Simon Weil

Aaahm ah-forgettin' Armaggedon S'only Twilight of Gauds Aaaahm ah-forgettin' Armaggedon.

Thanks.

40 years ago, I compared Rumours to For What It's Worth, saying that Fleetwood Mac was representative of Rock not believing in anything anymore, while it had previously on (e.g.) the Buffalo Springfield record. I got laughed at for my troubles - that's when I stopped believing in Rock, asserting that people didn't have anything to say, but they were very good at saying it.

Your post was empty.

And Mike Gibbs was born in Southern Rhodesia?

Strictly speaking, Wheeler was Canadian. I haven't played it for a while, but I liked the music a lot.

He was born in London and educated in Ambleside (Cumbria).

George Eliot's partner

What about the discussion we had about Rock books? Or are you just being provocative?

http://www.kenhyder.co.uk/

My memory is of buying that one later. The Red one comes up as Vol 2 on google.

Speaking for myself, I had a general idea of Jazz being "where the real stuff was" - as a vibe. This played out over the years. One of the guys who evidently was part of this "real stuff" was Monk. So I was on the look-out for something I could buy - but I had to have a positive direction to go. I have the vague idea of a specific mention of the Monk/Jackson sides - and buying Vol 1 of the BN records.

I know the 50s solo piano really helped me get into Monk. I have a special thing for (what I hear as) the concentrated promise (of things to come) of this material. I love the Milt Jackson BN sides - and for a perverse reason. That is the way Monk just pulls the floor from beneath his soloist so that the solo is, as it were, having to get across the gap.

I would go with the BN CDs.

Kofsky was arrogant and tendentious - and blatant. I always wish he'd been more receptive - because he would have missed so much by trying to push Coltrane in one direction. There is at least some stuff, however, that is not to be found elsewhere.

He's so ordinary. Maybe that's part of why he's so universal.

Arbour Zena (Keith Jarrett).

Pathetic-crazy. You're "Spite"...Kind of stereotype of a critic (I guess).

He waits 30 years - to say he's going to.... ...Not.

The synthetic stuff by Taborn (some of it) is kind of putting me [off] at sea. But I have a sense of the whole being valuable - and it'd have to be part of that.There's some ravishing playing by Parker (IMHO). My Holland echo is back to Conference of the Birds.

Sold.

That's a fine description. In the sense of a description of the internal of these people in a subtle way. You don't often get that - a rings true view of the inside of this sort of horrible person - and it's valuable for that reason (IMO). I don't think Lee he is capable of fine. Like he takes on this sort of "serious" subject and then never really delivers any sort of insight into what's actually going on. He sort of flatters to deceive in that way (also IMO).

Thanks, Larry. My roots are a lot more scattered. I had I guess what you'd call my first critical experience when I was going up the road and looked at this puddle. It had the sort of iridescent colours you get when there's petrol on the surface and I went "Is this beauty?" I think I was about 6. Also when I was 6 I forced my parents to buy me "The Runaway Train" by Michael Holliday (I've still got the replacement 45 they bought me when I broke the original 78). So I have an early train-related music thing. There's also a sea thing (but not musical). When I was 3, I remember looking at a ship and thinking why does anti-rust paint look like rust?

When I was in the back of my dad's car in the 60s, there was (when he wasn't listening to the financial reports) the pop sounds of the day playing. This was when I was about 11. For whatever reason, I seem to have the female British pop singers stuck in my mind as a core sound of the day. I bought some Dusty Springfield because she seemed archetypal of that sort of constrained, strangely hypnotic kind of thing. There's something seductive and very odd about her voice - a strange place that she's coming from. Not just that she was a lesbian who couldn't out, but also some weird cocktail of psychopathology you can read about in the Penny Valentine/Vicki Wickham biography. I don't know that it really gives you the secret of the music, but it gives you some sort of sense that, "Yes, this was a very specific place the music was coming from." So I think this is like Larry Kart's idea of the music taking you somewhere else. Only I do think it was inside Dusty Springfield - and, maybe, to some extent, representative of the women of the time. We always read about the 60s being the decade of liberation - but this doesn't sound like liberation to me. More like the music of a strange sort of survival in her sound. (IMO)

OK. I've put numbers by the bits I'm going to respond to: [1] I would agree with "served by science" in the sense of using a constrained-by-rationality approach to the tools of art. I would probably agree with [2] too. Because I don't think an artist knows absolutely all there is to know about what he's doing in a conscious, rational, though-through way. He does know somewhere however. [3] Enhance, I think, understates. There are movies where it's just essential. Imagine the first Star Wars film without that grandiose theme that opens the film. I mean it opens you up. I can only speak for myself - and I know there are moments when I am thinking in a very directed, rational kind of way. It is a means to an end, I want to solve this problem kind of thinking. On the other hand I do also respond in a highly emotional, instinctive kind of way - and that, I believe, is the more reliable, grounded side of me. I need that to stop myself being totally led up the garden path by something that seems perectly rational, but is, in fact, horse$hit. Not to disagree with the esteemed Mr James, but I do definitely feel there is a rational bit of myself and it's distinct and separate - but the thing that roots me is emotional. So maybe we're not so far apart. Yup.It's just nice we can do it in a collegiate way. And it's really nice we can discuss this sort of "deadly serious" stuff.