Interview: Pete Gershon, editor,Signal to Noise

[Simon Weil]

well - and I honestly felt this way even before they gave me a good review - I think they, along with Cadence, try more than any other publications to keep up with what new musicians are doing and saying. It doesn't always (or even often) work, but at least they are engaged with that world. I find this somewhat satisfying and, as I said before, important as documentation, at the very least

Well I just need some edge, penetration in the writing somewhere. Without that I just feel I'm wallowing around. Like it's all very well to document, but what about analyse? Order, construct, make some sort of sense of what I'm hearing. I mean that would be the main criticism I would make about writers everywhere (not just in Jazz pace Jon Abbey) - they don't do a terribly good job of making sense of whatever world they're describing. I have similar views about art/popular culture (see my thing about The State Within in the Bad Plus thread).

It is perhaps unfair to single out StN for this, therefore. The question is why is this lack of insightful writing/culture so prevalent these days?

You don't have that in society you're in serious trouble.

Simon Weil

[JSngry]

Ben Webster was Jewish!!

That was for the clubs. At Carnegie Hall, Gene Ammons was Jewish.

[JSngry]

The question is why is this lack of insightful writing/culture so prevalent these days?

If one wanted to, one could suggest that the level of insight in most of the current writing about music is by and large equivalent to the level of insight in the current music itself.

If one wanted to...

[Chuck Nessa]

[AllenLowe]

well, we're all suffering from pianist envy -

[jon abbey]

The question is why is this lack of insightful writing/culture so prevalent these days?

If one wanted to, one could suggest that the level of insight in most of the current writing about music is by and large equivalent to the level of insight in the current music itself.

If one wanted to...

from my perspective, this clearly isn't true. if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration. but for improvised music as a whole, the "level of insight in most of the current writing about music" is much lower than the level of insight in the best music being created today. I'd venture a guess that this has always been the case to an extent, but right now is probably the worst it's ever been.

[Larry Kart]

[ if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration.

"Sure"? Don't get out much, do you?

[jon abbey]

[ if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration.

"Sure"? Don't get out much, do you?

I do, but let's not have this tired discussion again.

[Larry Kart]

[ if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration.

"Sure"? Don't get out much, do you?

I do, but let's not have this tired discussion again.

"This" tired discussion? OK -- I give up. And in all "macro" senses, too.

[clifford_thornton]

Can we discuss my wasp sting?

[JSngry]

If one really wanted to go out on a limb, one could suggest that "critical writing" of the type under dscussion here is a distinctly "analog" act presented in a distinctly linear medium, and that as such, it's going to prove to be relatively proportionately less than 100% "effective" when practiced/received by people who are less than 100% geared towards such a reality.

The truth of McLuhan continues to reveal itself, that's all I'm saying.

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, probably.

[AllenLowe]

Jon - don't lump it all together - I know you find improvisation boring - I just read an on-line interview you gave - but having stood on stages with Roswell Rudd and Julius Hemphill, AFTER the Ford administration, I will say that you are missing some of the work of the Gods by making such generalizations.

Edited October 11, 2007 by AllenLowe

[clifford_thornton]

And I'll add that nobody here is really critiquing the critics the way that it could be done in an "academic" sense. I've not the time nor the wherwithal to do it here, but hey, if somebody wants to step up to the plate...

[Larry Kart]

If one really wanted to go out on a limb, one could suggest that "critical writing" of the type under dscussion here is a distinctly "analog" act presented in a distinctly linear medium, and that as such, it's going to prove to be relatively proportionately less than 100% "effective" when practiced/received by people who are less than 100% geared towards such a reality.

The truth of McLuhan continues to reveal itself, that's all I'm saying.

My critical writing is "digital," not "analog," and it's 100% "effective." That's why those in the know don't stand too close to it.

[Guest Bill Barton]

[ if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration.

"Sure"? Don't get out much, do you?

I do, but let's not have this tired discussion again.

"This" tired discussion? OK -- I give up. And in all "macro" senses, too.

Doesn't sound like a tired discussion to me either. In fact, it sounds more interesting than a good 50% of the blather here so far.

I'm with you, Larry. If "jazz" is creatively bankrupt has anyone informed Muhal Richard Abrams or Tina Marsh or about a zillion-and-one other active and ceaselessly creative musicians of this fact?

Edited October 11, 2007 by Bill Barton

[JSngry]

If one really wanted to go out on a limb, one could suggest that "critical writing" of the type under dscussion here is a distinctly "analog" act presented in a distinctly linear medium, and that as such, it's going to prove to be relatively proportionately less than 100% "effective" when practiced/received by people who are less than 100% geared towards such a reality.

The truth of McLuhan continues to reveal itself, that's all I'm saying.

My critical writing is "digital," not "analog," and it's 100% "effective." That's why those in the know don't stand too close to it.

I couldn't diagree more about the first half - your writing is deeply analog (and deeply meaningful as a result), in that it looks at real people in real time and comes to all sorts of examinations and conclusions in/about same. It's about as good/effective as such writing can be, and if there is infact any jsutice over time, it will outlast & outshine many more celebrated practioneers of the same attempted feats.

It also comes from and about a time, a place, and some peoples for whom things like "time" and "place", although not necessarily any more easily "found", were ultimately less "complicated" in that the "end in sight" was thought to be somewhere in a known/fixed quantity. That is far less the case today for far more people confronting the "eternal issues".

It remains my contention/hunch/whatevdr that we are in the midst of a true paradigm shift, one of those rare times in history when "the nature of reality" as we know it is undergoing a fundamental change. The omnispatiality/omnichronologicality (i.e. - when everything really is everything, what then is the true definition of "something" and "somplace" and "some time"?) of so much "free jazz" was at once a logical end to the old paradigm and a logical opening of the new.

I also think that what is being called "lack of insight" here is not so much a lack as it is a reptition of a reality/truth that still holds true as far as it goes. It's just that the "end of the horizon" is a lot farther away now than it used to be, so it doesn't go as far as it used to. What once was large is still the same size as it always was, but the area it's contextualized in has gotten a helluva lot larger.

Many will disagree, I'm sure.

Edited October 11, 2007 by JSngry

[Larry Kart]

I too sense a major paradigm shift in the works, one that will erase from the universe virtually everything I know and care about. This will be done not from outright malice mostly but as a semi-incidental consequence of the need to reshape things, a la what happens to what's in the way when a really big parking lot needs to be built. What saddens me, in particular, about what I expect will happen is that in the process large parts of the past -- our individual and collective historical memory -- will be bulldozed and thus probably lost forever, all this in the name of supposedly simple necessity. One perhaps oblique example of what's to come, the term "IslamoFascism." One knows why and more or less by whom it's been dreamed up, but the "need" to do so means that the historical reality of what Fascism actually was has been turned to dust. (For a powerful pocket example of some of that reality, check out the recent movie "Pan's Labyrinth.") I assume that Jim has fairly nice cosmic things in mind for the paradigm shift he sees coming, but thoughts of the major reshaping that would have to be involved leave me with almost no optimism; the major reshapers of the world in my lifetime have been sick, brutal fucks by and large.

[Simon Weil]

The question is why is this lack of insightful writing/culture so prevalent these days?

If one wanted to, one could suggest that the level of insight in most of the current writing about music is by and large equivalent to the level of insight in the current music itself.

If one wanted to...

If one wanted to look, one might see.

Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

my writing is analog as well, in real time, though occasionally I will do overdubs -

[JSngry]

I assume that Jim has fairly nice cosmic things in mind for the paradigm shift he sees coming...

You assume wrongly. I have nothing in mind for it except its ongoing inevitability.

I will say this though - the outcome is less likely to be bleak (although to what degree and to what end of success, I dare not venture) if those of us who do know something "true" about "the way things were" go ahead on and get into this new "flow" and contribute as best we can (i.e. - actively live instead of passively spectate) instead of remaining stationary like a boulder in the middle of a stream and then wondering why we're steadily being eroded away.

[JSngry]

The question is why is this lack of insightful writing/culture so prevalent these days?

If one wanted to, one could suggest that the level of insight in most of the current writing about music is by and large equivalent to the level of insight in the current music itself.

If one wanted to...

If one wanted to look, one might see.

Simon Weil

If one wants to convince one's self that a weed is in fact a giant redwood, one can, if one wants to badly enough.

[jon abbey]

Jon - don't lump it all together - I know you find improvisation boring - I just read an on-line interview you gave

you didn't read it very well, as I actually find improvisation so exciting at its best that I've devoted my life to documenting it.

but having stood on stages with Roswell Rudd and Julius Hemphill, AFTER the Ford administration, I will say that you are missing some of the work of the Gods by making such generalizations.

both of those guys did their best work before when I'm talking about, Hemphill hit his peak with his first two records. my point is that nothing truly new has emerged within jazz for decades, and I believe it's impossible at this point because of the limits of jazz as an art form. the same boundaries that make something "jazz" or not are what's prevented it from continuing to develop, there's simply no room. don't get me wrong, jazz was a crucial building block in the history of improvisation, but it's a historical art form at this point. improvisation, on the other hand, is very much alive and well and flourishing on a global scale.

I don't really get the analog/digital discussion here. there are still plenty of critics out there working largely the same way they always have, the issue is more that almost all of them aren't very good. if there was a fantastic online review zine, I'd see your point, but there isn't, something like Point of Departure has at least as many problems as Signal To Noise.

Edited October 11, 2007 by jon abbey

[Larry Kart]

[\I don't really get the analog/digital discussion here.

I was making, or trying to make, a joke (or wisecrack) by conflating the terms used for methods of recording music with Jim's metaphorical use of "analog" as he spoke of ways of responding in words to music.

[AllenLowe]

"both of those guys did their best work before when I'm talking about, Hemphill hit his peak with his first two records."

only if you've never heared them in person, but even recording wise this is not true - listen to Roswell on my American Song Project , just for starters, and when I did 3 nights with him at Sweet Basil in the early 1990s with my Louis Armstrong show, the bandstand seemed to levitate. Ask Loren Schoenberg, who was there, and not necessarily a fan of "free" playing -he was ecstatic - as "live" performers they kept it going in amazing ways. Also, per Hemphill, his big band record is the probably the best jazz orchestral writing done in the last 40 years; his sextet was incredible; and listen to him on my New Tango CD; playing with him at the Knitting Factory was an experience that will not be repeated -

"my point is that nothing truly new has emerged within jazz for decades, and I believe it's impossible at this point because of the limits of jazz as an art form. the same boundaries that make something "jazz" or not are what's prevented it from continuing to develop, there's simply no room. don't get me wrong, jazz was a crucial building block in the history of improvisation, but it's a historic art form at this point. improvisation, on the other hand, is very much alive and well and flourishing on a global scale."

yikes, don't know where to start on this - Julius, for one, and his development of the horn quartet and sextet; Zorn for obvious reasons (Spillane and Morricone discs in particualr, also Naked City); Tim Berne, completely unqique compositional style and method of organizing it; the late Andy Shapiro, the most talent synth/jeyboard player I have ever heard (basically undocumented on CD, but just ask anybody in Vermont) - Matt Shipp, who has fused certain keyboard approaches in ways whic are unprecedented; I hear new-sounding stuff all the time, and I'm old and out of it up in Maine. I'm sure the guys here can be much more forthcoming. And I'll mention my own guitar playing, which Larry Kart has called "unprecedented" - though you may prefer Mazzacane, who I like personally, but, damn, is really an amateur -

Edited October 11, 2007 by AllenLowe