Yanow Is Here

[Larry Kart]

It's the ones whose wives look like Elvis Costello that you need to watch out for.

[Hot Ptah]

Jim, You do realize that the photo posted right above your Elvis Costello post is a photo of Woody Allen, not Elvis Costello, right?

[Clunky]

Whilst I love the in depth analysis and challenge to my thinking that Larry and Allen offer , however, I do find Scott and AMG's potted bios and album crits of some help when pulling the trigger on impulse buys I know little about. Each type of review has it's place.

The UK has two serious jazz mags. Jazz Review (offering longer reviews, no star system) and Jazzwise ( shorter reviews and star system)..I prefer the former by a mile.

Can we all get along please....

[Noj]

What are the Yanow boosters comparing him to, other than their own void?

Youch!

[Christiern]

Clem, I don't know what Valerie's problem is, but you addressed it well.

Chris A (punk)

[GregK]

I think I remember the guy Clem mentions at Schoolkids as well.

It may interest a few of us to know that Schoolkids still exists on State Street in Ann Arbor. He's got a downstairs location, accessible from another store. Sells mostly new stuff, off labels and such.

Yep, under Bivouac. Best store in the area for prices, hard to find, vinyl, etc. I'm heading there tomorrow..

[Scott Yanow]

Wow, Clementine. Want some more rope?

[Chuck Nessa]

All I know is that I'm reading posts by Allen Lowe and Larry Kart, and I look at the bottom of the page and see next to my own name that Scott Yanow and Chris Albertson are also reading this thread, and I think to myself, "how the hell did I get into this club???"

They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.

You forgot Chuck Nessa, not to add to your anxiety or anything.

I have not been reading any of the threads after the first couple of messages. I probably won't go back and read them either.

I do want to say something after my (imagined) fear of the proceedings. I would guess most "bitches" are about personal oxen gored on AMG. That happens with any assessment of any opinion about a personal favorite. Nothing right or wrong, just a difference.

I have used Scott's writing on AMG as a useful guide through lots of reissues and thank him for that. I do not expect deep understanding of any particular idom but find him to be of use.

It is ok to "keep the pressure on" but please don't jump into a feeding frenzy.

Sorry if I misunderstood the long threads but if I wanted to read that much I'd start over with Nabokov.

[Jim R]

I, for one, am very glad to have Mr. Yanow contributing to the board. Damn, I'm just trying to learn all I can about this music that I love, and I welcome anyone's well thought out opinion. IMHO, some people here are taking themsleves way to seriously, and treating someone like shit whom they've never met -- after awhile, it just is embarrassing, all this trying to score points and using Mr. Yanow to do it with.

[Chuck Nessa]

i never went to the strip clubs of Windsor, nor had sex-- or even madeout!-- with an Upper Peninsula taffy heiress but oh baby, did i wanna...

not always a Titan,

c

I do believe most of this part.

[AllenLowe]

hey Val, anybody who knows me know that there's nothing I would say on this forum that I would not say in public - and have said on many occasions. I use my real name, am happy to furnish my address and or phone, picture, drivers license, whatever you want. But I never say one thing when I mean another, and I never hide behind a hidden identiity - like maybe Valerie B -

[JSngry]

Offering Clem rope is like threatening to throw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch...

Jim, You do realize that the photo posted right above your Elvis Costello post is a photo of Woody Allen, not Elvis Costello, right?

I didn't even see that... Oh well.

Look, Scott Yanow's work apparently serves a constructive useful purpose for many of y'all here (including titan Chuck), but I myself ahve a hard time relating to the concept of exploring music through a book. That's just not how I did it, and that's not how any of my peers did it. But that was a different time and place, full of still-living practitioneers of the artcraft who could fill your ears full of the real thing right in your face, and who would regale you after the gig with tales of shit you'd never heard of and you believed them because, hey, they were doing it their own selves. The music was alive, in the flesh, and even reading Down Beat once you got out of the sticks and into a scene was an act that some considered "cheating". And that was in the days when cats like Messrs. Kart, Litweiller, & Morgenstern were filling it full of stuff that spoke deeply of and to personal feelings about the music, be they emotional, intellectual, political, physical, and/or some/none of the above. You could feel that you were reading a letter from your older brother who'd left home and who was excited about some shit going on right now that you just had to know about.

Those days are pretty much gone, and maybe reference books are all that's left for newcomers to the music. If that's the way it is, fine. Scott Yanow seems to be a fair enough evaluator of a lot of the music's past glories, and I've got no real axe to grind with him, other than I'd just once like to read something by him that brings some personal feeling to the table. I know a lot this music already (and what I don't know, I'll get to eventually, in the course of my natural musical odyssey, and what i don't get to, hey - there's always never, if you know what I mean...) so if I'm going to read about it, I want to read something that makes me think/feel/pissmybritches/etc. I dig the shit out of dialogue, debate, etc. but have little use for "textbooks". Not at this point, if ever. Not for this music.

I understand and respect that he's not that type of writer, apparently by choice. All I'm saying is that the function he fills for many here is not a function for which I myself have much use. For those who do, hey, have fun letting somebody else set your course for you. I know, it's not that simple, but c'mon folks - half or more of the fun in this trip is taking it w/o a net! Being an Accidental Tourist is safe, and the results are guaranteed, but...

Having said that, though, I'd like to welcome Scott. I think/hope that at some poiint he'll join in on some of our more "opinonated" threads here and throw down with some real insight and/or personal opinion/perspective. Personal music deserves personal engagement, which in turn engenders personal feelings. If the books, reviews, etc aren't the place for them, hey that's showbidness. But this place sure as hell is, so dive in.

Y'all come!

Edited September 23, 2006 by JSngry

[JSngry]

hey Val, anybody who knows me know that there's nothing I would say on this forum that I would not say in public - and have said on many occasions. I use my real name, am happy to furnish my address and or phone, picture, drivers license, whatever you want. But I never say one thing when I mean another, and I never hide behind a hidden identiity - like maybe Valerie B -

Gimme your credit card numbers. All of them.

And dude - Valerie B is her real name. She's Walter Bishop Jr's ex, and she's for real.

Better luck next time.

Edited September 23, 2006 by JSngry

[Chuck Nessa]

hey Val, anybody who knows me know that there's nothing I would say on this forum that I would not say in public - and have said on many occasions. I use my real name, am happy to furnish my address and or phone, picture, drivers license, whatever you want. But I never say one thing when I mean another, and I never hide behind a hidden identiity - like maybe Valerie B -

Gimme your credit card numbers. All of them.

And dude - Valerie B is her real name. She's Walter Bishop Jr's ex, and she's for real.

Better luck nest time.

Valerie B is no more a "real name" than JSngry.

[JSngry]

When I feel fully Titanized, I'll throw in the vowels.

But the m, hey - nobody gets the m!

[RDK]

hey Val, anybody who knows me know that there's nothing I would say on this forum that I would not say in public - and have said on many occasions. I use my real name, am happy to furnish my address and or phone, picture, drivers license, whatever you want. But I never say one thing when I mean another, and I never hide behind a hidden identiity - like maybe Valerie B -

Gimme your credit card numbers. All of them.

And dude - Valerie B is her real name. She's Walter Bishop Jr's ex, and she's for real.

Better luck next time.

And I've met Valerie so I know she actually exists. So to do Noj, Bertrand, and a few others. But the rest of you... vapor!

[Chuck Nessa]

All I'm saying is that the function he fills for many here is not a function for which I myself have much use. For those who do, hey, have fun letting somebody else set your course for you.

Unworthy of my vision of you Jim.

[kenny weir]

also, on a more serious note about "old coots" - the ageism of these statements is really offensive - I supposed if those who disagree are in their 20s or 30s it looks more dignified to you guys -

As the originator of the coot comment - and being a 50+ coot myself - maybe, if such a reaction is forthcoming to such gentle tweaking, I should throw in "sense-of-humour bypass" as well.

[T.D.]

Whitney Balliett sure is fallible. For example, in the liner notes he wrote in 1956 for the Pacific Jazz album "Grand Encounter -- 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West," with John Lewis, Bill Perkins, Jim Hall, Percy Heath, and Chico Hamilton, after praising the certainly praiseworthy Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

I bought a remaindered copy of Balliett's Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz and read almost all of it (skimmed in places). The guy hates hard bop, and constantly throws in such digs at the genre. I don't feel confident enough to say "fallible," but his tastes are sufficiently different from mine (I listen to lots of hard bop, for instance) that I wouldn't go by his recommendations.

[JSngry]

All I'm saying is that the function he fills for many here is not a function for which I myself have much use. For those who do, hey, have fun letting somebody else set your course for you.

Unworthy of my vision of you Jim.

Well yeah, and I did qualify it in the following sentence. Probably sounds harsher than I intend to. But still, this whole notion of guidebooks is one to which I simply cannot relate. Different strokes for different folks, I know, but I've never been one to use a map except when I'm driving. I find the online AMG site fun for discovering "obscurities" and such, but that's using it for discographical/exploratory purposes rather than using the reviews to guide my purchases & steer my interests. The reviews are not the object of the game for me, although the sound samples, when available, are.

Honestly, no disrespect meant to those who use those things for such purposes. I'm just not one of them, and the whole concept frankly befuddles me. I can fully realte to Scott's purported goal of hearing everything there is to hear, but really, shouldn't we all be doing that ourselves if that's where our interests lie? Sure, you hear a lot of shit along the way, but so what? That's part of devolping a perspective, as I'm sure Scott will atttest. If you only stick to things that you know in advance are going to be "good", then you run the risk of becoming somebody who, as we malcontents like to say here in Dallas, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

[JSngry]

Whitney Balliett sure is fallible. For example, in the liner notes he wrote in 1956 for the Pacific Jazz album "Grand Encounter -- 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West," with John Lewis, Bill Perkins, Jim Hall, Percy Heath, and Chico Hamilton, after praising the certainly praiseworthy Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

I bought a remaindered copy of Balliett's Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz and read almost all of it (skimmed in places). The guy hates hard bop, and constantly throws in such digs at the genre. I don't feel confident enough to say "fallible," but his tastes are sufficiently different from mine (I listen to lots of hard bop, for instance) that I wouldn't go by his recommendations.

I like reading Balliet for his language, not for his taste. Sometimes his tastes and mine intersect, sometimes not. But his use of the language, stylized though it often is, is enough for me.

[Brad]

Whitney Balliett sure is fallible. For example, in the liner notes he wrote in 1956 for the Pacific Jazz album "Grand Encounter -- 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West," with John Lewis, Bill Perkins, Jim Hall, Percy Heath, and Chico Hamilton, after praising the certainly praiseworthy Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

I bought a remaindered copy of Balliett's Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz and read almost all of it (skimmed in places). The guy hates hard bop, and constantly throws in such digs at the genre. I don't feel confident enough to say "fallible," but his tastes are sufficiently different from mine (I listen to lots of hard bop, for instance) that I wouldn't go by his recommendations.

I wonder if he still feels the same lo these many years later.

[T.D.]

Whitney Balliett sure is fallible. For example, in the liner notes he wrote in 1956 for the Pacific Jazz album "Grand Encounter -- 2 Degrees East, 3 Degrees West," with John Lewis, Bill Perkins, Jim Hall, Percy Heath, and Chico Hamilton, after praising the certainly praiseworthy Perkins for his gentle lyricism, Balliett went on to say this: "There is [in Perkins' playing] none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, and JR Monterose."

I bought a remaindered copy of Balliett's Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz and read almost all of it (skimmed in places). The guy hates hard bop, and constantly throws in such digs at the genre. I don't feel confident enough to say "fallible," but his tastes are sufficiently different from mine (I listen to lots of hard bop, for instance) that I wouldn't go by his recommendations.

I wonder if he still feels the same lo these many years later.

Digging up my copy of the book, Balliett wrote a 1995 column on the "Young Lions", entitled The Young Guns, in which he absolutely lambasted the hard bop genre. He certainly wrote many columns praising Sonny Rollins, though. Mobley is barely mentioned (3 times in passing, no comments on his playing) in the 800+ pages, and Monterose not at all.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I think there's room for all types of criticism.

When I started getting really interested in jazz, in 1960, I bought a book called "Jazz on record", which I've still got, its pages now a delicate brown. This concentrated on music on LPs released in Britain and was extremely superficial and limited. There was NO soul jazz mentioned: no Jimmy Smith, not even listings of Horace Silver albums. Not much hard bop either - no Mobley or McLean. I soon found out what was missing. But nonetheless, it was useful to me in its time, if only for placing musicians covered in their context.

And now it's useful as a record of what established critics thought in those days. I think one of the big problems with the Web is that it's only NOW - nothing's necessarily permanent to form a historical record of what people thought in a particular era (a much bigger issue than jazz, of course).

MG

[AllenLowe]

there's nothing wrong with guides that contain succint evaluations - Max Harrison has done great work in this respect. But shallow is shallow; sometmes it's like reading jazz's version of Cliff Notes.

Forgot that Valerie was Bish's ex; she once sent me a friendly email (which I will not print here) - I knew and worked with Walter Bishop, one of the nicest people who ever was in the biz; and he was a real friend to Joe Albany in Joe's last sad days. Come on, Val, you know we're not hiding here; you seem to have retreated after your hit-and-run -

as for Ballliet - he has done some very valuable work, especially his interviews, which are brilliant - read the ones with Red Allen and Pee Wee Russell and you'll see what I mean. His biggest problem is his poor mimicing of the music with language - his performance descriptions are invariably pretensious, silly, and just plain innaccurate. But he has written some very smart stuff; you just have to get through the things which are insufferable -