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AllenLowe

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Everything posted by AllenLowe

  1. I am very interested but I have a feeling Sonny still holds almost everything back. The most insightful thing I have ever heard about him was about 30 years ago from Jamil Nasser who said that Sonny early eccentricities - the bridge, the mohawk, the sabbiticals - were expressed when Coltrane ascended and really usurped Sonny's tenor dominance. Jamil felt that all of this was just a way of his trying to reassert his popularity, that it was random, aimless, and somewhat pointless. I tend to agree, to whit: right after this time he did his best playing ever, some of the best playing in the history of jazz (say, 1962-1968) before turning to what I would call (and this is not a popular opinion) an over-ripe, neo-pop style with a newly-dominant (and noisy) rhythm section, culminating in years and years of good but unfocused playing. At this point (yes, in my personal opinion) he just decided he was going to be popular, and though there were real, live sparks of what he could do, his body of work just ended up as - a body of work, inconsistent, crowded with empty performances (of both his and the band's). There is almost a weirdly disturbing hint of distorted ego in all of this, and I remember being really disgusted with his interivews in that movie (G-Man?) where, along with Lucille, everything seems almost totally self directed. And the rest was a kind of sordid artistic journey from nowhere to nothing. Sorry, that's how I feel. Sonny is one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, and genuinely nice guy to boot, and personally he has had a dominating effect on my own playing and musical approach; but he could still have been wildly popular and made plenty of money if he had learned how to be dispassionately self-critical (instead of doing so in a more radically self-rejecting way, as indicated by one passage I saw quoted). He has/had the right to do otherwise, and more power to him, but it doesn't mean we cannot evaluate his work realistically. So....I guess what I am saying is that I would be interested in the notebooks if they reflect a real inside look instead of one that, under the guise of telling all, is really still very sanitized, even if in a way that is deep and very carefully encoded.
  2. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1353950503Mailer_WhiteNegro.pdf
  3. Pepper made frequent comments about his whiteness, many of them indicating a strong personal sensitivity at being considered less "authentic" because of his race. Absolutely, but not necessarily for the better.
  4. I have gone through five stages with later Art Pepper: 1) I met and spent time with him when he came to Boston on his comeback tour, loved the guy, escorted him around town, and thought he was fantastic that night, though I noticed some oddness to his playing. He gave me a few copies of his current LPs which took me to 2) being frustrated with the recordings. He seemed to be working too hard to sound "contemporary" in a sort of post-early Coltrane way. A lot of stops and starts that just were dull in their ineffective tonal tangents. A "scream" here, a pounded note there, as though he was telling people "yes I have heard jazz in the last 20 years and here is my interpretation." But he was always best when he changed back to his linear style which, as with that night in Boston, had intensified and focused itself in profound ways. But it never lasted; I could not listen to these LPs, which bored and frustrated me; so 3) I stopped listening. There was just too much wrong with his current approach, which had substituted a kind of emotional self-expose while losing the true intensity of linear development. It was raw but it was not really revealing or indicative of any true artistic epiphany, but then.... 4) Some years later I went back and started listening again, to the Vanguard CDs, another with Duke Jordan, and I heard moments of real personal revelation, so I started listening again, enjoying myself until.... 5) His personal history and artistic mis-advantures just started to repeat themselves; blues cliches substituting for real expression (and I do wonder if some of his personal racial self consciousness was starting to act in artistically self destructive ways), the same retreat into false tonal and harmonic exploration, just a weird kind of near-narcissistic emotional self-abuse. And now listening to a clip from one of these sessions, I feel like I cannot listen any more.
  5. Nadien is a terrific drummer; I will be recording with him in January. Very curious as to who the weak link was (older dude). It wasn't me.
  6. sounds great. As this is Organissimo, I doubt a lot of members will show up (actually one showed up at our Kingston gig, which was really nice). Would be there if I could.
  7. Sounds more like Shrinking Ears. With some exceptions, they are really stuck in a rut, as is most of what we used to call the "New Music" scene. Jon Batiste? Is he going to do one of his awful pop things?
  8. they don't discuss any of his groups in the '80s or '90s except M'Boom. And there are other errors, which didn't hurt my appreciation of the documentary, but which were significant and a bit shocking. The worst being that there is no real explanation of WHY his style was so revolutionary and important.
  9. I am watching it gradually; on October 22 my quartet will be performing after a showing in New Haven. I will also, on that night, be co-moderating a panel on the film (the filmmaker will be there) - So far, about one-third through, two things are bothering me - no mention of Jo Jones, who Max idolized, and, in the post-tragedy atmosphere of Clfford Brown's death, no mention of Bird's death just the year before. This must have had a huge impact on Roach - the two in near-tandem - and I know from the old beboppers I knew that Bird's death was cataclysmic for a generation of players who not only loved him but who were extremely dependent on his presence and creativity. From what I know, some were sent into a real personal tailspin, and I cannot imagine that the two deaths - not just the one, as the documentary mentions - were a terrible blow for him.
  10. Max, as Dan Morgenstern told me years ago "had psychological problems." In the early days he beat up people. Bill Triglia told me if he was walking down the street and saw Roach coming, he would cross the street rather than be shaken down for cash. And, Max did beat up Abbey Lincoln. Though from what I know he changed; when I met him he was just a very easy-going, nice person (we had a nice conversation about Dave Tough). Musically-speaking, post-70s Max is a slog, at least for me. I think he lost his swing in his attempts to be "contemporary," and that last band with Pope and Bridgewater was deadly dull, to my ears. Max's playing was just like a hammer in those last years, and it swung as much. I admire his attempt to try, but he should have stayed with his original concept, which was contemporary as anything; steely, rock-like sound, and incredibly swinging. Not as earth-bound.
  11. actually we don't say Quadrophonic any more. It's now "Sys Audio x 4". It's for listeners seeking a safe space, away from Jazz Sonic Micro Aggression.
  12. oh; hmmmm. Maybe I read that one. I will say that there's a lot I don't remember about that time (had just finished chemo and radiation for the first time, was sleeping for about an hour at a time, lost about 40 pounds and didn't eat solid food for two months). But I have no memory of that. I wonder where I put that book.
  13. I apologize for not going into greater detail, as I am in the middle of two insanely complicated projects right now, but to your question about polyphony - it might be related to the very unified independence of African rhythms, the way in which they divert and then return to the pocket. But truthfully, African music is not an area I know enough about to speak definitively. I would refer you to the writings of Gerald Kubik, who has written spectacularly on this and other related topics. I hope to do this in my Black Country project, though I did write about that a bit (I think) in Turn Me Loose White Man,
  14. this is very complicated, but essentially it fits the sound of rural music shared by whites....most if not all pre-War. It is complicated, yes, old timey and non-blues.
  15. one thing I will say is that Blake recorded a piano roll of that piece in 1917, and may have written it 5-10 years earlier.
  16. My next project (probably next spring) is on Black country, and you might be surprised at how many black string bands recorded in the 1920s and 1930s.
  17. I understand how academia, in particular, can destroy any enthusiasm one might have on any topic; but the origins of jazz question is really one about African American cultural history, and how various pre-jazz forces - from minstrelsy to songsterism to black and white pop, racism, and various musical stages came together in a strangely comprehensive way; kind of like a slow Big Bang theory. And I won't even mention the question of 19th century white fiddlers; and early black string bands. Also, in the middle of all this we may have missed my post above, with the Eubie Blake piano piece, which is really jazz in 1921 from a Northerner.
  18. I apologize for not having the time right now to go into detail about my opinion on this, but I will start by quoting Larry Gushee, who said "New Orleans is not where jazz started, but they have an excellent chamber of commerce." There was no better historian of early jazz than Larry. Personally I would say that perhaps early jazz was taken to its highest point of early development there, but there is no way to determine origins in an empirical way, I think. Think: James Reese Europe; Gus Haenschen; San Francisco (there is a good book on this); Eubie Blake's Charleston Rag (1921) (which really is a game changer); and the pre-history which is largely but not only Southern, and which I do cover in Devilin' Tune. I would also encourage you to read Willie the Lion Smith's autobio, which tells us what a complex musical world the North had. But listen to Charleston Rag, by a Northeasterner, from 1921; this is a Jazz Piece, as are several things by the Europe Band in 1913 (Charleston Rag had other names like Sounds of Africa and African Rag):
  19. I don't wanna start a he said: he said, but the non-overdubbed sound is radically better (yes, in my opinion); the Mingus "fix" sounds like one of those "remastered for stereo" things.
  20. well, you were 4 years old - close enough -
  21. well, I think one could make the argument that he accomplished enough in his early years.
  22. this is a really unfair way of disagreeing with me, as it implies I am lying and citing/criticizing work I have not heard. I have always been checked in, have been listening to Dylan since I was 12. He always had the weakness I describe, of confusing cleverness with intelligence; it's not the same thing. Lots of bad lyrics, "words that tear and strain to rhyme," (Paul Simon). Look, here is a guy that revolutionized popular music - sometimes I think he was more important musically than lyrically, as we hear in Highway 61 and Blonde on Blond particularly, as he changes the sound stage of this music completely in a way which no one has ever been able to duplicate. But somewhere along the line he started to believe his owb press notices and decided that since he was a genius anything he produced would be a work of genius (it's an old syndrome; happened also to Lou Reed and John Lennon). Listen to the voice as it goes from phrase mastery to the unlistenable Rolling Thunder Review; go back to 1962 and the Minnesota tapes. Here was a guy who was completely rethinking every aspect of folk, the blues, and then rock and roll. There's no shame in the fact that ge simply went fallow, lost his mojo, whatever the hell it was. It may even have to do with fame and the way it corrupts self image. But I never checked out. I was there listening, possibly even before you were born.
  23. I honestly think Dylan ran out of ideas with John Wesley Harding. After which his singing started to sound like a parody of himself. He was a great artist who completely transformed the music - very few can say that - but I find his prose insufferable in the autobiography and his opinions on various kinds music clever rather than smart. 'tis a pity. If only he'd retired instead of doing Victoria's Secret commercials.
  24. I too look forward to reading your reviews, which I suspect will be more enlightening than the actual music.
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