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But dammit Larry, for the most part, I'm on their side!

Yeah... not exactly sure what you and I were "disagreeing" about.... :unsure: Brian Wilson? ^_^ I simply meant to say that their point about "Surrey"--that it's supposedly a ridiculous, irrelevant song because it's about a surrey--was misguided. It's a vehicle song, in more ways than one (theatrical as well as automobile), and therefore not absurd on the grounds that they suggest it is--unless one is capable of understanding songs/stories that contain only one's own contemporary contexts/details/etc. (Hmm... isn't Bowie's "Space Odyssey" a "car song" as well? Oh man, I gotta get back to work!)

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I want to put a personal perspective in here - when I first wanted to fuse free jazz and hillbilly/country music, about 15 years ago, a certain record company owner looked at me like I was crazy. When I finally got around to doing this last year, it occurred to me that the difference between my attitude toward the music and someone like Eugen Chadbournes's (and also Frank Zappa) is that while well educated white boys like those two tend to approach this music with a distancing irony, to refuse to engage it on its own terms, I was determined to do the opposite, to play it in the spirit it was created. Their's (meaning Chadbourne and Zappa's) is a classic jazz attitude toward certain songs - to a lesser extent and in a different way with Sonny Rollins and Monk (and I once had an African American musical historian yell at me, when I said I thought Monk did use some irony, that "Irony is a white concept. He was doing the dozens on those tunes." Bullshit, I said than and now, and the truth was that even with this irony, neither Monk or Rollins ever felt superior to their material) - but my point, anyway, is that, whether you like it or not, the Bad Plus deals with those songs in their own terms, as real material without distancing. And this, after years and years of distancing and musically alienating (and now cliched) irony, is completely proper, in my opinion. Problem is, these critics are putting too much of their own snobbery into their interpretation of the group's intentions -

Edited by AllenLowe
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The lyrics of "Surrey" are perfectly silly but don't pretend to be anything else. The song is a vehicle for music-making and nothing else.

Actually, the song is a vehicle for plot developement/exposition/whatever in a musical theatre piece. The melody & lyrics should be judged as to how well they function in that role.

Everything else, everything else, pro or con, is "extra".

Absolutely. Rodgers & Hammerstein's great achievement was to move the Brodway musical away from "coat hanger" plots about nothing very much to real stories, often with real tragedy in them. Musicals such as "Carousel", "Oklahoma", "South Pacfic", "The King and I" - even "The sound of music" - had real stories and songs with music that carried the stories forward. I mean that it wasn't just the lyrics that carried the plot - "Surrey" is actually a good case in point, because the music itself evokes the surrey. (Though it doesn't NECESSARILY do that - the version by Patton, Green and Dixon moves the rhythm figure of the tune into a groove.)

Rodgers and Hart songs, however, were written for the theatre of the preceding era and are songs which could be fitted in anywhere in a musical. Or nowhere. The lack of context, in my view, makes them easier meat for musicians and singers who are not performing in the musical theatre. Hence their greater popularity with jazz musicians. The contextual nature of the Rodgers & Hammerstein songs carries with them into non-theatrical performances and almost inevitably conveys something to an audience that a jazz musician doesn't necessarily want to put over (assuming the audience has ever seen the musical, something that I guess is becoming quite rare).

Not all of Rodgers and Hammerstein's tunes were so deeply embedded in their respective plots as "Surrey"; "It might as well be spring" works in both ways, it seems to me. But to ignore the context, even though you can, is, I think, to misunderstand the composers' intentions. The past is another culture. Trying not to understand it, while evaluating its music for its "eternal verities" (can't remember the exact phrase Chas used), is the equivalent of a Senegalese trying to evaluate Gospel music solely against his own background of Mbalax and Islam; a load of bollocks.

MG

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I have no idea what a surrey is. Some sort of a carriage with a fringe on the top, I assume. What sort of fringe does one put on top of a carriage? I can't imagine. Why does a horse-drawn carriage have a dashboard and two bright sidelights winkin' and blinkin'? Again, I can't really picture it. And what on earth is "isinglass"?

Despite the obscurity of these now dated lyrics, it's obvious that the song is about a guy looking forward to taking his girl out in his ride, and the fantasy is told with considerable warmth and affection. Nice lyrics, now that I think about it, and not so dependent on context. It's not context I lack, it's knowledge about surreys!

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I have no idea what a surrey is. Some sort of a carriage with a fringe on the top, I assume. What sort of fringe does one put on top of a carriage? I can't imagine. Why does a horse-drawn carriage have a dashboard and two bright sidelights winkin' and blinkin'? Again, I can't really picture it. And what on earth is "isinglass"?

Despite the obscurity of these now dated lyrics, it's obvious that the song is about a guy looking forward to taking his girl out in his ride, and the fantasy is told with considerable warmth and affection. Nice lyrics, now that I think about it, and not so dependent on context. It's not context I lack, it's knowledge about surreys!

51bKzCtqFLL.jpg

MG

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Funny that THIS tune should be discussed in such detail.

As for jazz musicians not really liking plot-related musical tunes such as those by Rodgers/Hammerstein, jazz musicians sure improved this one a LOT when they took it up!

I always hated the tune as sung in the movie (boy, what gutless, artificial, stilted howling! :D :D) but I do like Miles Davis' version a lot.

BTW, as for Tom Storer's question about what surreys are, this term seems to have made it into common usage as a fairly ridiculous description of one version of a horse-drawn buggy. I remember a quote in a motor road test from approx. 1960 where the author had been wondering about the attitude of parts of the public that there was no need for this or that car to be that fast. So he went on to write: "Gents, if this attitude had prevailed in 1905 we'd still be cruising in motorized surreys with fringes on top, taking corners at 5 mph!" As a result the object of this song title has had somewhat ridiculous connotations for me ever since. :D Thanks for Miles Davis for making it much more palatable. ;)

To get back to the original subject, I am not so sure if the current use of "cover" versions beyond carbon copies recorded to cash in on a pop hit song is all that incorrect. Maybe the term "cover" as often used today is to hint at the lack of originality of those who play mostly covers instead of originals, especially in rock and pop music?

Of course I wouldn't consider Miles' "Surrey" version a "cover", and most jazz "versions" of previously recorded tunes would not fit those descriptions either (with the possible exception of some stock arrangement recordings of well-known big band tunes).

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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The isinglass curtains would be rolled up out of sight at the edges of the roof (probably hidden by the fringe) so they could be "rolled right down, in case there's a change in the weather" -- isinglass being waterproof. The surrey as depicted doesn't have sidelights visible, but you can guess where they would be and what they would be for -- nighttime safety, like reflective tape on a pair of running shoes.

Edited by Larry Kart
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I have no idea what a surrey is. Some sort of a carriage with a fringe on the top, I assume. What sort of fringe does one put on top of a carriage? I can't imagine. Why does a horse-drawn carriage have a dashboard and two bright sidelights winkin' and blinkin'? Again, I can't really picture it. And what on earth is "isinglass"?

Despite the obscurity of these now dated lyrics, it's obvious that the song is about a guy looking forward to taking his girl out in his ride, and the fantasy is told with considerable warmth and affection. Nice lyrics, now that I think about it, and not so dependent on context. It's not context I lack, it's knowledge about surreys!

51bKzCtqFLL.jpg

MG

Shirley Jones would not have been safe with me in that thing...fringe or not...

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methinks they doth protest jsut a little too much, 'cause whether they intended it or not, there is something ironic about a jazz piano trio playing "Iron Man" in 2007...and I think they know that. Sure the press has seized on a small corner of what they do, but that's entirely predictable. And, on the whole I find their music far too much like Black Sabbith or Rush, bombastic and lacking in nuance, and none of it, self-composed or reinterpreted, anywhere near as profound or funny as Sonny R's "Surrey" or T. Monk's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", or for that matter the Platters' "Smoke". Given that they couldn't even draw a decent crowd to a freebie some time ago in Ptld, I's surprised the're still a hot topic...

Maybe "she's so fine my 409" was covertly stating a preference for big girls? Think I'll go write some Studebaker songs...

Edited by danasgoodstuff
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I don't think I have any particular insight into whether a song is good or bad in some Platonic sense.

The past is another culture. Trying not to understand it, while evaluating its music for its "eternal verities" (can't remember the exact phrase Chas used), is the equivalent of a Senegalese trying to evaluate Gospel music solely against his own background of Mbalax and Islam; a load of bollocks.

Opposition to culturally-relativistic aesthetics need not rest on Platonic metaphysical assumptions , as it can arise among those sharing the desire to naturalize aesthetics . Many wishing to naturalize aesthetic values stop at the cultural level instead of continuing down to the level of human nature , largely out of antagonism ( rooted in political commitments ) to what they see as the essentialism of such a concept . Evolutionary psychology has helped provide an explanatory framework for studies demonstrating cross-cultural , trans-historical standards of beauty ( both of persons and of landscapes ) , so why are we to suppose that something similar could not be possible with musical aesthetic values ? If we accept the psychological nativism of Chomsky's linguistic universals , aren't we obliged to be open to the possibility of aesthetic universals ? Strictly speaking such an aestheticism would not be universalist or absolutist , since it would still be relativistic in the sense that it would be relative to human beings and the contingency of their evolutionary development .

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Opposition to culturally-relativistic aesthetics need not rest on Platonic metaphysical assumptions , as it can arise among those sharing the desire to naturalize aesthetics . Many wishing to naturalize aesthetic values stop at the cultural level instead of continuing down to the level of human nature , largely out of antagonism ( rooted in political commitments ) to what they see as the essentialism of such a concept . Evolutionary psychology has helped provide an explanatory framework for studies demonstrating cross-cultural , trans-historical standards of beauty ( both of persons and of landscapes ) , so why are we to suppose that something similar could not be possible with musical aesthetic values ? If we accept the psychological nativism of Chomsky's linguistic universals , aren't we obliged to be open to the possibility of aesthetic universals ? Strictly speaking such an aestheticism would not be universalist or absolutist , since it would still be relativistic in the sense that it would be relative to human beings and the contingency of their evolutionary development .

Well, fuck.

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