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Lazaro Vega

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Posts posted by Lazaro Vega

  1. The "invisible hand" is a crock, first and foremost. The highway system, the school system, NASA, Haliberton in Iraq: none of that was determined or implemented by competition and then weeded out, it was all helped along by the government, especially back when the government was more about the people of America than corporate welfare.

    McDonough is grinding an ax on Basie's back. When that's the way the article begins, its a red flag for reading the eventual criticism. Essentially using the lead to spell out an agenda that the music will now support.

    Some ideas which may in fact deal with his notion of "the invisible hand" in cultural expression are from the realm of psychology, particularly Jung's concepts of archetypes, which make for interesting application to all kinds of human behavior, yet have nothing to do with the inhuman, indifferent efficiencies of unhindered capitalism.

  2. The Go:Organic Orchestra is about as different as large ensemble music can be. Interesting to read Lateef's comments regarding John Coltrane. While I'm tempted to say Go:Organic is in the spirit of the great artist collectives of the 70's, and though Lateef puts it in perspective as post-Coltrane, soundwise they freely mix creative improvised music, "contemporary" classical music and folk sounds (if not forms).

    Please click on link to enjoy an article and interview with

    Yusef Lateef and Adam Rudolph in this LA Weekly

    http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/04/music-burk.php

  3. Was reading Alyn Shipton's "New History of Jazz" on the subject of "Free Jazz" and he reminds us that Taylor's first influence from the 1950's was Horace Silver, "a player who in some respects paralleled Thelonious Monk, in that his technique was unorthodox, yet he poured his personality and his feelings into his playing. In a conversation with A.B. Spellman. Taylor compared Silver's total commitment to his music to that of the soul singer James Brown, as part of 'the genuine tradition of a people."

    Shipton also notes that Val Wilmer's description of Taylor playing "88 tuned drums" and Taylor's idea, "We in black music think of the piano as a percussive instrument: we beat the keyboard, we get inside the instrument" is highly Afro-Centric, an important part of the decade's dialogue on black identity.

    Which seems to me to be, ah, Right On. To say Taylor is more aligned with European classical music than jazz is an impossibility for me: without Gospel, Blues and Jazz there would be no Cecil Taylor.

    To use another more familiar example: in his quest to change jazz forms, Dave Brubeck involved his music with many classical music methods, and I don't hear folks saying that he's nothing other than a jazz musician, "Two Part Contention" notwithstanding.

    An interesting point in Shipton's few pages on Taylor vis a vis this thread: after his period as a bandleader and the mid-60's classic recordings, Taylor found a period of solo performance to be most sustainable in the 1970's, and though in the late 70's he would tour with a band from time to time, he "began to specialize in working in duo with percussionists, starting with Tony Williams on his album "Joy of Flying." Later percussion partners included Max Roach and the South African drummer Louis Moholo." (End Shipton).

    So whatever early troubles he had with drummers, they eventually became equal partners in his musical interplay. The paths opened up by Sunny Murray and Andrew Cyrille are still well marked and unlike anything else in the jazz woods.

  4. The Shepp/Bill Dixon Savoy session has alluded me. Would love to have that. Was reading in Alyn Shipton's "New History Of Jazz" today, and he made the interesting point that Shepp's radicalism was more in his poetry and dramatic writing for the stage than in his music, and pointed to the Impulse that has Trane's band on one side, Shepp's on the other. In general Shipton observes Trane's music as more intense and "radical," less tied to, say, the ballad tradition that Shepp was so in love with. (Obviously I'm talking about that one recording). Though Shepp came up in Philly with Cal Massey and some of the same musical teachers and influences Coltrane experienced, Shepp said he got a lot out of Cecil Taylor's intelligence, too.

    Shepp's return to the recording studio in the 1980's on Steeplechase was even more "conservative" than his previous work, with Ben Webster and images of pouring molasses coming to mind. (That, of course, is not to knock the duo with NHOP in a program of Bird's tunes, nor the Gospel or Blues records with Parlan).

    Fire Music directly inspired Chicago tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson when he put together his band "8 Bold Souls."

    The recording Shepp made on Delmark with Kahil El'Zabar's Ritual Trio and the Verve concert tape with Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III (isn't that the one?) show Shepp in the 1990's as a horn player, frankly, out of practice, with the Verve album finding him playing piano and singing to take a break from that big tenor. Thanks goodness he was well documented, thanks to Trane, in his younger prime. The New Contemporary Five still rocks my world.

  5. There's an Ornette Coleman thread at All About Jazz.com that relates to an editorial running there. Thought maybe some of the fine folks here might want to contribute their insight, history and participation in Coleman's music.

    http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread....35332#post35332

    and for good measure, some links to articles/interviews.

    http://jazz.xs2u.nl/interviews/Ornette%20Coleman_1.htm

    http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/7332706.htm

    http://www.jazzhope.com/review_CT_2003_09_...etteColeman.htm

  6. The first time I saw the Sound of Jazz it was being projected on a record warehouse wall from the film collection of Bob Kester, and it was fabulous in the film version. The video tape is about 100th generation. They need to remaster it from a better source, but as the material is public domain, there's no real effort being put into it. It's easier to just find something and put it out, no matter the quality.

  7. Some bands have tried to make the most of bootlegs as a means into the market, almost encouraging trading to build enthusiasm in a fan base. With jazz, recordings are more of a snapshot, a series of moving stills from the on-going dramatic musical life of a leader and their band. They hold a moment in evolution like spots on a cat; document the changes and refinements that are worked out nightly on the bandstand. What becomes frozen on the recording could shift by the next night, or after 6 months, a year. So in a sense jazz recordings, by which I also include the New Thing and improvised creative music, are less a product than they are a window into an evolving artistic process. Which begs the question, without prior judgement or moral stratus in the response: "What price love?" Should trees be broadast, frequency modulated, like waves from Jo Jones' cymbals? Or garretted in dehumidified basements, let out to run like big dogs over waist high speakers?

  8. Thanks Jazzbo. I went to the site, signed up, and saw a name in one of the branches of a dude I know, e-mailed him and await his response. What are the ethics of these things? They were "advertising" another tree's stuff, including music played by Peter Brotzman, who's very much alive and would seemingly like to see some bread for his music. What do you think of the listener's responsibility to the artists? <_<

  9. During our recent on-air fundraiser I played Rhapsody In Blue from the set and had at least five calls immediately saying they had to have that. I usually don't get any. Then three or four e-mails. Then a voice message on the machine. I finally just went on the air, played it like a 45 and everytime mentioned Mosaic Records web site, and that the set was going away. It was already on the endangered species list when I started, soooo, maybe a few people in West Michigan helped this along...Lazaro

  10. Let's talk about the music on this one. I've collected a few of the things here: Diz and Roy, the Talk of the Town record, which is a producer's "answer" to Jonah Jones success, perhaps, and the Dale's Wail single anthology of this stuff, which is incredible: it's been a long time coming for people to have the Oscar Peterson/Roy Eldridge material in toto, or Kansas, or Oz, lefty, righty or staight-ahead...

  11. I think that's fair, K-U, and would recommend earlier Shepp/Rudd Impulse issues first, though there are moments. Featured Rudd last night on my radio program and really thought "Mixed" with Cecil and Rudd's arrangement of 'Naima" on "Four For Trane" were incredible, still. Especially the chamber sound world of Mixed juxtaposed with the entrance of Jimmy Lyons. Also played Communication #11 from the JCOA which would have to the high water mark of Rudd's classic avant period.

  12. There are a few newer ones to add to the list: HIGHLY recommended is "Broad Strokes" on Knitting Factory, a 'ballad' album including one riotous cut, "God Had A Girlfriend," about the birth, life and death of a jazz club in Greenwich Village in the 1970's; Elvis Costello's "Almost Blue"; the "Theme From Babe" (That'll do, pig.). There's also a Roswell "songbook" record featuring Roswell with the Charlie Kohlhase Quintet on Nada that is out of sight. Includes a 12 minute blues called "Joel" written for Herbie Nichols Dad. And though not as strong, a recording called "MaliCool" on Sunnyside where Ros plays with African musicians, including "Jackie-ing" and Beethoven's "Ode To Joy."

  13. "Nicky's Tune." Thanks Larry. I should have checked my dates re Pharaoh and Harris. There was something I heard in Harris' playing last night which reminded me of some of the almost chordal patterning that Pharaoh does in some of his work: not the harsh, overblown, throaty stuff, but his trilling.

    As for the straight ahead guys who Harris may have influenced, ??? Maybe we could go back to Jim and ask who are the players he hears who aren't playing homogenously. The individuals -- Vandermark, Mwata Bowden, Fred, ???.

    I'm just fishing. Wondering how to answer the question, wondering if it were someone in Chicago, or just a general reaction to the over all fabric of the music.

    Maybe the answer is in "the way." That is jazz as a way of life, not a noun but a verb. Not a style, but a way of life that comes out in music. Maybe the Chicagoan never left that path, whereas some of the New York dudes, for whatever reason, did.

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