Miles Davis on Columbia/Legacy

[ep1str0phy]

Ep1-- can you elaborate on Prime Time? do you dig as more Ornette (which we all do, or wanna) or as its own unique concept? I've listened for years & years to every record & while I do get stuff out of, none of them save maybe the first (where I listen w/'potential' in mind) strike me as ideal. you may say that is a false goal-- ok, & that we gotta take O anywhere we can but I find better examples of collectivism, esp. in West African music (subject for another thread), likewise Afro- America for dead on the heavy FUNK. nice Jerry cameo on "Virgin Beauty" tho'. there's still some great O. in Prime Time but I just don't find 'em that hot band for all the business. am i 'missing it'?

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's so difficult to get inside Ornette's head. I do my best to subscribe to the conceit that he's completely conscious of the materials and idioms within which he functions and, on that level, it's easier to bypass the smell of bull... Pulled this one out of a Downbeat interview I ran across:

Howard Mandel: We're talking about the word jazz. I know you've written about yourself as being a jazz artist. Is that really the categorization that you find keeps you from being able to perform in other contexts?

OC: Yeah, I think those terms existed before I existed and I can't quite outdate those terms, but I've outgrown them... I have to find out how I can get what I do where I would like to have it done. WHat do I need to do that? In the Western world your success is based on how many people you reach, and in the music called jazz up to now it's only people who've made money from other levels of music who are allowing people that have a jazz background to integrate, to increase their financial status by mixing with other kinds of music.

<snip>

Mandel: Do you feel you're co-opting an audeince by having electric guitars there with you?

Ornette: ...It's not the same thing as having an electric band, having two guitars. That's really what I have, two guitars. I don't call it an electric band. The terms that pepople have had to play their music under! Categories and the ways in which the musical world allows musicians to survive, usually are much more about the selling and buying than the creating and performing.

(typed quickly and probably messily)

There's a general sense of ambivalence about Ornette's ideology in this period--jaded by industry dealings, Skies of America and the Columbia situtation had gone bust, economic hardship, etc. I presume that there's some sense of obfuscation regarding Ornette and his public face, but I'd be damned if he isn't struggling to maintain the classic "no labels" optimism at this point. I love him to death, but I think it's a lot more fun--and Mandel sort of nails it--when he suggests that Ornette was co-opting an audience. Of course, the musical drive of the Prime Time group was disco guys--Ellerbee, Tacuma, (later) Weston--with some more jazz and free oriented cats mixed in--but Ornette has never had trouble fitting people into his musical conception. The idea that Ornette not only knew what he was doing (and there are all those quotes about wanting to reach a bigger audience and whatnot) but did so through a willful co-optation of indsutry-driven jive is not just subversive--it is, in my book, brilliant. Ornette was pissed and upset enough to refuse to wink, but Prime Time is one fantastic wink, in my book.

When I hear the more strident Prime Time sides Dancing In Your Head, Body Meta, etc., I hear, among other things, "fuck you and I'll have fun doing it." I don't think it necessarily makes it as great funk, let alone free funk (and the BAG and AACM guys were all over that as, as many of the senior group here can attest), and it's really not just electric free jazz. BUT it sounds like Ornette music to me, and it's no more deluded or fake, AFAIC, than The Empty Foxhole (which was more or less the same thing in a jazz trio context).

[JSngry]

No problems here w/electric Ornette. Some's better than others, ranging from great to merely pleasant, but no real problems. Probably just those damn hormones interfering w/my judgement.

[DMP]

What about Freddie Hubbard's "Sing a Song of Songmy" or Bill Evans and George Russell's "Living Time?" (Donald Byrd's "Electric Byrd" has a few elements, although mostly it's like the other traditional jazz plus trendy touches discussed above.)

[ep1str0phy]

"Songmy" is kind of off on its own, all things considered (it's not just electric stuff on there, right? Some wild things going on...). The Living Time stuff, though, is pretty stridently electric, although not always in a funky or rocky way, certain soloists notwithstanding--it's still very Russellish in the long run.

[JSngry]

Well, if you want to talk about people who got into electronics in "ways that partially transformed their musical vision", and if "taste" is not a consideration, then you gotta put Don Ellis in there. For every 10 (or 100...) pieces of gimmicky bullshit, there'd be a thing that showed real vision.

Probably more trouble than it's worth finding them, but if you're so inclined, they're there.

[Guest akanalog]

now we are getting too far away from miles davis, but what about anthony braxton and george lewis doing stuff with richard teitelbaum. i don't really like teitelbaum but i would imagine they were among the first here in the US to be combining such electronic noises with jazz improvisation. there was also that don cherry with jonh appelton. none of this stuff really does it for me....

[JSngry]

"Songmy" is kind of off on its own, all things considered (it's not just electric stuff on there, right? Some wild things going on...). The Living Time stuff, though, is pretty stridently electric, although not always in a funky or rocky way, certain soloists notwithstanding--it's still very Russellish in the long run.

Songmy is really an Ilhan Mimaroglu thing, imo, allt hings considered.

Russell, remember...

[B. Clugston]

now we are getting too far away from miles davis, but what about anthony braxton and george lewis doing stuff with richard teitelbaum. i don’t really like teitelbaum but i would imagine they were among the first here in the US to be combining such electronic noises with jazz improvisation. there was also that don cherry with jonh appelton. none of this stuff really does it for me....

Teitelbaum mixed electronics with improv with MEV long before his collaborations with Braxton and Lewis.

When they did get together, it was music far removed from the funky subtext this thread has developed.

[ep1str0phy]

Agree with you there, B. A lot of MEV stuff (I'm thinking of United Patchwork right now) could pass as Euro-American free jazz in a Lacyish, post-BYG vein. As with Ra, a lot of this music has electronics without being straight-up, jazz-rock "electric." Now, if we want to get into pseudo-funky free improv--about as free as it gets without losing that "rock" feel in so much of the later Miles stuff--then we can mention Arcana's The Last Wave. That's even less accessible than the crazier Lifetime moments, and with Bill Laswell to boot.

[Guest the mommy]

i don't think laswel belongs in this discussion.

[ep1str0phy]

Laswell per se is a can of worms, but his whole ethos is part of what has happened to the legacy of early jazz-rock (and electric Miles, for that matter). I'd agree that Laswell never "went electric," though, 'cause he had nowhere to go from. It's interesting to hear Tony Williams in that context though--especially that late in the game. Arcana was essentially a more pissed-off Lifetime.

Edited October 18, 2006 by ep1str0phy

[Chuck Nessa]

My "hormone period"?

Dude, I hope I never have a time that's not my hormone period in some form or fashion!

The neutered life is not for me, thanks anyway.

Despite your protestations, you be much jumpier at 13-17. Music encountered during this period "imprints" and it is up to the recipient to allocate importance. I have youthful weaknesses for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and even Timi Yuro. Never started a thread about this stuff 'cuz I know (and accept) what it is.

Many post in the past but no response.

It is very important when one encounters music and how that is folded into one's personal taste.

[7/4]

I'd agree that Laswell never "went electric," though, 'cause he had nowhere to go from. It's interesting to hear Tony Williams in that context though--especially that late in the game. Arcana was essentially a more pissed-off Lifetime.

That's right, he was never acoustic. I'm a big fan of his, but even though I have a ton of his stuff, I haven't been listening to him much lately.

[ep1str0phy]

13-17 for me was spent listening to this stuff, so I guess I'm fortunate in that sense. It doesn't always occur to me, but my salad salad days pop up now and again (my girlfriend, sympathetically receptive to modern improv--had her dancing to Steve Reid not too long ago--went nuts when I went into my early-90's singer-songwriter mode yesterday). I'm speaking from the perspective of youth and inexperience, though--I'd like to know just how much of it sticks with, how much changes... oh, thirty, forty years down the line.

Edited October 18, 2006 by ep1str0phy

[Chuck Nessa]

13-17 for me was spent listening to this stuff, so I guess I'm fortunate in that sense. It doesn't always occur to me, but my salad salad days pop up now and again (my girlfriend, sympathetically receptive to modern improv--had her dancing to Steve Reid not too long ago--went nuts when I went into my early-90's singer-songwriter mode yesterday). I'm speaking from the perspective of youth and inexperience, though--I'd like to know just how much of it sticks with, how much changes... oh, thirty, forty years down the line.

Important info. We all have stuff to deal with. Thanks.

[Dan Gould]

My "hormone period"?

Dude, I hope I never have a time that's not my hormone period in some form or fashion!

The neutered life is not for me, thanks anyway.

Despite your protestations, you be much jumpier at 13-17. Music encountered during this period "imprints" and it is up to the recipient to allocate importance. I have youthful weaknesses for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and even Timi Yuro. Never started a thread about this stuff 'cuz I know (and accept) what it is.

Many post in the past but no response.

It is very important when one encounters music and how that is folded into one's personal taste.

Chuck, if I may, are you saying that we all have particular favorites that are purely a function of our age when we first heard them? Are you also saying that such favorites are in some sense almost involuntary or not completely rational? In other words, had we not heard them at a presumably impressionable age, we wouldn't enjoy them as we do? For that matter, why do we have to "allocate importance"? Just because you discovered Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong a few years down the road, does that mean you're supposed to downgrade the music of your youth?

Are you ashamed of your "youthful weakness" for Little Richard, et al.? I'd happily trade my weakness for "American Pie" and countless other top 40 hits of the 70s for an equivalent dose of "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Great Balls of Fire".

This deserves a separate thread - but its the first comment in this one that I had anything to add to.

[JSngry]

My "hormone period"?

Dude, I hope I never have a time that's not my hormone period in some form or fashion!

The neutered life is not for me, thanks anyway.

Despite your protestations, you be much jumpier at 13-17. Music encountered during this period "imprints" and it is up to the recipient to allocate importance. I have youthful weaknesses for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and even Timi Yuro. Never started a thread about this stuff 'cuz I know (and accept) what it is.

Many post in the past but no response.

It is very important when one encounters music and how that is folded into one's personal taste.

The pop "imprinting was well underway by the time I reached those years. 13 was when the tide began to turn. 14-17 was spent listening to anything but Top 40 pop radio music, except that which was unavoidably around in the environment (and that which "crossed over" from the cave into the mainstream). Some's stayed, some's gone. 18, I got sentimental and turned the radio on again, and it was fun.

Guess I had a "youthful weakness" for, a.o., Armstrong, Ellington, Ayler, Bird, Trane, & Sonny that I've still not shaken. OTOH, "youthful weaknesses" for "jazz-rock" as an umbrella style, weirdness for the sake of weirdness, and all that type of stuff have pretty much been shaken. It's fun, but that's it. And I don't mind having fun. But the meat stays, and there is meat there, whether it's to your liking or not. Weather Report & electric Miles are substantially (& substantively) different musics than "fusion" in general. Etc. etc.etc.

It's a good argument in theory, Chuck, but it's only partially accurate. If you ever catch me saying that The Buckinghams were "major artists", then you can smack me down. Until then, one size (or one age) doesn't fit all. You of all people should know that.

Edited October 19, 2006 by JSngry

[Guy Berger]

Despite your protestations, you be much jumpier at 13-17. Music encountered during this period "imprints" and it is up to the recipient to allocate importance. I have youthful weaknesses for Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and even Timi Yuro. Never started a thread about this stuff 'cuz I know (and accept) what it is.

Many post in the past but no response.

It is very important when one encounters music and how that is folded into one's personal taste.

So, Mr. Psychoanalyst -- what does it mean that I got into electric miles at age 20?

Guy

[Chuck Nessa]

So, Mr. Psychoanalyst -- what does it mean that I got into electric miles at age 20?

Guy

You were a late bloomer.

[rostasi]

So if I was digging Nessa LPs during my pre and teen years

(and I was), then I should be reconsidering my

choices from those days?

[Chuck Nessa]

So if I was digging Nessa LPs during my pre and teen years

(and I was), then I should be reconsidering my

choices from those days?

Reject 'em.

You should know the difference Rod.

[rostasi]

Just playin'

[JSngry]

on the other hand, i just spun Body Meta and Metal Box back to back & pls-- PiL kills those guys at that time.

I wasn't aware that it was a cage match.

[JSngry]

Can't say that PIL & PT struck me as playing the same game even a little. For one thing, PT was always relaxed underneath it all, and PIL....wasn't.

Must be one of those non-related parallel out-of-time universal convergence flukes of the universe things you were talking about earlier. They do happen...

[felser]

If you ever catch me saying that The Buckinghams were "major artists", then you can smack me down.

But I love the Buckinghams (really).! "Kind of a Drag", "Susan", "Foreign Policy", some great stuff! Amazing production by Guerco before he moved onto Chicago Transit Authority. Major artists, no, no staying power once Guerco moved on. Tina Brooks also wasn't a "major" artist either for the same reasons. Were the Buckinghams thoroughly enjoyable for me on the same level as a lot of the music we enshrine here, absolutely!