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AOTW Oct 30-Nov 5


JSngry

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I'll probably get beaten on the head for this, but I was disappointed when I finally got me the CD when it was reissued. Somehow this was totally beneath me. Maybe it twould have been different and exciting if I had heard this around the time it was originally released. But so, it didn't make much of an impression. I sold it.

On an average I find it easier to relate to this style of playing on a live gig than on record.

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Maybe it twould have been different and exciting if I had heard this around the time it was originally released.

I did hear it at the time of release, (perhaps even a tad before, not sure, but definitely before reviews were out in the press) and "different and exciting" is an understatement.

But that's a story that's going to have to wait until October 30. Still not done w/Oliver Nelson...

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Full points... not quite as cohesive as "Body Meta" (culled from the same sessions, if I'm not mistaken), but easily among the most invigorating records in the Coleman catalogue (as far as I'm concerned).

Perhaps I'm lapsing into superlative, but it's albums like this that keep me listening to music. When the groove kicks in on "Theme From a Symphony (Variation One)", you just know shit is gonna go down. There's a strange, giddy sort of "revolution" pervading Ornette's best sides, and these are no exception. The moment the alto comes staggering in, it's obvious that this is the same man who wailed over "Lonely Woman", screeched into "Snowflakes and Sunshine", and proudly, conclusively declared (his words or not...): "this is our music". To me, it's obvious why Ornette keeps returning to the "Symphony" head (known elsewhere as "The Good Life", "Tutti", "School Work", "Dancing In Your Head"...)--it really does stick. It's insidious, taunting, discomfiting, the creative Id completely unleashed and ready to take names. Superimposed over Prime Time's rollicking, sing-songy soundscape, it's all it once a musical commentary and a call to arms: "You want to funk things up? This is how I groove, mutha*******".

And yet, there's something endearingly simplistic, "benign" about the whole affair. What separates Ornette from much of the movement he birthed is a sense of intellectual, emotional revolution--there's nothing militant about it. The irony is that "DIYH", in it's own way, manages to validate--perhaps elevate--the frivolty and inconsequence of a great deal of the post-"free" era. Here is Ornette--a forefather of the fire-breathing, acid-spitting "New Thing"--taking up the instruments of the counterrevolution, "checking out" and plugging in, tap dancing on the very verge of dance floor bullshit. But, as "DIYH" attests, it's not about the instruments, the era, or even fighting in the streets--what's important is the art: the highest order of human, personal expression.

Ornette wasn't so much above the fray as he was a place apart. Like all the real legends, he innovated not through purpose, but through compulsion--the need to create. "DIYH" could have dated worse, and it is somewhat uneven (two takes of the same tune, a scratchy personal recording). Nonetheless, it is sonic proof that aesthetic can transcend all sorts of boundaries--you just have to do your own thing. This is his music, and--fortunately--it can be ours, too.

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I can think of but two times in my life when I've gotten smacked upside my head by a personally relevant musical revolution in real time, as it happened, the kind of thing that comes out of the blue and grabs you by your gut and changes things forever.

The first was seeing The Beatles their first time on The Ed Sullivan Show in January of 1964. But that defining moment (I immediately knew somewhere inside my 8 year old self that music was to be the life for me, some how, some way, and that everything else was going to be secondary) was not without some lead up - KEEL-AM in Shreveport, La. had been playing the shit out of The Fab Four for a few weeks prior to the Sullivan show, so I was primed. The TV gig just sealed, no, seared the deal.

The second time was in the summer of 1977. I was home from college for the summer, and had been flirting with Music School Burnout. All the "formalism" of the legit stuff was really starting to beat me down and all the Jazz Education Rules were beginning to make me feel as if maybe jazz was not the music for me, at least not the kind of jazz I was fighting indoctrination against. I'd begun to flirt with the early punk bands and to revisit the rock and pop of the 1960s just to get in touch with that energy, the feeling that music was something you played because you had to do it or else you'd die. I was getting it from some jazz, but not the type I had regular opportunities to play at school. The whole music thing was getting kind of...dreary.

So, it's the summer of 1977, and I'm in Dallas on an off-day from my summer job in Gladewater as a roustabout for Texaco, and I'm making the rounds of all my favorite Big City Record Stores. I stop in at a place called Metamorphosis (Rod surely remembers this place), and I'm browsing the bins when I come across a promo copy of a new album by Ornette Coleman with a really cool cover called Dancing In Your Head. I'd not heard any advance word about a new side by Ornette, and the personnel listing on the inside looked pretty, uh...different from anything I'd heard by him before.

And I had heard a lot of Ornette before - a 45 of "Una Muy Bonita" was one of the very first jazz records I owned, Free Jazz was one of the first 50 or so jazz LPs I ever bought, and I'd bought pretty much all the Atlantic, Blue Note, Impulse!, and Columbia stuff by the time I was 20. So I knew Ornette. Loved Ornette, in fact, and knew well what was up with him and his music. And this record looked to be not at all like any of it. So I bought it immediately.

Got home from Dallas about 7 PM, checked in with the folks, ate dinner, and went into my room to check out the day's purchases. Of course, the new Ornette was first. I didn't understand how Ornette could have a new album out on a major label (A&M - home of The Carpenters!) and I'd not heard or read anything about it. How could that be? Oh well, let's put it on and see what the deal is...

WHOA....

From the very first sound of Side One, I knew that this was something else entirely, that my world was changing right before my ears for the better. Every microsecond of this music was a revelation. I listened in awe at the sing-songy theme from Skies Of America that was played over and over and over and over. I listened in ecstasy as Ornette played an endless solo that was as inventive as it was organic. My jaw literally dropped as I heard Rudy MacDaniel (he wasn't Jamaaladeen Tacuma yet, at least not in the personnel listing) play how no bass player had ever played with Ornette before, and on electric at that! The guitars and the drummer, hell, I was too much in shock to hear what they were doing, but I good feel it, and it felt right. Damn right.

I was stunned when the side finally ended. Too stunned to turn the record over in fact. The old-school multiple-play turntable had the balancing arm up and off to the side, so the tonearm picked up, and the side replayed all by itself. I listened. That went on for a while before I could finally muster the presence of mind to turn the damn record over.

Lot of good that did - it was the same thing, only completely different, with a little bit of Morrocan stuff thrown on at the end. That side was also allowed to repeat god knows how many times. I fell asleep to it and I woke up to it the next morning.

I wasn't sure exactly what I had heard, but I knew that it had come out of nowhere, literally, and that it had connected in a way that music hadn't been connecting with me lately. Was anybody else doing anything even remotely like this? Not that I knew of. Why not? This was music that was damn near perfect - sure, there was dancing going on in the head, but as the prophets had advised us just a few years before, free your mind and your ass will follow. Here was the proof!

(Already) long story short - I went back to school that fall energized, revitalized, and ready to do with music school what any sane creature should do with any schooling - get the knowledge, and fuck all the dogma they try to sell you as being further, more rarified knowledge. I became absolutely committed to dancing in my head, and anywhere/everywhere that led to. My Lab Band Career was shot, but my life, my life, not my programmed existence, had begun anew.

Almost 30 years later, the world has changed. This album did make some noise, finally, and it spawned a little Mini-Revoltion. Like all of Ornette's revolutions, the direct influence proved to be pretty insular, even if the indirect influence eventually spread far and wide. The Big Chill of 80s Retro-ism tried its damndest to silence the revolution, and it did a helluva job. But it didn't succeed, not totally. Ornette continued to grow along the way to his next manifesto, Tone Dialing, and now, finally in the last few years, we're hearing younger players who absorbed the lessons of Dancing In Your Head, not so much in terms of stylistic imitation, but more in terms of realizing that freedom and dancing are really synonymous if you've taken the time (and the necessary precautions) to get your shit together as a human being. It's the basic lesson of jazz, really, and Ornette keeps keeping it current, even if the current has AC involved. Can you live a totally unplugged life? If you can read this...

I'll leave it to others to provide musical (and/or other) analysis of this album. My experience with it has been way too personal for me to do anything other than tell y'all what it did to me. It came totally out of nowhere (I may well have been one of the first 500 or so people in the world to have heard it, which blows my mind now almost as much as it did then, if for altogether different reasons), but it was definitely the right thing at the right time. Finding this album when I did and how I did might have just been a cosmic accident, but it's the type of accident I wish for everybody.

Dance on!

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JSngry, thanks for sharing your experience with that record. I've had similar experiences, but not with this one. It's always been one of my least favorite Ornettes, maybe because of the schoolyard melody of the first half, or maybe because the rhythms don't gel to my ears. But that's just my 2 cents. I'm glad other people get off on this one; it's never worked for me.

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Jim, do you do any professional writing? I'm sure this has been mentioned, but your writing is frequently some of the best jazz writing these eyes have ever seen. Maybe doing interviews and beat stories isn't your thing, but Downbeat or JazzTimes would be damn fools if they didn't hire you to write reviews or do some in-depth stories on some artists or albums. Outside of Nat Hentoff, you might be the best jazz writer I know.

Still have to check out the album though. Iv'e loved all my Ornette so far. :D

Edited by md655321
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(I also remember Metamorphosis.)

However, I've never connected with this record, for some reason, other than the track with the Master Musicians of Joujouka. This is even though I count Ronald Shannon Jackson and Jamaaladeen Tacuma as favorite musicians.

I didn't hear it until later, after I had heard "Of Human Feelings," which to me is the first great Prime Time record.

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(I also remember Metamorphosis.)

However, I've never connected with this record, for some reason, other than the track with the Master Musicians of Joujouka. This is even though I count Ronald Shannon Jackson and Jamaaladeen Tacuma as favorite musicians.

I didn't hear it until later, after I had heard "Of Human Feelings," which to me is the first great Prime Time record.

Ah--but how do you feel about the later Prime Times (e.g., In All Languages, Tone Dialing--nice to see some positives on that, BTW)?

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The edition of Prime Time with Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix on twin guitars, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Albert McDowell on twin bass guitars was one of the greatest bands I ever had the good fortune to hear live (on a number of occasions). I did not have the opportunity to see the next edition of Prime Time live, but based on the recording (Tone Dialing), it doesn't sound as good to me. In all Languages is a wonderful record. Opening the Caravan of Dreams is a good one also, but it hasn't been on CD and the sound quality of the recording leaves something to be desired.

(I also remember Metamorphosis.)

However, I've never connected with this record, for some reason, other than the track with the Master Musicians of Joujouka. This is even though I count Ronald Shannon Jackson and Jamaaladeen Tacuma as favorite musicians.

I didn't hear it until later, after I had heard "Of Human Feelings," which to me is the first great Prime Time record.

Ah--but how do you feel about the later Prime Times (e.g., In All Languages, Tone Dialing--nice to see some positives on that, BTW)?

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I stop in at a place called Metamorphosis (Rod surely remembers this place)
Remember it? I practically lived there!

Major sympathy from me here - both about the stagnation that was in the air at "our" college

during the time of the fusion medusa, and about the DIYH LP. I didn't have the major

experience that you had (I'll leave that for that day in the summer of 1970

when I bought Bitches Brew along with Cannonball Adderley Quintet and Orchestra

from a store one afternoon here in North Texas), but I knew that I wanted more...

and with it's addition to the great musical triumvirate of Body Meta and Of Human Feelings,

I knew one could sooth the savage with Soapsuds, Soapsuds.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman anybody?

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I stop in at a place called Metamorphosis (Rod surely remembers this place)
Remember it? I practically lived there!

Major sympathy from me here - both about the stagnation that was in the air at "our" college

during the time of the fusion medusa, and about the DIYH LP. I didn't have the major

experience that you had (I'll leave that for that day in the summer of 1970

when I bought Bitches Brew along with Cannonball Adderley Quintet and Orchestra

from a store one afternoon here in North Texas), but I knew that I wanted more...

and with it's addition to the great musical triumvirate of Body Meta and Of Human Feelings,

I knew one could sooth the savage with Soapsuds, Soapsuds.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman anybody?

Soapsuds, Soapsuds is my favorite album of all time. Seriously, I don't think I could name something that I enjoy more. Anyhow, I have my share of maudlin, sentimental stories on that one, but then I'd be exploding this thread off topic (another AOTW somewhere down the line, maybe). Thank you for so much as bringing up what is surely a lost classic.

Edited by ep1str0phy
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I don't think that you could call the feel/time of DIYH "strict" in any form or fashion. It's loose, it's liquid, it moves, and it grooves, all without there being any rigid patterns or "beats" coming into play. It's got a steady pulse, to be sure, but it's a pulse that is alive and mobile, not stilted and fixed.

Not all of the later Prime Time pieces had this quality to be sure, although it seems to me that as the bottom got more "fixed", what was put on top got even more open. Personally, I think it's an important contribution/insight/whatever of Ornette's later music to show that rigid times do not need to lead to rigid thoughts, that in fact when the downward/inward pull increases that it's possible, probably even essential, to find and provide an equal upward/outward counterforce.

Hey - I'm very suspicious of people who don't like at least some form of dance music. People who don't like feeling a dance have a major character defect if you ask me, and more often than not they're people who pose a threat to all things good. By the same token, I'm extremely hostile to those who would reduce the dance impulse to a prefabricated, two-dimensional set of Pavlovian spasms. They too are a menace to society.

What I dig about Ornette, and especially about the album under discussion this week, is that, good country-boy-gone-to-the-city that he is, is that he's always been a dancer (and a singer, too). Hell, his tone alone dances, you know? But he's never, even in Prime Time, stooped to playing "dance music" that is nothing more than aural puppet strings. His dance music is always open in some form or fashion. It recognizes that dance, true human dance, isn't just a series of steps and moves, it's a creation caused by a reaction. Lose the reaction, and you lose the impetus for the creation.

Dancing In Your Head was Ornette's opening creative salvo fired against a world that was becoming increasingly and irrevocably "plugged in", a world dependent on the power cord (power chord?) as umbilical cord. It shows us that we can change and still stay the same, that we can still create in reaction to a changing fundamental social paradigm. Tone Dialing was to the Digital Revolution what Dancing In Your Head was to the Electrical Revolution, and what The Shape Of Jazz To Come was to the Automation Revolution. As far as I'm concerned, they're all are Guidebooks For Survival & Sanity In These Changing Times Of Ours.

A dancer, even one who dances in their head, is always moving. It's harder to hit a moving target, doncha' know...

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