Simon Weil

Did a google search and this came up: http://www.ink19.com/issues/august2002/scr...eMikesSick.html Simon Weil

I never really liked Jewel Boxes. You really have to be careful with them all the time. With Digipacks, you can be a little loose and not suffer breakage. I've ordered the Ayler (hasn't come yet)...Actually there seems to have been quite a lot of Ayler stuff come on the market lately. Maybe a rekindling of interest? (wishful thinking?) Simon Weil

...And I thought it was Fats and.... "just to be sure".... did that thing with the properties button...diz.jpg. Shoulda believed my instincts. Simon Weil

I loved the intensity of the Dizzy one...Also it works against his public image. Simon Weil

Just to be clear, I didn't really like what Harris said - It sounded to me like clever self-justification. But, then, on the other hand, I also hear the dead hand of Wynton and his mates percolating through, albeit unknowingly, in the "if it doesn't have blues in it, it can't be Jazz". Basically, what I was doing was reactive. Simon Weil

...If "the blues" are ceasing to have relevancy as a STYLE to many people, that's one thing. The reason so much of what passes for "blues" these days sounds outright STUPID is because its NOT about the meaning anymore, it's about the style above all else. ....But style so very often has nothing to do with substance, and that's where proclaiming the lack of relevancy of the blues starts down a slippery slope. Seriously. Ellington figured that one out, didn't he? The Blues ain't nothin' but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ...The blues - not the temporal style, but the eternally relevant fundamental dynamics that create them - will die only when humanity does. I just hope that that death is by natural causes, not the mass suicide of a Faustian bargain with a self-congratulatory delusion. But, the blues being what they are, it probably will be. Well, how about a test for playing the blues - that even when you're not trying to do it, it comes out. I mean the blues mean a lot to me, and in some respect feel like home. So, like sooner or later, everyone comes home... Isn't that stuff about illusion the new reality? Like white is the new black. I woke up this morning and I was in the Matrix.... Simon Weil

Right, I mean the first European Jazz musician of real stature, Django Reinhardt, doesn't really strike me as a blues player. I mean he was, I guess, coming out of the tradition of gypsy improvising. And then there's guys like James P. Johnson - also not really a blues player, although he does play some blues tunes his sensibility seems somewhat different. I mean once can maintain that blues and swing are central to the Jazz tradition, but before that tradition was really formed, you got James P. (as a non-blues guy) and (say) early Ellington (as something that doesn't swing, not really). I confess that tieing things down too specifically worries me. Simon Weil

I really respond to the "vibe" of the blues, but I think something has happened in black American society (basically I think the blues is a black innovation which affects other people) which has disconnected a lot of people from it. I don't think there's anything you can do about that, I think it's just happened. I actually find a lot of "blues playing" now also rather disconnected and lacking in honesty - more like a technical exercise in "playing the blues" rather than about expressing emotion. I think "the Blues" isn't *really* necessary to create Jazz or Jazz-related music. The Euro-free players don't really have much blues in their pallette and yet do produce vital and original music - and there's a big crossover between them and the American free players who often do have substantial blues feel (say in Chicago etc) - showing a deep level affinity. The main thing for me is the vitality and honesty of the improvised music - which I think is necessarily rooted in the musical (and other) culture from which the musican comes. I do worry that Americans don't seem to respond to blues though... Simon Weil

Just to make slight justification of the Art Ensemble Box (The guy who produced a set says don't buy it, but I disagree...aaargh). It's kind of an instinctive thing. In a way, I think the too-muchness of the set is a good thing. It's like it gives you all this stuff to work with, work through, so that it becomes a kind of testing ground for acclimatization. All this assumes that Mark is going to like the Art Ensemble, and that's really the weakness of my position. Somehow I have the idea he will. Anyway... Simon Weil

Well, I can go "oh dear" again...I actually didn't know (or hadn't looked..or something) about the EMI disk. But it has "People in Sorrow" on it, which would have been top of my list to recommend if I'd known it was out. So, yeah, what Chuck says is right. Simon Weil

It seems odd that Dolphy should have been tagged a charlatan. The man had a very identifiable style with his trademark intervallic leaps. Even on the surface, there’s a distinct method at work. There's an interview on the Dolphy video (?Last Date - very nice) where an older European musician recalls thinking along those lines until he actually got to sit down in front of Dolphy and he see what he could do. Then he was totally blown away (I think this was a rehearsal for something). My view is that if something is unfamiliar and people don't get it, they can easily fall into thinking "well, there's nothing in it" - and thence to thinking the whole thing is a con. That's especially so in the fraught musico-cultural scene that surrounded the appearance of "Free" etc. I mean there was long discussion about whether, specifically, Coltrane and Dolphy *circa 1961* was "anti-Jazz". I mean Coltrane circa 1961 - who can believe that? Yet it was done. I guess some of that, kind of musical paranoia, fed into Dolphy having to prove himself. That 1961 Village Vanguard Coltrane box with Dolphy etc is really fine... Simon Weil

Oh dear, having said Da Moose can get Free via Dolphy, I'm a bit stuck now that I find he already likes him. My first thought was "Free Jazz" itself (the Ornette album)...My instincts, however, say: 1) Gunther Schuller/Abstraction - This is a kind of atonal third-stream record with solos from Dolphy, Ornette et al. Pretty accessible to my ears. 2) Conference of the Birds/Dave Holland - tunes plus Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers etc. I think maybe you want to go at this thing sideways. Use avant-garde "bridge" recordings (and players, like Dolphy) to "acclimatize" yourself to a "freer" ethic - and then work your way in. In that context some of the early Art Ensemble recordings (e.g. Roscoe Mitchell's "Sound" or Chuck's Art Ensemble box) might be the deal. Also I second John Litweiler's "The Freedom Principle" as a useful way into this music - if you respond to books. Incidentally, Dolphy was one of the guys who got the charlatan thing... Simon Weil

If Hard Bop is where Jazzmoose is coming from, he might like to try Oliver Nelson's "Screaming the Blues." This is a pretty straight ahead date with the addition of Eric Dolphy whose solo interventions energize the record to my ears. Dolphy isn't really free; more or the borderline between...But this is a real good record in my opinion. AND it's the way I found into freer Jazz from other disciplines. Once you get into Dolphy (if you do), that can take you elsewhere. Maybe. Simon Weil

I'd guess that Bluenote are shocked at the response they got from us, the regulars, at their botched "cleaning up" of the board and now they want time to retrench and rethink. Tom did originally give a relatively short time-scale for the board revamp and that has clearly changed. Why? Well it might be something else, but the pissing off of 4,000 customers in a niche market is always liable to concentrate people's minds. They should just apologize and be done with it. Plus GET A MODERATOR. Simon Weil

Don't know Lucky Southern, but Lon's description makes me think I should get "Free". "Virgin Land" was one of those records that meant a lot to me when I was coming into Jazz and I'd like to have the stuff around it, as it were. Looks like it *is* oop, so I'll have a go at Gemm.com... Thanks, Simon Weil

I think "Fingers" is a nice record too. The whole band has a light, flexible Brazilian-type groove - which is what the record is about. The Airto CTI record I got first was "Virgin Land" which has Stanley Clarke/Alex Blake on bass and George Duke/Milcho Leviev on keyboards replacing the Brazilians from a year earlier. The result is heavier - but it still works. Although it doesn't have that "second-nature, band that plays together" feel of "Fingers", it does have a bunch of engaging Jazz-Rock tunes including "Stanley's Tune" with Clarke's monster bass playing. I absolutely love that cut, and really like the album as a whole. Don't know "Free", the CTI record Jim was referring to. Simon Weil