic approach to phrasing and the deceptively "light" sounding touch/attack. I look forward to learning more.

I also picked up George Russell's Living Time Orchestra Blue Note record from 1983, The African Game. I've only given that one listen and I have no idea yet what I feel or really what I'm hearing. There are unfortunate and all-too-facile associations that leap up (in particular, echoes of television cop show soundtracks) and these are definitely unwanted associations. All in all, it's great to be experiencing music from both Burrell and Russell that expands the concept for me even further, a frequent recent experience.

The great windfall is a result of a friend of mine (the beginning of our friendship was playing in a trio when I was 12 years old, 33 years ago, tunes like Walk, Don't Run and Delta Dawn) transferring his vinyl to digital and offering to ship the vinyl to me. He sent me a four page list of such a huge variety of recordings, many of which fill in serious gaps in both my listening and my library. So after the holidays are blessedly over I'll be getting the best Christmas present I could imagine, probably about 80 albums or so, only a few of which are replacements for vinyl that I have but that's unplayable. He was more thorough than I over the years in getting a broader historical perspective so there's a significant amount of Bix, Fletcher Henderson and Duke. But there's also a Marion Brown solo album, for example, that I've never heard of, etc.

On the live music front, the inspiring and surreal and deeply moving Tatsuya Nakatani blew through town and I managed to catch his solo set at High Mayhem. This indirectly led to reconnecting with Gary Hassay who was a central figure in my musical experience in 1979-1980 in Allentown, PA. Nakatani is based in Easton PA and it turns out he's in a trio with Hassay. Hassay is still going strong and I'm looking forward to getting some of his recordings for possible air play on the radio show. Also, I'll be pitching a profile of Nakatani to a percussion mag or other publication in the next week or two.

The most extraordinary aspect for me about Nakatani's art is the complete reconfiguration of the trap set, despite its traditional (though stripped down)set up. On a technical note, I'd love to know how he gets such a warm, basso profundo tone out of his tiny bass drum. Anyway the overall aesthetic effect was trancelike, otherworldly, both beautiful and somewhat daunting. The use of metal (cymbals, bowls, metal wire beaters, gongs, bells, ratchety coils) in combination with the membrane of the drums (and Nakatani's "blowing" against the snare head, creating banshee wails and screeches) coalesces into a sound somehow simultaneously primal and ethereal. Nakatani's relationship to his materials allows for startling chance events, especially in his arrangements of bowls on either floor tom or the snare, sometimes muffled with a towel underneath and sometimes naked, either ringing against other bowls or not. The placement, especially of his largest bowl on the floor tom, also allows for constant swaying of the bowl itself, which creates a rolling, washing sound. His use of the bow is masterful. It was the kind of performance where I wanted the sound first and so closed my eyes often, but then absolutely could not help myself and would gawk again, wondering what the hell is that and how does he do it?

Finally, I'm hoping I can still get tickets for Public Enemy, playing a few blocks from where I live this Friday. Yeah, Public Enemy. Santa Fe is so very odd.

story ville

The previously mentioned Reading Jazz, edited by Robert Gottlieb, has me up late in what has turned into absorbing the book from cover to cover, which at roughly 1,100 pages is somewhat ridiculous. But the great fact that is emerging from the Reportage and Criticism sections is perhaps somewhat best summed up by two quotes. "To the outsider, the aggressiveness with which the aficionados of one school of jazz attack another school may appear silly, a tempest in a teapot. It is far from this. Beneath the surface it is a defense, whether well- or ill-advised, of an attitude toward life." (William Grossman, Jazz Review, 1956). "After all these years, I find myself unable to avoid an unhappy conclusion: jazz criticism is a bad idea, poorly executed." (Orrin Keepnews, 1987)

For the moment, I'm still reaching for a broader understanding of the culture wars of the 1940's:

Leonard Feather's writing about the Esquire jazz polls of the mid-40s and the uproar between the "moldy figs" and the "progressives," yet another reminder that the lines were clearly drawn in the years before bop, even though it is now the fashion to point to jazz controversy as first arising with Parker, Gillespie, Monk. The black vs. white lines were clearly drawn as well. Here's a quote from Feather talking about the reaction to the first Esquire poll in 1943 in The Jazz Record, a specialty publication co-edited by white pianist Art Hodes: "But the most memorable statement was (the writer's) complaint that Joe Stacy, Joe Sullivan, and Art Hodes received only four, three, and two votes respectively. 'These men,' he wrote, 'are the three greatest small-band piano men on wax. To mention Art Tatum in the same gasp with them is blasphemous!'" Another quote from the same article: "If this isn't inverted Jim Crow, what is?"

The winners in 1943 (who went on to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House) were: Louis Armstrong, Teagarden, Goodman, Hawkins, Tatum, Al Casey, Pettiford, Catlett, Red Norvo and Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw. The second place winners were Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Earl Hines, Oscar Moore, Milt Hinton, Al Morgan, Cozy Cole, Leo Watson, Mildred Bailey, saxophonist Willie Smith and Dave Tough.

So these are the musicians signifying something catastrophic, impure, degenerate or at least questionable to an entire camp of jazz writers who seemed to have seen jazz's salvation at the time in Eddie Condon and Wild Bill Davidson. Is it any wonder that when Bird and Dizzy et al were heard, a very few short years later, the reaction was what it was?

Also, coincidentally I just bought a copy of the recording of the concert at the Metropolitan in 1944, originally produced by the US Army and only available on shellac V-Discs. My first few listens reveal that something was going on among these highly disparate musicians within the supposed confines of...whatever genre they were supposed to be confined by. Partly I'm sure it's the "jam session" atmosphere, partly the "superband" syndrome, just too many voices trying to get heard. But even beyond these circumstantial reasons, I hear a music definitely in transition already. It's struggling with two competing organizing principles, for one thing (perhaps three): collective improvisation versus comping behind the individual soloist. The intense irony is that the radio announcer insists on saying the name of the individual soloists while they are playing, in the manner of a sports broadcast. The third conflicting strain on the efforts of the musicians is the "swing" style itself, which lends a kind of war-time desperation and frantically happy, happy, happy (who put the benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?) energy. There's more concatenating throughout the proceedings, including strange versions of "the blues," highly divergent instrumental styles, and probably more that I'm not even aware of.

Yet there are revealing moments from individual musicians. Lionel Hampton's extended solo over Flying Home is most amazing for the intense presence of his vocalizations, especially in the rests between his phrases. (Compare with Cecil Taylor's, on for example, The Great Concert of, Side 3, or less pleasantly, with Jarrett). Are there shades of bop already emerging from Hawk and Tatum? Absolutely. Could there be any starker contrast than that between Billie Holiday singing "I'll Get By" and Mildred Bailey "singing" "Squeeze Me"?

It's a terrible stew, really, and I can see why the moldy figs had an opening to be aghast, but only now that I am listening with an awareness of the turf wars and infighting that had everyone up in arms. What I heard before this was quaint, occasionally brilliant, energetic, but hearing with bop-through-21st Century ears meant feeling grateful that the music soon found more consolidated and "sophisticated" organizing principles. I have too often bought hook, line and sinker the "official" stories of whatever jazz is, and, lately, every time I turn around, I'm encountering new awareness of a much broader and much more messy picture.

up to your boobies in white satin

"You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation." (Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues).

Jazz books on the floor next to my bed currently include Reading Jazz, edited by Robert Gottlieb and Visions of Jazz by Gary Giddins, as well as Ted Reed's Progressive Steps to Syncopation, which I keep returning to over and over to find new ways to apply the studies not only to drumset work but music and composition in general.

Reading Jazz is a remarkable anthology heavily weighted toward the mainstream but still stuffed full of great material. The autobiographical section ranges from Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet to Cecil Taylor and others. The Cecil piece is from Len Lyons' 1983 book, The Great Jazz Pianists, and Gottlieb's comment says something like "sometimes the life of an interviewer is a difficult one." I suspect this is meant with a dash of humor and as a tongue in cheek commentary on Taylor's apparently combative and argumentative responses, but truly, although you can tell he's trying, Lyons' questions are superficial and idiotic. How little must the man have known about Taylor to begin his interview with "What approach did you use for developing finger dexterity, and what would you recommend that younger pianists do in that regard?" Not only does he open with that absolutely inconsequential question, but he persists doggedly. This is Lyons making his own life difficult.

It's also representative of a thread that keeps winding through these autobiographical texts, which is a white attitude that is clearly condescending, racist, patronizing and unconciously or blatantly infantilizing. The position of the artist in America, let alone the black artist, is laid bare repeatedly and it's ugly.

Giddins' compilation of short essays is a wonder to behold by comparison. Yes, it leans a bit toward hagiography at times, but his respect is welcome even if it borders on reverence. Giddins is so obviously a fan of the whole spectrum of genres and approaches, and in particular it's a lovely experience to read articulate and knowledgeable insights into the work of musicians as disparate as Budd Johnson and Roscoe Mitchell.

Acquisitive jazz slut that I am, I recently snagged Randy Weston's latest (at 80 years old!), Zep Tepi, as well as the odd Impulse reissue that combines Taylor's Into the Hot pieces (Pots, Bulbs, Mixed)with Roswell Rudd's Everywhere session. Every time I hear Weston I want to hear more, and it's too bad that I somehow managed to miss his work along the way. I only gave Taylor's sessions for Gil Evans a cursory listen when I was younger, largely because I had already been absolutely riveted by Indent, Silent Tongues, Dark to Themselves, 3 Phasis, etc. and too quickly dismissed Taylor's early work as unformed and quaint. With fresh ears these Taylor originals are absolutely mind blowing and yet again mark a whole range of possibilities that Taylor perhaps left behind too quickly. (That's my greed talking). There's something lush and humid about his orchestrations, the song forms, the dense and usually not reiterative themes. Amazing that Ted Curson was working with Mingus at the time. I wonder what he thought working his way through Taylor's Mixed?Not because it is different from the Mingus workshop, but because it launches off of so many similar strategies. (It's also instructive to hear Sunny Murray on these recordings; his odd 5/4 boogaloo beat, his leanings toward the concept he'd plunge into quite soon after).

Roswell Rudd is one of those rare musicians who intuitively understands sound. The trombone is a perfect fit for the man's ears and soul. My first impressions of the Impulse session is that it's unfortunate he wasn't surrounded by heavier players. Charlie Haden is too far behind Lewis Worrell in the mix and I don't get grabbed by Guiseppi Logan and Robin Kenyatta, really. I just want to hear Beaver Harris and Roswell Rudd do duets.

playlist

today's show was...interesting.

Sahib Shihab Blu Around Jazz Sahib
Benny Golson, Phil Woods, Bill Evans, Oscar Pettiford and Art Taylor join Shihab in 1957

Miles Davis Blue in Green Kind of Blue
from the gussied up reissue that's pitch-corrected and remastered.

Thelonious Monk Mood Indigo Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington
Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke join Monk for this example of how jazz musicians lovingly make something their own

Hamiet Bluiett Tranquil Beauty Jazz Loft Sessions
Is there a better name in jazz than Hamiet Bluiett? Juney Booth, Butch Campbell, Olu Dara, Don Moye, Billy Patterson, Bobo Shaw, 1976

John Carter Sweet Sunset Night Fire
From one of Carter's "Folk Suites," underrated jazz classics that will probably get a lot of hype in 10-15 years

John McLaughlin Binky's Beam Extrapolation
astonishing first recording with McLaughlin as leader, 1969, with Tony Oxley, John Surman, Brian Odges

Billy Cobham Spanish Moss Crosswinds
How does Cobham manage to make 17/16 funky? The Breckers and John Abercrombie help, but it's Cobham's show

Sonny Rollins East Broadway Rundown East Broadway Rundown
with Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison. A centerpiece at 21 minutes, worth every second.

Billie Holiday/Esquire All Stars I'll Get By/Tea for Two
The First Esquire Concert, recorded and released by the US Army on shellac V-disks. Check out the announcer. 1944.

Charlie Parker Back Home Blues/Lover Man Swedish Schnapps +
This is what Parker was up to during the WWII recording ban

Steve Lacy/Mal Waldron Star Crossed Lovers Sempre Amore all duets, all Duke or Strayhorn. 1987.

Cecil Taylor Pemmican/Points Garden
I can hear the whole history in Taylor's playing. This is the last 8 minutes of a 103 minutes solo piano performance, November 16, 1981

I seem to be getting better at transitions that are relatively smooth between stuff that one would normally think of as widely divergent. I have no idea how it happened, for example, that the Tea for Two piece segued so naturally into John Lewis's piano intro to Back Home Blues. I think playing the entire 21 minute East Broadway Rundown may have rattled the daylights out of my station manager...and how ironic is it that Rollins/Hubbard/Garrison/Jones perhaps pushed the aesthetic limits the most out of all the selections on the above list?

I had forgotten how much I admire Extrapolation. McLaughlin sets up a fairly straight rhythm section concept with Oxley and Odges, but his guitar sound has rich shades of Brit "blues revival" and then astonishing jazz chording. One wonders if this was something McLaughlin jumped off too soon, after, say, Emergency! or some of the Miles stuff. Surman blows the everloving crap out of the bari, great gorgeous yawps.

And Spanish Moss, the funkiest 17/16 ever. Cobham plays more 8.5 than 17 which helps funk it up. This too is a kind of music that seems largely undeveloped. Fusion-esque textures and instruments, but great horn lines. Sophisticated yet accessible. Lose the fake wind sound and everything would be fine....

Mr. Taylor's last bit of Garden tied the whole thing up somehow. At least I thought so....

The Only Music Worth Playing

I've been part of several tribute/homage/songbook projects, notably with Zimbabwe Nkenya, doing an Ornette Coleman project, a mid-'60s Miles quintet project, part of a Monk tribute; now the main thing happening musically for me is the Miles Davis electric project. So I've been involved with this experience where someone (maybe even me) loves the music of so and so enough to get a group together, try it out, do some of the favorite pieces. With some of Zim's projects it was a drag, ultimately, because he wanted to do OC's songs, he wanted to do the tougher material too from the MD quintet, some very nuanced Monk tunes too, and where were the musicians? Myself included! I always felt completely behind the curve there, exposed, unable to develop a statement of my own and left either poorly imitating Higgins, Blackwell, Roach, Jones (man, Broadway Blues is a bitch!) Williams or, well, generally, lost. With the Miles electric project it's different, because that grew out of players I had already heard here: DJ's, live and pre-produced samples, guitarists, keyboard, bass. It happened more organically, the sounds and approaches already fit before we started to shape pieces like Honky Tonk, Yesternow, Black Satin, etc. The end result is sometimes our versions are flat out imitative...how close can we get to some of the suspense of Yesternow, for example...sometimes the versions, even of the same tune, are unrecognizable. It's filtered through a kind of freedom that was not available on the OC or Miles quintet projects, because the mastery and the understanding was not in the ensemble, was not in the sound. The tunes there were out of reach, some kind of Platonic eidos that we could only genuflect at the base of or stumble around within, offering our pale stabs, no matter how much we loved the originals.

The Vandermark 5's "Free Jazz Classics Vol. 3: Six for Rollins" sounds like this to me. Both forced and lost. The format is head-solo-solo-solo-head, the arrangements seem desultory, and the overall effect lacks so many of the qualities of Sonny Rollins' music: daring, humor, space, fluidity, elan. The playing is superb, yet another example of unequivocally fine musicianship standing still, running in place, sounding contained and distant, even when the bar lines drop. It's as if the music is a museum piece, a simulacrum, with the homage not reverent enough or all too reverent, I can't decide which. There's a spirit joyless and formulaic in it. I love hearing Vandermark's bari, Jeb Bishop's bone, Kent Kessler's bass and Dave Rempis in particular (shades of Dolphy, Roscoe Mitchell...he is in my opinion the best soloist on the date), but Tim Daisy's drums are so literal. It's jazz drumming on music that I can't help but hear with Roach, Jones, etc. The elasticity of the tempos on The Bridge make me wonder-- are we hearing people play or think about playing while they play? The device itself is not at fault, it's the way it clobbers me over the head.

But for me the signature problem piece is East Broadway Rundown. The original of this recording has long been one of my all time favorite recorded performances in all of jazz, period. It somehow manages to be hilarious, ominous, introspective, playful, pandimensional, inside, outside, abstract, gutbucket, splatteringly free yet stompingly funky, all at once. The line itself is a deceptively simple, seemingly throwaway bit of classic Rollins-- conversational, arch, inscrutable, with a recursive jumpiness that doesn't take itself too seriously and with a hilarious switch to the major in its raggy tag. The best thing about the Vandermark 5 version is hearing Rollins' line. The rest of it just misses me.

I don't know any of the other work of the Vandermark 5 and I'm not qualified to say much about Vol. 4, Free Kings, based on Rashaan Roland Kirk's compositions, as I am way behind on my Kirk.

But the larger questions for me: why bring the repertory idea to so-called free jazz? And why Rollins? Rollins as sound innovator, structural innovator, one of a kind and absolutely original-- no contest. But free jazz? I'm not opposed, I just need more of a conversation around that. Why the self-consciousness in the packaging, the marketing, the use of the questionable phrase "Free Jazz Classics?" I wonder-- who is the audience for this music? Not that there is necessarily one audience.

In the liner notes by Vandermark he concludes with two very strange paragraphs:

"Maybe investigating the groundwork for the improvised music from the 1960's and 70's taught me that it was time to get off the shoulders of those artists in order to look in another direction.

Maybe the point has come when it's necessary to realize that the only music worth playing is happening now."

These statements seem simultaneously so thoroughly arrogant and benighted to me that I'm left (almost) speechless. The only thing I have to say right now about the last sentence is...when Monk played Duke's music, when Rollins played I Can't Get Started, when the Art Ensemble played Zombie, when Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy played A Flower is a Lovesome Thing, was that happening now?

score!

Looking forward to writing more about the Vandermark 5's "Free Jazz Classics Vol. 3: Six for Rollins" but for the moment, a bit of a gloat. The local chain media store (I know, it's strange, "local chain," but there are more startling oxymorons..."Free Jazz Classics," for example...) surprised me by having a ton of used jazz CDs. For less than 50 bucks I snagged:

1. The pitch-corrected remaster of Kind of Blue (mine was stolen out of my car by some impecunious Miles fan with a Flamenco Sketches jones)

2. John Carter's Black Saint recording, "Night Fire," with Bobby Bradford, James Newton, Roberto Miranda and William Jeffrey. Makes me want to get all of the other suites Carter did, especially recordings with Andrew Cyrille.

3. A CD compilation of the Douglas Wildflowers Loft Jazz series (now playing "Black Robert" by Dave Burrell, Stafford James and Harold White). It seems they culled the most "radio friendly" or close to the tradition cuts from the multiple LP series, several of which I have on sadly distressed vinyl. I had forgotten how much I loved the sound of Burrell's piano.

4. "Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington," with Klook and OP. Man, I've thought of getting this about a million times. Can't wait to hear it.

5. John McLaughlin's innovative "Extrapolation" with John Surman, Tony Oxley and Brian Odges. Again, I had it for years on vinyl but now it's digital.

6. Jackie McLean's "New Soil," 1959 Blue Note in keeping with my recent re-evaluation of the late 50s through mid-'60s Blue Note catalogue. This one I picked up in particular because it has Pete La Roca Sims on drums, and I don't hear nearly enough of him, but there's also Paul Chambers, Walter Davis, Jr. and Donald Byrd.

The advantage of an amorous relationship with underrated music? Maybe. What kind of fool would hand over their used Monk to a chain CD store? Okay, maybe a fool with an iPod or whatever, but still.

east broadway standstill

Latest "candle in sunshine" discovery that speaks volumes about the current state of things, The Vandermark 5's Free Jazz Classics, Volume 3, Six for Rollins. It's entirely possible that I'm benighted and quite out of line to suggest it's better not to make this recording *at all*. But before I go any further, mistrusting first impressions as I do and wanting perhaps to open my ears...maybe I'm missing something? Maybe it isn't fair to compare *even when the musicians beg the comparison* by calling something "Six for Rollins." Anyway, before I say more here, I'll listen more. If anyone out there wants to give me their own version of "glowing liner notes" to this or other Vandermark 5 recordings go for it.

parochial blues

The calendar entry I wrote previewing Wynton Marsalis's show here actually generated a letter to the editor, expressing dismay. Expressing a lot of things, including the strange opinion that it's parochial, calling Marsalis "largely derivative" and calling Jazz at Lincoln Center "backward looking." On the contrary, one could argue that calling Marsalis a "National Treasure" (as the letter writer did) just might be...something like parochial. What is especially of note is that I write all sorts of snarky, backhanded blurbs for this Performing Arts calendar every week, and it was the Sacred Cow that generated the first letter ever.

Also of note is the flurry of interaction with Outpost Productions, who booked the event. I've known Outpost's director, Tom Guralnick, for many years. He and I are in email dialogue now about my comments. By the way, if you can get your hands on the Tom Guralnick Quartet with Steve Feld, I highly recommend it. Or any other of a number of Guralnick's kickass electroacoustic Mobile Saxophone and Mute Unit recordings. There's old stuff of mine, 1990 or so, with unbelievable bass sax playing by TG on there.

Today's show as a substitute DJ was very strange. I decided to focus on jazz vocals in the first hour, including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella, as well as the too-hip Babs Gonzales and a Dizzy Gillespie vocal number. Oh yeah, Billy Eckstine too. I don't really hear jazz vocals and it was interesting listening. The strangest of all was probably Rae Pearl with Tadd Dameron, a number called "Casbah" that one critic has called "the most extravagant three minutes in be-bop history."

Call me parochial, but a lot of jazz vocal music is just bizarre. Then again, I'd rather hear CT's spoken word epic Chinampas than Diana Krall or Kurt Elling, so I guess that says something....

society of esoteric and arcane flamethrowers

Interesting what stirs the loins of internet gladiators. Destination-out puts up some Herbie Mann and the unexpected (or perhaps entirely predictable?) result is an argument about the significance of a certain Miles Dewey Davis. Analogous to the ridiculous Ornette Coleman "debate" of a few weeks ago. The theme is the same: "I know far more about cultural history than you do, and if you knew what I knew, you'd know more than you know. Miles is overrated, you are ignorant of the secret world of true artists, you have been duped."

If I didn't have to finish two pieces that are due tomorrow for SFR's Gift Guide (one on music to buy for people you love, the other on games to buy for people you love...) I'd make a project out of this Miles thing today. I'd also upload some of the Adrian Belew pics from last Saturday and write my take on that. I'd also write a few more 4th step pages. I might even eat lunch.

trumpet unfanfare

I observe with some curiosity that Wynton Marsalis's visit to the City of Holy Faith gets very little press. There's my blurb in the performing arts calendar in SFR, (scroll down) but I fully expected a two or three page puff piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican, which did not appear in their "arts and culture" weekly magazine, Pasatiempo. What did appear was the best my friend David Prince could arrange with Marsalis's press people, a one page interview with Walter Blanding, Jr., who plays tenor in the band. On the one hand this may simply be a continued reflection of the shithouse coverage that jazz in general gets here. On the other hand, it could be a "conspicuous in its absence" indication of a more specific lack of interest. I'll be interested to find out what the house is for Marsalis's performance. Again, I expect it will sell out, but who knows?

What does it mean that Peter Nero got more coverage than Marsalis? I had a great time interviewing Nero for SFR. Personally, I would rather shoot myself in the kneecap than spin a Nero record, but he was unpretentious, funny, world-weary, honest and made no bones about who and what he is and what his music is.

elephant talk

Through an odd series of events (me to arts editor: do we have any comps for Adrian Belew's show? arts editor: not yet, I'll check it out. Arts editor calls venue (Santa Fe Brewing Company). Guy from venue calls KBAC during contest for free tickets, a meet and greet, and an autographed guitar, wins but can't accept prize, gives KBAC my name...) I get to talk with Adrian Belew, I get an autographed guitar, I get two free tickets. I think I'll review my Belew discography a bit...I know him from King Crimson's Discipline, Talking Heads Remain in Light, his own recent Side 3 and I guess that collaboration between Henry Rollins and William Shatner. (you know, "I Can't Get Behind That...," about which experience Rollins included a hilarious 20-25 minutes or so in his Shock and Awe monologue when I saw him here a couple of years ago).

The other odd thing about this is I already had comps to see Wynton Marsalis the same night. Typical Santa Fe log jam, nothing for weeks, Adrian Belew and Marsalis on the same night. I was set to go to the Marsalis show just to see what he's up to these days but I'll pass now.

Comps for shows have become not just a nice occasional fringe benefit of being a writer, but an economic necessity. I have no idea what ticket prices are like in other parts of the country but here they have bumped up faster than gasoline. The Marsalis show starts at $45 and goes up to $80. Belew, appearing at what is basically a pub without a stage, is $30-$45. Freelance writing rates here are in line with wages in general (in the sub-basement) so a lot of shows are prohibitive. This new ticket pricing deal here is a fairly recent development and would be interesting to do a story on.

Yesterday's show sparked more phone calls than I usually get, including from the 85 year old Meredith Fink who deeply appreciated my playing some '70s "fusion." The main impression that sticks with me is just how fresh and jagged Ornette Coleman's Dancing in Your Head sounded next to some of the other pieces I played. That and how profoundly fascinated I continue to be by Miles Davis's electric trumpet/wah-wah pedal set up. So close in time to the big, brassy open horn sound he was using on Jack Johnson, etc., coming out of what one could call the peak of his technical proficiency as a brass player.

Speaking of which, have to check out a Roswell Rudd disc called Blown Bone handed off by station manager: "Here, this is the kind of thing you seem to like..." haha.

boo

Last week, vaguely toying with the idea of putting together a Hallowe'en themed jazz show, I had a hard time coming up with ominous, frightening jazz. Lots of the listeners to KSFR would probably be frightened by lots of what I'd like to play...Brotzmann, Silva's "Luna Surface," CT's Indent, Zorn. But it's not frightening per se. Miles Davis occurred to me as a musician and composer who went into a sort of shadow-aesthetic that a lot of so-called jazz seems to lack. I'm thinking Bitches Brew up to Pangaea. (excluding the obvious).

Jazz Odyssey

Transferred all of the downloaded music from the past few weeks into a playlist (yeah, Windows Mediaplayer, real cutting edge 'round here) and up now is Julian Priester's "Love,Love." Large ensemble, great groove in 15, somewhat dated electronic effects (but charmingly retro-analogue, and damn it I adore the Fender Rhodes, one of the most underrated of all 20th Century instruments). Most of the downloaded music in my files is from the inestimably valuable and tasty destination-out.com. Surprising to see that the playlist totals more than 6 frikkin' hours.

Also up is some Tim Berne, sample mp3's from the lovely screwgun records site, and some Clifford Thornton with Jimmy Garrison and Joe McPhee as well as late '60s Brotzmann from a site called epitonic, that sadly seems defunct or something, despite having live downloadable complete tracks, some of which are quite long. Brotzmann's "Nipples," for example, with Evan Parker and Derek Bailey and a host of others. I keep meaning to digitize my FMP vinyl (and maybe about 50-75 other records) and I keep...not.

The unreliable narrator has offered some of her lovely server space for me to upload mp3's and I look forward to offering links to my own performances as well as music of others.

I'm planning a "jazz fusion" show for this week on KSFR, seeing as how The Zawinul Syndicate played at Lincoln Center last weekend. Like every genre in "jazz," so-called fusion is, well, a lot of different genres. Sadly, the wealth of great music boxed into the confines of "fusion" gets obscured by either the wanktastic proclivities of some who carried the torch for the genre just after the first vital wave (The formidable Derek Smalls composition "Jazz Odyssey" as performed by Spinal Tap, for parodic example), or by the wet kleenex smooth jazz approaches. It's particularly funny to me that Miles Davis gets blamed for creating the genre in the first place. It's clear to anyone with ears that Davis's most aesthetically challenging and prolific creative period was 1969-1975. It should also be clear that the music was a natural extension of what the "second great quintet" was up to, in combination with Davis's unbelievable ears. Hilarious to observe the jazz critics "re-evaluate" this period. (Reminded of the two-star review of On the Corner that ran in Downbeat when On the Corner first came out, containing the statement: "I hate to think that anyone is so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent.")

Thank God for Windows Mediaplayer, now delivering the roiling, discursive, recursive John Coltrane solo from "Creation," via Ethan Iverson's blog, via Billy Hart.

pantheons and pandemonia

The Oct. 30th issue of the New Yorker lists Tomasz Stanko, Bennie Wallace and Cecil Taylor playing this week, among others. Then there's this blurb:

"Jazz at Lincoln Center: "Fusion Revolution." And so the barriers come down. With the appearance of The Joe Zawinul Syndicate within the hallowed confines of Jazz at Lincoln Center, fusion enters the pantheon."

In honor of these barriers coming down I'm rolling with Billy Cobham's Spectrum as I type.

I would love to interview Wynton Marsalis about this, but he's not giving interviews, at least not in connection with his appearance here in Santa Fe next week. I've only heard some of Zawinul's work prior to Miles and Weather Report, I think all of it with Cannonball Adderly. He plays extraordinarily well on a previously unreleased live 1966 recording with Adderly on Capitol, "Live at The Club;" the centerpiece is his own Requiem for a Jazz Musician. (It's a strange recording, as Cannonball was in the habit of handing out sticks to all of the audience members, and this loose "click track" makes for some odd moments).

There is a lot of meandering, self-indulgent live Weather Report up at YouTube, mostly posted by the Jaco groupies. This performance of Volcano for Hire from the later band at the Playboy Festival in LA is remarkable. It's great to hear Wayne Shorter stretching out some more, and the two-drummer setup (Omar Hakim and who?) is pretty wicked, except that the guy on the tom rack and percussion is often inaudible. Zawinul gets some twinkly synth solo time just before the break. The main line itself is pure Zawinul, much more sophisticated than what WR was doing on Birdland, etc. Victor Bailey's bass sound and attack is beautiful. I especially appreciate the odd, broken bop-like lines at about 3:20 that lead into the head.

here's to barriers coming down. And here's to Cecil Taylor tonight at Iridium on Broadway...CT, I hope you found American Spirit menthols somewhere in Manhattan.

today's show

Reeling things in a bit today on KSFR, as some of the programming the past couple of weeks has begun to raise eyebrows again from the higher ups. (Long-suffering station manager to me after last week's show: "Another wacky show today eh?" He was mostly referring to the alto (Dudu Pukwana) and trumpet (Mongezi Feza) solos over the lush orchestrations of Brotherhood of Breath's Devashe's Dream. Perhaps the Muhal Richard Abrams tracks as well.)

Modern Jazz Quartet, Roy Haynes, Bud Powell, Brownie with Roach and Rollins, Pepper Adams, Erroll Garner, Holiday, JJ Johnson, Milt Jackson provide a panoply of safe yet tasty excursions in today's set list. The eyebrow raising is limited to Archie Shepp from Magic of JuJu (side B) Joe Harriott (Straight Lines) and Ornette (Enfant).

Fence sitting, "radio-friendly" (good lord) hybrid inside/out music is more rare than I realized, at least at this time in my library. One example in today's show is the wonderful quartet with Paul Bley, John Gilmore, Paul Motian and Gary Peacock (Ida Lupino). Two goals for building playlists for the future: 1. snag a lot more music from figures solidly in the tradition but that's odd or edgy in some way (late Duke has worked well for this, as has Herbie Nichols, some Mingus, actually quite a bit of Miles). 2. Find much more so-called "outside" stuff that is fairly easy aesthetically (so far some Art Ensemble, Ornette Coleman, several downloads from destination-out.com, etc.) The problem with the whole enterprise: my ears are so accustomed to the entire spectrum that I often hear something as aesthetically accessible that ends up freaking out my long-suffering station manager.

A third goal: get a lot more contemporary releases, from 1995-present. Funny that I get pigeonholed around here as an "outside" listener and musician when in many current circles my library is considered absolutely retro and stuffy.

anyway, I'm on from 1-3 Mountain Standard Time every Thursday streaming from www.ksfr.org.

o tempora! o marsalis! (a.k.a. laces out!)

Call me obsessed, call me paranoid, call me misguided, but when The Outpost, formerly a rather adventurous presenting organization, brings first Branford Marsalis and now, Wynton Marsalis to the barren, windswept, cultural badlands of northern New Mexico, I start to freak out. Or at least get downhearted.

To be fair (and to increase a strange sense of the culture wars being played out at my doorstep) The Outpost helped bring Cecil Taylor here about 2 and a half years ago, and has some interesting stuff on the fall schedule, including the great Eddie Marshall.

Recent "jazz" bookings here included Jane Ira Bloom and Sophie Millman. Bloom is up to fascinating stuff, not entirely to my personal taste but independent and unique, fiercely conceived and instantly recognizable as original. Millman was so bad she actually generated letters to the editor protesting just how bad she was. Which surprised me.

There's The Southwest Jazz Orchestra, which just released its first CD. Some talented players and obvious investment in arranging (mostly by Jack Manno) but largely a repertory outfit. Manno's own piece, "Soaring," is his take on Pat Metheny's guitar lines, but doesn't stand up all that well next to Mulligan, Mingus, etc. The strangest cut is the 16 minute version of "A Love Supreme," (really just the opening section of Coltrane's piece) at too fast a tempo and with none of the meditative mystery of the original. In general, this is an excellent document of what passes for jazz in this part of the world, in that the music is unarguably crafted, mostly reverent, mostly familiar and ancient, not original, and encumbered by a stage band/recital mentality. The enthusiasm and love for the music is implied, but doesn't translate into very energetic or memorable performance. The technical facility and polish of the soloists is pervasive, the charts are workmanlike, the results bland, like jazz preserved in amber.

In other words, to my ears, completely and entirely unlike jazz. On the other hand, I suspect attending a live performance by The Southwest Jazz Orchestra would be a lot of fun. In particular it's rather rare to hear music by a large ensemble these days here. Most of the rehashing is in piano trio and sax quartet settings, mostly in dinner music venues. The big band sound remains one of my favorites, dating from my 10 year old obsession with Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Louis Bellson, Count Basie, and later Duke Ellington, David Murray, Muhal Richard Abrams and Braxton's amazing Creative Orchestra Music '76. Big band music also has perhaps the highest bombast/treacle/pretense quotient in all of jazz. A recent spotlight on Stan Kenton on KSFR here reminded me just how aesthetically bereft and tasteless some big bands could be. (In particular, a dirgelike and funereal version of All the Things You Are that utterly, completely stripped that lovely standard of every aspect of its worth).
In comparison, The Southwest Jazz Orchestra largely avoids embarrassing pitfalls and turns in steady, studied and staid (but at least inoffensive) performances.

And this would be one way to characterize what's on offer here most often, and what garners the most approval, support and attendance. Steady, studied, staid: familiar, polished, repertory-derived, inoffensive...and bland, a music locked, like an extinct insect, in primordial tree sap.

ego

Also finding plenty of the usual internet cock measuring, posturing, and drive-by cheap shots at, in particular, bagatellen.com (see sidebar, check out the Bill Dixon birthday post and comments, Good Lord)-- sadly, as it's also a vital site that is perhaps the most lively. Another irony: a post to freejazz.org extolling the virtues of Ken Burns' Jazz by none other than Marc Edwards, CT's drummer on the epic Dark to Themselves (Edwards turns in a remarkable, passionate, incisive and brilliant performance there, in which I personally hear a lot of Andrew Cyrille influence). Which, in typical free for all internet fashion, has about six trillion responses representing a wide range of mentally interesting points of view.

freejazz.org

Another discovery...looks like a fairly active forum. The sidebar keeps growing.

Freeing Jazz: A YouTube Artist's Tour (or, why I think The Jazz Police have no clothes)

Thinking more about the argument between traditionalists and innovators in any art form, but specifically music. What jumped up in my memory was a Cecil Taylor quote from one of his prickly interviews in the '70s, I think. Interviewers were always asking him about his technique. He'd always say something like "what does it matter?" He elaborated in a quote once by saying something like "anyone with the means can develop technique." I suppose he meant financial means, the resources.

So we have this concept of instrumental mastery, of theoretical mastery, of study and musicianship. The traditionalists more often introduce these terms into their discourse. Here in Santa Fe, especially, "musicianship" is thrown around like mad. (Well, when "playing changes" is still the be all, end all insignia of jazz "musicianship," as well as a very defined timbre, a very refined and gentle aesthetic...) (don't get me wrong, I love Paul desmond, no sarcasm whatsoever, I truly do).

So what makes a musician an artist? Going beyond their instrument, their technique, tone, going beyond being a technician. Individual voice and vision. You don't only instantly recognize their instrumental playing but you also are very glad to be there with them. "Beyond" might be the wrong word. Encompassing more than the physical relationship with the mechanics of producing sound.

But also encompassing more than an imitative or reiterative relationship with the sounds and styles of others. The Braxton stab at Impressions up at YouTube is one kind of example. Compare the melodic, scalar materials he uses, hewing close to the modal tonality, with the immediate departures in phrasing and temporal sense. The Dolphy influence is very clear to me, except that Braxton chooses something midregister without so many intervalic leaps. Taking off around 2:30 and 4 minutes Braxton plays with multiphonic and harmonic shredding, not to my ear from the gospel shout background from which some players' "screaming" seemed to emerge, but from a more abstract place. Fascinating to hear Corea, Vitous and DeJohnette playing very much in "the idiom," laying down a background over which one could imagine many different soloists. (Note that Braxton pulls a traditional jazz rabbit out of a hat by restating the theme at the end of his solo- re-emphasizing the essentially traditional nature of the performance no matter where he might take the solo in between.)

My friend Chris Jonas said once "I hate when Anthony plays those standards," referring more to the "In The Tradition" recordings with Pedersen and Tete Montoliu. Jonas studied with Braxton at Wesleyan and I assume he prefers Braxton unfettered by the tensions of traditional song form. I should ask him.

Then there's Cecil Taylor's One Night with Blue Note Tribute to Alfred Lion solo piano piece. part one,
part two

An interesting contrast is Mr. Taylor's solo performance in Imagine the Sound, captured a short time before. Listen for some of the compositional elements that are identical, in a somehwat pared down milieu.

How much Taylor brought to music by leaving tunes like Things Ain't What They Used to Be behind, by leaving those ensemble and solo ideas in his past (yet there are long sections of his Unit performances that are very much in that tradition as well). By the '80s, when this performance happened, Taylor had made a leap into a sort of 4th dimension that incorporated several melodic and harmonic themes that have yet to be properly analyzed and understood. The alternation between his articulated two-handed immaculately fingered runs and his drumming technique is particularly stunning. I hear the tradition in what he does but in dimensions that are difficult to explicate. As far as technique is concerned, it is beyond reproach, but how ridiculous would it be to hear this and ask "yeah, but can the guy play changes?"

I don't mean to harp on Wynton and Branford Marsalis, but here's CT in his own words on Wynton from an "interview" with Kurt Gottschalk up at allaboutjazz Taylor's take on "the jazz tradition" is very lovingly and acerbically articulated in that interview.

Is it any wonder that Ben Raitliff's "Listening" piece with Branford Marsalis calls Brandford Marsalis "The Jazz Police?" As I mentioned in a comment on the be-jazz blog, I'd gladly forget the Marsalis Factor altogether except that they have left an indelible mark not with their music, but with their revisionist and conservative history of jazz. I loved reading Dave Douglas on the Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary: "It made me want to throw a brick through my television." This was exactly my response for many reasons, yet at the time of its airing I was surrounded by people well-versed in "jazz" as well as neophytes who were orgasmic over the program.

George Russell, Robert Palmer and Ornette Coleman free-forming in conversation about intuition and the heart is part of the story. Interesting to hear one of the foremost technical theorists in jazz harmony and improvisation referring to "Third World Technology" (which could easily be misconstrued out of context)as a value represented by what we call jazz.

The remarkable Italian television performance by a kind of transitional Ornette Coleman group from 1974, with James Blood Ulmer, Billy Higgins and Sirone, says more. Theme from a Symphony, The Good Life, School Work, whatever you call it, there's something seemingly perversely primitivist about Ornette's melody, its repeated, cloying scalar simplicity, recalling Albert Ayler's Bells. (And the Art Ensemble's A Jackson in Your House). At this point Coleman is employing rhythm section ideas that are fairly close to traditional jazz strategy. Higgins playing time, Sirone and Ulmer covering some diatonic harmony. As soon as the solo section starts, what happens? I don't know enough about guitar to understand Ulmer's set up, tuning or technique, but his comping is impressionistically impressive. Sirone's walking chromatic bass lines in slightly more than double time are definitely intuitive, but draw from the traditional role of the bass during jazz horn solos. Coleman goes a lot of different places, but he does restate variations of a part of the theme to cue the end of his solo. Higgins' solo is as straight as anyone's playing here, but elegant and melodic and fitting. The return to the theme itself at the end is surprising and strange. An interesting exercise is to hum or sing the tonic of the theme statement throughout Ornette Coleman's solo, or just keep repeating the theme itself...perhaps it's my imagination but architecturally Coleman seems to accomplish a harmolodic miracle, jumping off of various scale tones of the original theme.

Braxton, Taylor and Coleman are perhaps the three artists from earlier extensions of "jazz" strategy who are most often cited as thorny, difficult, "not jazz," or even "charlatans." This seems particularly sad and unnecessary, exaggerated by traditionalists, both critics and musicians themselves. Some give a cursory nod to their work while citing some "lack of musicianship" and explicitly or implicitly, some lack of plain old cred. (Betty Carter on Cecil, paraphrased: "I don't know what Black Music has, but Cecil doesn't have it." Is it any wonder that a half-fond nickname Mr. Taylor uses for Carter is "The Beast"?) A critic of Ornette Coleman who raises the issue of his tone and intonation and unfavorably compares his playing to that of, say, Phil Woods or Branford Marsalis on the basis of sound production alone is stuck somewhere, in my opinion. Technical aspects of sound production go right past something ineffable about musicians who are also artists.

ornette in his own words

Here's a link to an interview with Ornette Coleman from 1987 that I think says it all:

OC at the Ed Blackwell tribute

smooth or jarring?

we'll see...looking forward to the fade from Don Cherry's piece Brown Rice to Sassy doing Lullaby of Birdland.

which reminds me...have to go be on the radio.

wtf? There's an Ornette Coleman debate??

Sometimes something so breathtakingly unexpected leaps out at you and you have to reconfigure your whole framework. Such is the case with a bunch of stuff on the web regarding so-called "outside" or "free" jazz.

I thought that people had become more comfortable with so-called "free jazz." Of course, I was wrong. "Free jazz" or "outside" or "avant garde" or whatever are themselves terms that are red flags for me. Why do you even have to say what it is? Why put a label on music that's been crucial to jazz evolution for almost 50 frikkin' years now? It's just great music. And who are Wynton and Branford? I heard "Blackzilla" on the radio today and it absolutely bored the everlovin' crap out of me. A sad, pale, thin, boring rip off of "that wild Trane stuff." Branford does better when he's playing new age riffs over sappy orchestrations. It's particularly revealing that Branford M continues to make proclamations about some sort of "ownership" of the music as a result of study and imitation of past masters (see the end of Darius Brubeck's essay).

Darius Brubeck's extremely odd essay about Ornette (on Jack Reilly's blog) doesn't really take a position. It seems clear to me he has not a clue what OC's compositional and theoretical approach is really about.

Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus takes a stab at a clearer and more cogent analysis of Ornette's methodology on his blog.

This still seems tangential somehow. And the truly ironic thing about the Great Ornette Coleman Debate of 2006 is it's nearly 50 years old. Where has everyone been?

HurdAudio posts an excellent rebuttal to Brubeck's "essay."

Still, it amazes me that Ornette Coleman's music and his presence in American life could still be cause for controversy. Perhaps it is a measure of the media success of The Marsalis Factor, this culture-war idea that jazz has to be "legitimized" as an art form, safe for repertory and the concert hall, as "worthy" of serious study as "classical music." The irony is (partly) that The Academy has supported probably far more creative composers and musicians than it has jazz traditionalists bent on "preservation." Well, there are a lot of ironies.

Another irony is that the musicians themselves, who have the least distinctive personal visions or voices, are the ones standing back from *sound innovator and manifest visionary* Ornette Coleman and talking the loudest. The strange aspect of jazz as a cultural product of legitimacy is it leaves behind the phenomenon of what Gil Evans called the "sound innovator." You put on a recording of Louis, Dolphy, Hawkins, Ayler, Threadgill, Bowie, Duke or Garner and you immediately know who it is. It's not about something that can be preserved or archived. And perhaps it is precisely because many so-called jazz musicians now have absolutely no identifiable sound and nothing recognizable as uniquely theirs in their vision that they have returned to "debating" the merits of musicians who make an indelible mark the instant you hear them.

a problem with blogs

You feel oddly compelled to write something even when you suspect you have little or nothing to say.

Pinkbootathon tomorrow. Bing rehearsal today.

Destination-out.com still has “A Beginner’s Guide to Free Jazz” up. One of the things I’ve appreciated most about destination-out is that they have uploaded a bunch of stuff I have on flawed vinyl, or I used to have but no longer have. Such as Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice,” which was for a short time a sort of theme song at St. John’s (perhaps coincident with the influx of a huge brick of hashish and some extremely potent psilocybin mushrooms).

My student produced opera schedule is set: Thursdays from 3:45 to 5:00 at Nava, Fridays from 8:30 to 10:15 at Salazar. The best aspect this time around is I’m working with the same theater artist, Kathryn Mark, at both sites.

3+4+3+4+3+4+3+3+4+3+4+3+4+3+3+4+3+4+3+4+3 without being able to hear. While another drummer and bassist are playing 3+4+3+4+3+3+4+3+4+3. Lock into 24 while the other drummer and bassist lock into 17. Then get ready for 16 bars of 4/4 then back to 24 against 17. Without being able to hear. Or try playing in 3/8 in a piece that's in 15/8 so also counting in groups of 5. Or find a pocket in 20/4 at a tempo somewhere between 60 bpm and 80 bpm. WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO HEAR. Compounded by one's natural desire to create organic sounding musical shapes that are not counting cleverness nor arid mathy stilted constipated mind games.

Such was recording with Jonas yesterday. If anything truly sparky and useable came out of those 6 hours it will be a miracle.

Question: how can a college spend out the wazoo on a state of the art recording studio and have the shittiest studio monitor headphone setup I've ever encountered? It's wrong of me to attribute this to Santa Fe idiocy in general but there it is.

Destination-out crafted a wonderful post titled "A Beginner's Guide to Free Jazz" and while I might not agree with the specific tracks in some cases it's an interesting idea. How do you introduce someone to creative improvised music? It's so contrary to music made for consumption, for life soundtrack or the reinforcement of sentiment. Or whatever. I think the most powerful experiences of collectively improvised music are in live concert settings. But maybe there are recordings that offer a sort of gateway.

stuck on a title

High Mayhem was definitely something. The experience changed for me after the performance Saturday with Rrake. In general, it’s a different feel when one is in the festival as well as a spectator. Random: so many drummers. Conceived a possible piece for 9 drummers for next year. Maybe with 9 drum kits, maybe with somewhere from 1-3 drum kits and multiple drummers on each, sort of like the bowed piano ensemble. Partly a humorous take on just how many drummers there are. But also an expansive approach to the sounds a drum kit can make. Obviously when you think about 9 drummers you think drum battle, bombast, volume. What I’m hearing is extremely sparse and mysterious, also perhaps a humorous parody of the whole concept of drumming itself. Perhaps the drum kits could gradually be assembled and taken apart during the performance.

Rude young people: behind me, during a quiet passage in the excellent (if slightly tentative) Hall Monitors set a young woman was yakking away loudly about Cadillac Ranch, of all things. I asked her to be quiet. She approached me in a break between pieces and under the thinly disguised pretence of apologizing accused me of being rude. I let her know in no uncertain terms that I would brook no such table turning. Whereupon she scurried about (after ascertaining my name) complaining loudly to a wide variety of High Mayhem personnel about what a Rude Person I was. Come to find out she was also highly intoxicated and rather incoherent in general (which I couldn’t pick up on in the brief interactions in the theater itself).

Deirdre Morris’s butoh-inspired piece: one of the highlights of the whole weekend for me.

The wonders of modern technology: Chris Jonas already has a DVD of the Rrake performance. Possible recording session for tomorrow at the College of Santa Fe to capture some stuff before Josh Smith heads back to Oakland.

Awake until 3:30 am. Not up until 11:30. Disorienting for a Monday.

Catalogue: two winter guide pieces, theater review, PA calendar, drum lesson, possible new drum student, opera meeting tomorrow, recording session tomorrow?, Miles rehearsal Wed. 6:30-8, radio and Nava Thursday, Bing rehearsal Saturday?, Pink Boot Sunday. What kind of week is that?

Mayhem

First night of the High Mayhem Emerging Arts Festival was generally phenomenal as usual. The Brilliant Dullards launched with brooding, introspective ambient country/folk music that had an original edge, with references to Tom Waits, Bill Frisell, Radiohead, etc. Jeremy Bleich’s melodica and Milton Villarrubia’s subtle but energetic drumming made it really move for me. Steven M. Miller up next with cascades and washes of tripped out electronic music of the sort that provided a drug-free out of body experience. The highlight of the evening for me was Dino’s Out of Context. A large ensemble including spoken word and voice, OOC is an improvisational orchestra shaped in the moment by Dino’s conduction. He uses 40 different hand signals and was brilliant in his sound sculpting; the ensemble showed focus and prescience.

Another layer altogether provided by Damon and family outside drumming and hollering hilarious poetry through a megaphone. Also, the Anarchestra shack, this year streamlined with quieter instruments. Scary red curtains in a square little room. Reminded me of hell as depicted by David Lynch in Twin Peaks. No backwards talking dwarves were in evidence, however.

What I personally could have done without: a segment of the otherwise intriguing Simulate Sensual performance that included a smug asshole pseudo-shaman who sang lyrics like this: “I want to be enlightened but I’m too fucking frightened.” Go away kid, you bother me.

This evening’s highlight for me personally will be me personally attempting not to personally slaughter Chris Jonas’s intricate and fierce compositions.

The un noted a couple of days ago that High Mayhem is the only thing that has kept me from Friday night poker. Excepting the silent film gig months ago.

The un has generously offered her apartment to my niece Emily and her (what? Boyfriend? Partner? Another conversation with the un about the unsuitability of these relationship names. Maybe this is confirmation through linguistic analysis of The Sponsor’s general theory that relationships are an illusion. Maybe not) boyfriend, who are here for a wedding. This offer comes in the midst of some soul searching around who stays where when, so it is particularly generous. More on that later.

rio en medio

Went out for my annual exercise yesterday on a hike with the narrator up SF National Forest Trail 163, Rio En Medio. River in the middle. Unaccountably beautiful. Every now and then I start in on the old refrain, “I have to get out of here, it’s crazy to live here, people are nuts, this isn’t the right town for me.” Then there’s a day somewhere outside, in the middle of why I’m here in the first place and I find it hard to imagine living anywhere else.

Also discovered a three storey shopping mall right on the plaza that I didn’t even know existed. Ridiculous. Somehow right back to the feeling that this is a ridiculous town. When my sense of humor is intact I’m all right with it. Especially appreciate St. Francis Cathedral with its rose window and its formidable razor sharp spikes arrayed in dense clusters under other windows. St. Francis grieving over speared squirrels and birds. All they wanted was a ledge.

One surprise up the Rio en Medio trail was Pediocactus simpsonii which I thought only started popping up farther north.

Must…write…PA Calendar.

what it must be, it is!

I play around sometimes with the automatic translators on the web. The following is a review of The Henry Grimes Trio, on Ayler records, with Hamid Drake and David Murray, transduced from the Italian:

From the null one Henry Grimes returns. The orecchie and the hairs are bristled. One that to a sure point of the life, after years sixty are confronted with the best jazzisti of the times (); it has decided to disappear for thirty years from the scenes. One that came considered you draw better bassisti in circulation then; one of more equips to you. It had sold its instrument, had cut every possible bridge; it did not know neanche that Ayler was died. Then its name, unexpected; to Los Angeles. Traced from a social worker. Nourishing cerchia of musicians adopts it ideally, encourages it. Then the time of New York arrives; of a new one low. What it must be; it is! Recorded in june 2004 during the Kerava Jazz Festival that is carried out in Finland, the Henry Grimes Trio reveals entusiasmante machine (free) jazz as little times are given to feel. Of it they make part the drummer Hamid Drake and the titanic one to incedere to sax the tenor of David Murray. Fantastic an incandescent lavica tap that one that is primed between the three, one to sprizzare continuous of sparkes; class and inventiveness to profusione. Us vision is found again in the presence of one/emanation connected directly to the several Ayler, Sonny Rollins. All of one surgical precision, the more complex passages and collectives; the solisti moments of one gold of moving classicità. One real, entusiasmante; epifania sonorous. The drumming often funk of Drake one meets with vibrates to you of Murray, to hold all the united one think the agile melodiche lines to us of Grimes; capolavoro. I detach then omicida of according to brano, assolo sweeping of Drake and the opening to bottom throttle and sax; the perfection! The perfect interpretation of the Ayler verbo in opening of the third fragment, dedication and ecstasy; God on the tip of the fingers that suggests that to keys and ropes and skins to strapazzare. What it must be; it is! Pure Trascendenza! One that had gotten lost is has been found again. The divinity induces ringraziare all that are known in closely alphabetical order. Immense! The Naked Lunch!

Which reminds me. Recurring state of agitated self-reflection in which I am weedy and ill-fitted, in combination with behind the curve and late for everything. On the one hand passionate about a few obscure things that I can’t often fully articulate. Sponsor: What is the purpose then of theater? Hmmmm: I dunno. Explorations even brief of the wealth of information out there on jazz now ranging from a tenor player named Javon Jackson who is visiting The Outpost in Albuquerque this week (really just sort of pale R and B funky nonsense that would never have been booked at The Outpost even a few years ago) to Swedish new music record labels (including a Jimmy Lyons Box Set that I didn’t even know existed or the personnel on Alan Silva’s Luna Surface which it turns out included Braxton, Shepp, Malachi Favors…a record I have owned for a long time but without the jacket so I never knew who was in the brew) to The Bad Plus which I somehow convince myself is a mirror for the apathetic, anhedonistical low affect 20-something chill cynics. To cactus info in response to members of the cactiguide forum wanting help with an ID and I set out fairly sure what something is and end up completely in the dark, really.

In theory, the new mantra “I don’t know the whole story and I don’t have to,” intended to make steps 1-3 bite size is something just fine by me. But when the rubber meets the road (oh strike that, no leave it in) and I touch on areas where I call myself an expert (“And you call yourself an expert? Hahahahahahah”) it’s a painful experience to come up against just how little I actually do know.

Then there is that weedy thing. I am out of place. This is the wrong town with the wrong people, the wrong artists and musicians. Second, third, fourth wave recycled by wannabes, approaches appearing cutting edge and radical here that have been deployed and abandoned decades ago elsewhere. The old arguments about “outside” versus “inside” that aren’t even taking place in my imaginary cities where everyone is very hip and knows who Karen Borca is. Where Cecil Taylor long ago moved from “radical” to “icon.”

I explain and defend here a lot and I imagine a magical place where *other people would bring shit to me that I did not know about* and where all of the explaining and defending would be over with. A group, too, not just one or two others. But that’s just my imagination. Runnin’ away with me.

I theorize that all of these discomforts are aspects of myself emerging rather than hiding in the background and pretending. Certainly a side effect of sobriety.