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Lazaro Vega

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There's a jazz gig scene in Texas? Where is it?

In the 70s in Dallas, there was the Recovery Room.

In the 80s, there was Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth.

Those wer the "high profile" joints. There were also lots of "little" places that you wouldn't know about unless you knew about them. ;)

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There's a jazz gig scene in Texas? Where is it?

In the 70s in Dallas, there was the Recovery Room.

In the 80s, there was Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth.

Those wer the "high profile" joints. There were also lots of "little" places that you wouldn't know about unless you knew about them. ;)

Of course, I do live in a hermetically sealed bubble, into which CDs and (less frequently) meals are sometimes inserted.

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I think musicians like Kurt Rosenwinkel put out some incredibly creative stuff last year with albums like "Deep Song", I think with the exception of songs on it like "Cake" and "Use of Light" nothing really grabbed me emotionally. He is an incredible writer and I will continue to check what he puts out, but his music didn't get me the way releases like PMG's "The Way Up", the JOS/Joey record or even Bill Frissell's album last year.

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montg

If you turned on Blue Lake once, heard Feather, and turned it off I'd understand. But if you've come to know our evening programming I would hope you stick around for the switch up. With 5 hours a night we're not exactly cramped for time, and various strains from the world of jazz flow freely. Unpredictablity sometimes happens. And if an idea comes to mind, or, Little Jazz. Yes, Roy Eldridge was here. Last night at 1:30 a.m. we got into Roy and stayed with him mostly as a sideman and mostly alongside Chu Berry or Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson (with and without Billie), Krupa, Artie Shaw, FLETCHER HENDERSON, until 3 a.m.

Everything that went on before 1:30 since 11:30 was newer, including an hour of "avant-garde" music, Out On Blue Lake, from midnight, including the recent release by The Respect Sextet, their version of Fred Anderson's composition, "3 on 2."

Radio stations play new records because they are sent to them, and the radio is also, for good or bad, supposed to convey a sense of the time we live in according to the marketplace. And with the same kind of humor Braxton used in Downbeat when he said something to the effect of, I want to be around for Sinatra's senile stage, I want to be able to play Paul Anka's Verve recording and have "True" stuck in my head the next day while I'm pushing the lawn mower. It's like the aftertaste of a dinner mint, or the sticky residue of cotton candy. It's nothing. It was fun while it lasted, or not, but that's what last summer sounded like to many people (regardless of Blue Lake). To have to discuss ephemera like that, though, is like trying to recreate the reasons you used last year's tinsel. It's Pop. And it's popped. Why try and put air back in it?

Which is why I'm officially taking Feather OFF my top ten list!

If you heard Krall and switched us off you'd miss an hour such as this last one featuring Dizzy: Duke and Diz, U.M.M.G.; Diz with Machito's Orchestra conducted by Chico O'Farrill, Three Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods; Randy Weston with Diz, African Sunrise; The Seattle Repertory Jazz Ochestra, In the Beginning God, from a new CD of Ellington's Sacred Concert.

Commercial intruders beware: Redemtion is nigh! At heart Blue Lake's jazz programming recognizes our non-commercial soul, but flirting with commercial music is just that -- the wind around the hem of a girl's skirt.

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p.s.

There's a new program called "Media Guide" which can monitor a radio station's tower with software that recognizes music programmed into it. There are agencies hired by record companies to send out music to radio stations and now, with this new software, they can tell if it gets played from our tower and if it doesn't they call me up and threaten to not send anymore music or otherwise accuse me of not holding up my end of the "bargain."

In any case, tonight's playlist continued with Anthony Brown's Orchestra, Tang; Omar Sosa, Nuevo Manto; Either Orchestra live in Addis, Muziqawi Silt; Diz's U.N. Orchetra, Kush; the Nia Quintet, Bellamy's Dance...

Frequently modulated, your host, V

Edited by Lazaro Vega
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If you turned on Blue Lake once, heard Feather, and turned it off I'd understand. But if you've come to know our evening programming I would hope you stick around for the switch up. With 5 hours a night we're not exactly cramped for time, and various strains from the world of jazz flow freely. Unpredictablity sometimes happens. And if an idea comes to mind, or, Little Jazz. Yes, Roy Eldridge was here. Last night at 1:30 a.m. we got into Roy and stayed with him mostly as a sideman and mostly alongside Chu Berry or Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson (with and without Billie), Krupa, Artie Shaw, FLETCHER HENDERSON, until 3 a.m.

Everything that went on before 1:30 since 11:30 was newer, including an hour of "avant-garde" music, Out On Blue Lake, from midnight, including the recent release by The Respect Sextet, their version of Fred Anderson's composition, "3 on 2."

Your point is well taken. Anybody who programs Fletcher Henderson and Fred Anderson--in this "Media Guide" climate-- has my undying respect. :tup

Unfortunately, in my experience with public radio as a listener to my local station and to internet stations, this type of prgramming is the exception. On my local station, Feather is followed by Krall, a bland guitar trio, a new recording tht's a freebie to the staion and it's worth what they paid for it, etc. This type of programming promotes jazz as adult background music.

Edited by montg
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My own feeling is that the "problem" we're seeing here is also that so much focus gets put on the few artist with major label deals. Folks like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Greg Osby (good as they may be) get focussed on to the exclusion of everything else. And for me the really interesting stuff is happening on independent and self-produced releases.

--eric

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Finally, on the Reagan/Marsalis parallel:

There's a lot to this, but from my historical perspective: GenX raised by an Old-Left-inluenced Social Democrat, I can't say that I have many tears to shed for the passing of 1960s/New Left cultural and political paradigms in the 1980s. I look on them as being largely responsible for this long sojourn into nutty religious right conservatism we're (hopefully) starting to emerge from now.

The Old Left's critiques of the new: that it was irrspeonsible, self-indulgent, irrationalist, arrogant, quietly elitist, and dominated by style over substance--al this from my perspective seem right on. And another thing that's "no coincidence" in my book is that many of the same folks who enjoyed the ride in the sixties are the folks who cashed in during the Reagan years. Folks who grew up during one of the biggest economic expansions this country has ever had; folks who came to feel entitled to that cash-in, and who figured a few years off fooling around spouting high-seeming (though perhaps non-sensical) ideals would do no harm to their prospects.

They were luckily right on the economic front, but quite wrong on the political front. The New Left's use for all the cultural capital they managed to get ahold of was to pave the way for the Reagan right. But in the end, it didn't really make a whole lot of difference anyway: the cultural hegemony of the left bore the same relation to it's high ideals as Tom DeLay does to a seriously reflective spiritual approach to life.

That is, it mostly invloved a put-on style, just a different syle than Marsalis's--as denim reflected a different style than the nicely-tailored suits. I can't really say I have much sympathy for either faction or their closed-minded, ideologically-driven judgements of music; or the ad hominem attacks that inevitably seem to follow close on the heels of aesthetic disapprobation.

From my perspective Reagan is part and parcel of the sixties legacy, as is, I suppose, Marsalis.

--eric

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From my perspective Reagan is part and parcel of the sixties legacy

Well of course he is, silly. He was governor of California then!

So the X-ers are still pissed at the Boomers. I'm shcoked, shocked I tell you, at this revelation! :g

Hell. I'm a Boomer, and I'm pissed at the Boomers, so what does that mean?

So much self-congratulation going on at "discovering" the wrongs that somehow actually righting them kinda got lost in the shuffle....

I would think, however, that an attempt by somebody like Feather to co-opt Ellington in exactly that same spirit of essentially self-congratulatory "entitlement" would be more the reaction of a pissed-off X-er. Surely such a lad would be able to see it for what it is (if not intentionally, then certainly in effect) - an attempt to alter the American Cultural Iconography for entirely self-serving ends. Quite the Boomer-esque gesture, don't you think?

Yet the X-er defers to this gesture and instead attacks the attempt to call it what it is. This Anti-Boomer Boomer is left to ponder the possibility that the X-er doesn't fully comprehend what is going on with Ms. feather's work (at least in terms of the General Cultural Landscape Battle), or that it is yet another example of an ongoing battle for identity (and the right to identify one's own self in and on one's own terms) that Mr. Ellington was deeply involved in his entire career.

Also being pondered - why the X-er doesn't seem to recognize that that the Anti-Boomer Boomer's attacks on both Ms. Feather & Mr. Marsalis are rooted in the same basic complaint - that they forcibly claim the music for their own self-serving ends instead of allowing the music to claim them as a matter of graceful happenstance. Again, they type of self-aggrandizement that the X-er should surely recognize for what it is - an Archetypical Boomer Power Play in action!

This Anti-Boomer Boomer is also left to ponder the possibilitythat the X-er is so overtaken by pissed-offness towards the Boomers that he is left reflexively dismissing the Anti-Boomer Boomer's criticism of the specific for the sake of venting a general criticism that has absolutely nothing to do with said Anti-Boomer Boomer's criticism of a very Boomer-esque act and attitude and everything to do with said X-ers general resentment of everything Boomer related.

That 's a lot of pondering, pahdner!

But then again, I'll ponder pretty near any damn thing...

Edited by JSngry
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From my perspective Reagan is part and parcel of the sixties legacy

Well of course he is, silly. He was governor of California then!

So the X-ers are still pissed at the Boomers. I'm shcoked, shocked I tell you, at this revelation! :g

Hell. I'm a Boomer, and I'm pissed at the Boomers, so what does that mean?

So much self-congratulation going on at "discovering" the wrongs that somehow actually righting them kinda got lost in the shuffle....

I would think, however, that an attempt by somebody like Feather to co-opt Ellington in exactly that same spirit of essentially self-congratulatory "entitlement" would be more the reaction of a pissed-off X-er. Surely such a lad would be able to see it for what it is (if not intentionally, then certainly in effect) - an attempt to alter the American Cultural Iconography for entirely self-serving ends. Quite the Boomer-esque gesture, don't you think?

I'd disagree. Boomer-esque, I think is judging the music on the basis of the fact that Feather doesn't proclaim the correct allegiances rather than on the basis of it's effect, which, let's face it, is practically nothing. One can like her adaptions or not, but I see no evidence whatsoever that they have any effect on Ellington's status in our culture.

Yet the X-er defers to this gesture and instead attacks the attempt to call it what it is. This Anti-Boomer Boomer is left to ponder the possibility that the X-er doesn't fully comprehend what is going on with Ms. feather's work (at least in terms of the General Cultural Landscape Battle), or that it is yet another example of an ongoing battle for identity (and the right to identify one's own self in and on one's own terms) that Mr. Ellington was deeply involved in his entire career.

Duke, unfortunately, hasn't a right to a damn thing: he's dead. All we've got is self-proclaimed protectors of his legacy. Frankly, I'm a lot more comfortable with the fickle winds of current use than a am with folks who think they have some inside scoop on who Ellington really was.

To me, the main legacy is the music, and so long as it's available, nobody can trump that. Will the msuic get used and re-used and adapted and taken out of context: absolutely, that's what it means to be a cultural icon

Also being pondered - why the X-er doesn't seem to recognize that that the Anti-Boomer Boomer's attacks on both Ms. Feather & Mr. Marsalis are rooted in the same basic complaint - that they forcibly claim the music for their own self-serving ends instead of allowing the music to claim them as a matter of graceful happenstance. Again, they type of self-aggrandizement that the X-er should surely recognize for what it is - an Archetypical Boomer Power Play in action!

Your distinction between claiming the music and allowing it to claim you seems to me to be pure fantasy. A distinction that sounds good so long as you get to make it, but which always boils down to nothing more than giving your aesthetic reactions the force of law. Now there's an Archetypical Boomer Power Play in action.

This Anti-Boomer Boomer is also left to ponder the possibilitythat the X-er is so overtaken by pissed-offness towards the Boomers that he is left reflexively dismissing the Anti-Boomer Boomer's criticism of the specific for the sake of venting a general criticism that has absolutely nothing to do with said Anti-Boomer Boomer's criticism of a very Boomer-esque act and attitude and everything to do with said X-ers general resentment of everything Boomer related.

That 's a lot of pondering, pahdner!

But then again, I'll ponder pretty near any damn thing...

Well, it wasn't I who dragged in Mr. Reagan. But I don't think it's irrelevant.

As to the specific: No, I don't like the Feather adaptions, but I what I dislike even more is the attempt to give the offense (not being particularly good) a valence and a scale it quite simply doesn't have. And the tendency to do this HAS had some significant bad effects: it tends to poison or squelch discussion.

To call Feather's work what it is: it's a set of free adaptations. And Ellington is a composer who's work has been and will continue to be freely adapted. And we ought not cry rape and colonialism when we don't like it any more than we should cry "Nazi" or anti-semite when we don't like an adaptation of klezmer music.

--eric

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Dude, you really don't get it, and I think that you don't want to get it for what are shaping up to be "personal reasons". Diiferent strokes, and all that.

But I gotta wonder - if the "little things" don't matter, what makes the "big things" come to pass? I guess they just happen all at once without any help. Evolution is a series of randon cataclysmic upheavals, eh? There are no canaries in the mineshaft along the way? Ever? Unless they're Boomer-related?

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To call Feather's work what it is: it's a set of free adaptations. And Ellington is a composer who's work has been and will continue to be freely adapted. And we ought not cry rape and colonialism when we don't like it any more than we should cry "Nazi" or anti-semite when we don't like an adaptation of klezmer music.

Not even if the adaptation is being used to promote, say, Christmas in Mississippi?

Intent and effect are not always synchronious...

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