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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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17 minutes ago, BeBop said:
Jazz music is "the clearest of all signs of our age's deep-seated predilection for barbarism".
Richard M. Weaver
that one I agree with it. That's pretty much the way the business is.
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1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:
And in other news this evening, water is wet and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
are you sure about Franco?
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29 minutes ago, Mark Stryker said:
Interjecting here to say that while I certainly cannot speak for all university presses or Allen's experiences, the University of Michigan Press paid me a modest advance for Jazz from Detroit -- half upon signing the contract, half upon delivery of the manuscript -- and I have received royalties annually since publication. Now, it is an exceedingly small return, particularly given the years of work involved and my own dollars that went into it -- I had to pay for the indexing and some of the photo acquisitions. I have no doubt that Allen's self-published books have netted him a higher return per title than my book did through a university press. But it has not been nothing.
thanks - my reaction was prompted by two very esteemed music writers, one of whom had his book reprinted in a different format by his U press without any consultation or consideration, the other of whom told me he received a pittance over the years for various books. But to me the bigger problem is the way U. Presses price books - I assume they are thinking only libraries will buy them, but that's just idiotic, as it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when they are charging $40-$100 a book. And Kindle prices are even crazier; because of surgery around my eyes I have been reading mostly on my kindle, and I wanted to pick up Larry Kart's book so I could re-read it; it was DOUBLE for kindle, compared to what a hard copy cost.
The other thing I will add (and I'm glad Mark that your experience was better) is that I have found U Press peer review to be nasty and full of conflicts of interest - I know I am somewhat controversial, and the last time my book was reviewed in this way it was clear that some of the reviewers did not like my opinions or me personally, though they never said so in the review but instead nit-picked. They should have recused themselves; and I should mention the U. Cal Press woman who said to me over the phone about one of my books "I love it but it won't pass political muster with my board." The truth is that academics don't really, at their core, believe in free speech if it challenges their basic assumptions.
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5 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:
One of my favorites was my second Clark Terry interview, which began at 1 am due to his having company stay later on a weeknight. But he made it worth it when I asked him how he premiered his routine of alternating between trumpet and flugelhorn during a solo, something that wasn’t included in his autobiography.
I never know when a question will strike gold but even with a veteran interviewed many times over the decades, it does happen.
I will have to admit that both Herb Ellis and Andre Previn were miserable experiences. I erased Ellis’ tape without playing it. Previn’s demands were ridiculous and he postponed scheduling it so long that the magazine couldn’t substitute another cover feature. But everyone else has been a joy and it helps when they are well represented in my collection.
I know in advance that jazz books don’t generally make a lot of money, but that’s okay. It’s not like I am expecting a university press to publish it.
what did Ellis do? Also, I would suggest you avoid University presses like the plague. I have made a decent amount off of my books, all self published. U presses don't pay, even royalties, and you cannot trust small presses who never do an honest accounting.
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get musicians who have not been over-covered; Ken Peplowski, Aaron Johnson, Sascha Perry, Frank Lacy, Ray Anderson, me (I did two long interviews in the last year, Q&A that were a lot of fun); Jack Walrath; Elijah Shiffer (great alto player, one of the most creative musicians in jazz today, though nobody here seems to know him); James Paul Nadien (great young drummer), Gerald Cleaver.
One of the reason jazz books are so dull is because the same "personalities" appear over and over. It would be nice to break the habit -
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weird thing about so much of Grossman's later output is how badly a lot of it is recorded. Off-mic, too much reverb, very little presence. Maybe his problem was with engineers. That's driven me to despair more than once.
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Noisy audience. Maybe he was waiting for them to quiet down.
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1 hour ago, JSngry said:
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Specifics?
from a musician who worked with her, said she was very difficult and Diva-ish.
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I have heard various things about an extremely difficult personality. That may be relevant.
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Larry Gushee told me about her. IIRC she did a lot of work with baseball statistics.
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6 hours ago, Dan Gould said:
Well that makes no sense but there it is.
probably because for legal reasons they are saying it's not for sale in the USA but don't really give a sh** and will sell it anywhere.
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we made two top ten lists so far for 2023 recordings, both for In the Dark on ESP:
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/12/04/our-jazz-columnist-reveals-his-favorite-releases-from-2023/
https://geneseymour.com/?p=3733
get 'em while they're hot and before I'm cold.
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I know Grossman is a complicated figure, and the conventional wisdom, based, AFAIK, on recordings, is that after his early years he took up with the style of Sonny Rollins and lost his way. Mark in particular has written well about Grossman's stylistic wanderings, which jibed with what I had heard of his playing - and then - and then - I found a series of live footage on Youtube of him playing "Live on Tokyo" and I would venture to say that now, at least to me, all bets are off. Yes, he has backed off a lot from his Coltrane-ish attitude, and assumed more of a post-bop thing, but on these videos he has gathered it all together and turned it into some of the most comprehensively inventive sorta-bebop playing I have ever heard - but it's really much more. His sound, technique, harmonic grasp, makes these performances some of the best saxophone playing extant after, I would say, 1980 - gone is any real hint of Sonny Rollins mimicking, though of course that influence is still there. Listen to this, just one of several things floating around Youtube from this incredible performance:
where's that guy who said I never like anything? Out torturing flies?
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so when's the reveal? Perspiring minds want to know.
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I will relate a story that Paul Bley told me about when he was playing with this group. There were tunes in which Sonny's playing was so abstract that he seemed like he was trying to lose Hawkins. In these cases Hawkins asked Bley to cue him in for his solos. As for Sonny, I've always thought he was a lot more competitive than he let on in his basic kindness and graciousness. But I have heard a few stories of his attempts to wipe away tenor sax competitors at jam sessions in what I recall were the 1950s in New Jersey (related to me by Bill Triglia). He was not shy about showing other players up.
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16 hours ago, kh1958 said:
No. I just enjoy attending music festivals, and it's a good one in my opinion.
Based on your recent releases, they should have booked you. Dumb move on their part to not do so.
Thanks. I think we'd be good for them. But according to the web site you cannot apply. It's like that old tv show about the Millionaire.
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On 10/3/2023 at 11:10 AM, kh1958 said:
Next Tuesday, October 10th, Big Ears will unveil more than a dozen exciting additions to the 2024 festival lineup. Stay tuned via our newsletter, website, and social media channels for more details!
are you working for the Big Ears fest?
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and now listening to it in the original mix, all is well. I actually think Elvin's drumming is brilliant and brings out something really extra in Duke.
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weird thing is, hearing the balance like this, it feels like the time goes out of whack somewhere in the middle of his solo. I will have to listen to the original.
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6 hours ago, sonnymax said:
From what I gather from other members, no Allen, you are not alone. At the same time, you're probably the only one here who would create a thread to express your hatred of another artist. Certainly not the first time you've done this, and probably not the last. With your vast knowledge and experience, I'd much rather see a thread about musicians you really admire, artists you think I should check out. Larry K does this from time to time, and I appreciate his efforts. Then again, curmudgeons are gonna curmudge. Too bad.
1) I've written 5 books, at least, and mastered/restored about 2,000 songs that say otherwise. History of jazz, rock and roll, American music, and the blues. All with explanations, historical background, rationale, etc. You're not paying attention. All reasonably priced.
2) The curmudgeon label is really offensive. Also a-historical, showing a real lack of historical understanding of the place of criticism in music, literature, theater, etc. And it is horribly age-ist - dictionary definition: "a bad-tempered person, especially an old one." I am not bad tempered though I am definitely old. But when I dislike things I have reasons and I explain them. I refuse, as I do get older, to passively accept degrading stereotypes.
And truthfully, this is the kind of personal b.s. that has chased me away on this forum on more than one occasion.
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12 hours ago, dicky said:
GB was a monster guitarist. I have 3 CTI albums which I thoroughly enjoy. Also have him w/ McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Miles, Freddie, etc.. He chose to make money rather than continuing on the path of the albums I dig. Good for him.
In doing so (with his not so distinguished singing), he undoubtedly brought awareness to a mass audience of "purer" jazz recordings. Good on him. What's the problem?
it's been long shown that that kind of trickle down theory just does not indicate reality. And unless you can document it through personal reports, sales, audience response, I wouldn't suggest it as reality.
13 hours ago, JSngry said:Taste is subjective of course, but things like pitch and time are totally quantifiable. If you seriously think that's a "bad singer" then I question both your ears and your objective judgement. Seriously.
Bobby Bland shows were much like that, at least the ones with African-American audiences.
Good for him!
God forbid that people have both skill and ambition that find reward...
Seriously, please continue to question my ears and objective judgement. And I will question your taste. Somehow I don't think either of us will get too far.
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his singing is just awful, has a horrible, flaccid quality to it - also, I didn't say he had been on America's Got Talent, just that he always appears to be on the show when he is singing. But that Moody thing is just....well, if I heard it blind I would think of it as just another soft jazz thing.
Clearly I am fading into the minority here. He just sounds to me like the musical equivalent of processed food. And I think the Moody vocal sounds like the kind of bad singer who sits in at jam sessions and who you can't seem to get rid of.
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....he's always preening for the judges on America's Got Talent.
I ask because I just posted this on Facebook to a largely negative response.
Yes, I know he's a great guitarist, but the last clip I saw of him he played mostly stock phrases and cliches. This is the price a jazz musician often pays for that kind of popularity.
But his singing is slick and bland and shallow, to my ears.
Dizzy and Queens
in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...
Posted · Edited by AllenLowe
you betcha, that article disgusted me, was complete and offensive crap; as I posted on Facebook:
"the New York Times continues its assault on American culture. In an article on jazz musicians who lived in Queens (and it never even mentions people like Percy Heath who not only lived there but whose house, as I recall, was a place where a lot of younger people were welcomed to what became a very friendly hangout; and, while saying how important it was as a place for Dizzy never mentions that he left it for New Jersey) they write: