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"Some of you sound like you're being coerced into listening to certain artists.

If you don't like 'em, ignore 'em.

I like & listen to whoever sounds good to me.

Stanley Crouch never forced me to buy a CD. "

well, I'm not so sure - since people like Stanley Crouch control what is recorded, they control what you can buy and what you will buy - so, as you, robot-like (nothing personal - we're all robots on this bus) go to purchase that CD you are truly under the Lincon Center Mind Control Program -

Edited by AllenLowe
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The most constructive thing in this thread, for me, was Sangery's link to Howard Wiley...

And yet, you could've hear it HERE first! ;)

I mean, ok, there's a post in the Recommendations thread by some guy who's always going off the wall and it's for somebody who probably nobody's heard of, so it gets passed over, other than one guy who said that he got a review copy and didn't like it because it was too intense, that I understand, I guess, sorta.

But otoh, why does it take a thread of semi-pseudo-contentiousness such as this to make people actively (or more actively) curious? Or so it seems.

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well, I'm not so sure - since people like Stanley Crouch control what is recorded, they control what you can buy and what you will buy - so, as you, robot-like (nothing personal - we're all robots on this bus) go to purchase that CD you are truly under the Lincon Center Mind Control Program -

Not over here. They roll into the Proms or the Barbican once a year and that's it.

Minimal influence. Smooth jazz also has very little influence. I don't think I've ever heard Kenny G!

Some would have it we're under a mind control from Munich, however.

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there's a popular rock book the last few years called "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad. it's not very good but it is, obviously, good enough to appeal to both people sorta there but not close enough to know better & also to a decent # of younger people for whom the underground, pre-Alternative, pre-"Indie" rock world has understandable real-ness appeal...

i don't know Jim or Joe's familiarity with that stuff-- figure from '75 Pere Ubu to '90 when Sonic Youth signed to Geffen as the "peak" years. Ya'll know what comes next. even Young Randy, tho' the MC5 were inspirational to some of those people, there's no real comparison except maybe to the "Looking At You" 7"-- Elektra was extremely cool & technically independent but hardly "underground" as such things are measured.

anyway, it's a fucking JOKE-- more a sad, dark one than "funny"-- so see when some people talk about what they THINK they know about rock-oriented musics from that time period. the enthusiastic Rooster Ties walks into it time & again but goddamn, there are others who have NO IDEA.

there are reasons for that, ** NOT ** anyone's "fault" (you get to what you can when you can & I know Michigan well enough-- including a very pervy ex-wife who was heiress to an Upper Peninsula taffy fortune-- to know large parts of it are VOID, which is why some of the Michigan bands seemed too "silly" to some; little did they know, say, the Dutch oppression those kids were going against) but what was "known" & what WAS...

... come the fuck on. anyone here care to remind us the difference between, say, "Rolling Stone" & reality? or the days when mention of the fucking Replacements-- who never shoulda been thought underground anything, stylistically-- in, say, "Musician" magazine was "progressive"? (the Replacements still suck btw & with less excuse than Springsteen, who was at least friends with Suicide (oddly enough) in the late '70s.)

much longer story not-told-esp.-well by Azerrad but still compelling enough to wake people the fuck up 20 years later...

***

... the same, or similar, at least, shit can be applied to jass, which is WHY the Josh Redman, Jarrett Standards, Mehldau... & Bad Plus Covers Crap should be approached critically & excoriated where appropriate.

yeah, it's GREAT (really) some of ya'll know Jimmy Smith AND Jimmy Ponder quite well ineed-- why the fuck should any of who have a pretty decent idea of much that came between them & current Major Label Marketing NPR Shuck & Jive settle for less?

& even if some of ya'll are "nice" or "nicer" than edc, why the fuck SUPPORT the laziness & corruption that shoves the same crap-- of even "very good player crap" down the majority of people's throats again & again & again & again?

Ethan Iverson might be able to play but he's also an inspid little twat trying to dupe dipshits with some theory of pop primacy that was NEVER real to begin with. & "we"-- with shelves full of records, Brit music papers, fanzines, etc-- that show his ignorance (& shitty taste) times 1000% are supposed to just grin like monkeys & say--

well, if folks like it...

but bingo!! history is what's happening & it's easier to access now than ever before-- RAISE THYSELVES.

& not by turning up a Josh Redman or Joe Lovano record up to 11, hah.

***

Q: how many times has Matthew Shipp say been on NPR? Craig Taborn? etc etc etc.

D. Boon, when he was alive?

But DUDE - first, all that punk shit you're talking about has a direct analog in the DIY-jazz-underground of the very period you're talking about. Why do you think people like Thurston Moore were so inspired by Arthur Jones and Frank Lowe and Ak-Ba and all that? And there were/are a lot of cats self-producing raw underground improvised music in the wake of the "OG" shit - look through the North Country Distribution pages to get a snippet of at least some of that. It's not thee mainstream (never was), and by the same token I don't think most people who bought Nebraska ever heard of Alan Vega.

And Elektra always put out better white-kid protest music than ESP.

There's a great photo that Atavistic used on the inner of the Dieter Scherf reissue - it's got a pic of the trio sitting in their broken-down VW tour van. They jam econo!

I mean, most current "indie" is utter pap, so the issues of content-driven marketing that you're talking about really go to both the highest and lowest level. You just gotta sift to find the good stuff (and it is there). The same "type" of person who digs a little bit deeper than the Replacements will likely dig deeper than Dave Douglas. Sometimes they are a person who digs deeply in both genres.

Brad Mehldau does Tom Rapp -

CT

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I have a vision of a scene where a large, dark, hot room is filled with sweaty bodies of one giant beautifully indeterminate race/socio-economic group/marketing demographic all moving in interlockingly independent rhythms to the sound of a band that's got some live players and some DJs/drum-machinists, just a big steaming CAULDRON of electro-accoustic GUMBO (yeah, this one's for you, Daddy's Boy) throwing down some rhythmically/harmonically intricate grooves whilst horn players solo passionately and effectively at length in between verses

Now, wouldn't that be nice?

That was the acid jazz movement in San Francisco in the mid 90's. Then the club owners decided it was cheaper to just have the DJs without the jazz musicians and hipsters decided that indie rock was cooler and it all went downhill. Im ready for a revival though.

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Most of the "acid jazz" records from the 90s that I've heard are kinda...lame, especially in terms of bringing it all together like I'm hearing it. Not saying that it didn't happen, just saying that it wasn't documented like that, at least not that I know of.

The current broken-beat scene is a lot better in terms of actual musical meat, but it too is lacking in being fleshed out by improvisationalism, at least on record.

Truthfully, I can really hear, really hear, say, Joe Henderson at his early-1970s level of energy, scaring the shit out of a big bunch of people by playing full-force with some broken-beat. Sure, Joe's dead now, but surely not everybody who could do it is too, are they?

The object as I hear it, is to use the tools of DJ-dom to create original live music in conjunction with the other tools we have always used, music that at the end of the day will have to be called jazz because....that's all it could be called...because that's what it is. No doubt there's a learning curve (to say nothing of a reacclimation curve for a lot of the "jazz" people, you know, "Hey, WAKE UP, these machines can actually SWING now! :g ), but damn, why can't it be done? Why shouldn't it be done? Why isn't it being done?

Lemme get down off this soapbox now, lest I raise some jazz ire. ;)

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And oh yeah, what does NPR have to do with ANYTHING?

see --> HERE

Big deal. The average NPR-type isn't your average jazz-head (except Ghost of Miles and WD45, but they are the exception, not the rule), so yeah NPR's gonna have a story about Redman. Big deal and so fucking what. They're a commercial venture like everything else in the world; can you imagine the outrage from the blue-haired patrons who fund this shit (who like to think they're all artsy-fartsy because they contribute to NPR, go to museums, they "support the arts" and are therefore more intellectual than you or me) if they played any of the music you suggest? As much fun as that would be, it ain't gonna happen. All NPR is doing is pleasing the advertisers.

Or playing down to the level of intellect. Take yer pick.

Edited by Big Al
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And oh yeah, what does NPR have to do with ANYTHING?

see --> HERE

which drastically warps the retail, 'institutional' perception of shit v. shinola... not even techno Warp.

Yeah, I mean that on uh, paper, looks shall we say, "thin." And I feel two sentiments here, myself: "so what, NPR is irrelevant" and "damn, the Houston jazz concert series will use this to base their programming for the next five years."

I think Atavistic either did or will reissue the Big Black tape on DVD among a few others. I think I may have lucked out on seeing a few of these (SY, Flaming Lips) in my high school days, but Topeka was NOT Lawrence.

"Long Stockings (for Barbara Ess)" -

CT

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Truthfully, I can really hear, really hear, say, Joe Henderson at his early-1970s level of energy, scaring the shit out of a big bunch of people by playing full-force with some broken-beat. Sure, Joe's dead now, but surely not everybody who could do it is too, are they?

I know NOTHING about the kind of electronic beat music you listen to. But didn't Squarepusher use like Evan Parker on one of its discs?

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One of the side/aftereffects of Marsailisism is that jazz musicians often feel a sense of "entitlement" in the Cultural Arena, like yeah, hey, I'm here, I count, where's mine, bitch?

Which is all well and good, but... think about it, and think about the old adage about being careful about what you ask for, and all that.

Used to be that "the underground" was some place to run to, not away from. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with buying in as opposed to selling out, but if you gotta run away to get it...

There's a whole big world that doesn't need/want us. Rather than howling at them, why don't we just make our own thing and get cozy and smart with it? Parallel economy and the whole deal.

No reason why it shouldn't go.

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so, not to be too coy about it... ** WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, Tejas? ** good reeds are a bitch to find i know but otherwise...

The object as I hear it, is to use the tools of DJ-dom to create original live music in conjunction with the other tools we have always used

that is your project.

A fair question, and other than middle-age fatigue, being in an area with next to no Dance Underground scene to pull that end from and an even lesser interest by the local jazz musicians in doing anything even remotely like this...

Hey, I'm tired. Really tired. Two kids, god knows how many bands, an innate lack of "proper" business skills, living in the Musical Shithole of America, hey, I tried and didn't get it done. Maybe at some point I'kk get back some gumption to take it back to the streets, but right now, the best I can to now is offer encouragement for some kid who's reading this and thinking, "hey, that lazyass old fart might be a lazyass old fart, but he's right." Damns straight I am kid. Now you go do it, and try not to fuck it up like I did. I'm pulling for you all the way.

Is that a cop out? I've no doubt that it is. But right now, that's what I got.

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I mean, I'm just pointing out that if one digs, even in the crap-bin that is NPR, one can still find "decent" stuff. I mean, yeah, four bits on J Redman is not excused by a lil' bit on Dave Burrell, but I'm just sayin'...

Didn't know that FD was her husband or that he wrote anything about the America catalog. My pick is the Emergency LP, but...

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Giddins unmasked-- like when he tries to write about film-- is still too delish to pass up; it's funny too, in a field where more people kinda have an idea what's up than jass, he doesn't have NEARLY the accolades, nor should he.

For you, because I believe in the ElderYouth Of America, the very first Weather Bird column, DB,11-22-73:

Gid.jpg

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and I think that poem is unfair; I don;t know of any serious student of any art form who is truly like that - it builds on a "type" that itself is virtually non-existent -

Hey...I ain't pointing a finger at anybody. I just happened to think of that poem and decided to post it.

....still think it's a dang funny poem.

.

I love it! It sounds like the poet has met Clem...

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wake the fuck up Al or count 'em-- 1... 2... 3... FOUR goddamn stories on Josh Redman & those are all I found in a split second... & you are right about something: NPR >>>> greater than the # of "real" jazz fans, which is why these mediocre turds have such careers. come on, Son, i defend Texas to most people, don't let me down.

now check out the books covered on NPR & their publishers, what books are stocked by chain stores, etc etc.

don't delude yourself that everything is available everywhere anytime on the fucking internet, that does NOT translate into gig $$$ etc & all the accoutrements these "very good players" (just like Fucking Modest Mouse, kill me now) have grown accustomed to... & well, you've seen what the rest of the folks are up to.

ALSO, having such weakass boring mediocre shit touted as the paragon can only diminish greater interest among the maybe curious many. thiis is FACT bro' so don't even bust out an inhaler trying to deny it.

If someone is depending on NPR for what to listen to for jazz, then they're not even trying; hell, they're even more clueless than I am. Proof? Someone I know, who is an avid NPR listener, told me some years back about the latest (at the time) jazz CD by Boz Scaggs. Boz Scaggs=jazz??? WTF???? It's the same mentality that led one young person told me, "Oh, you like jazz, too? So does my mom. She has a couple of Kenny G CDs." Yer preachin' to the choir here. I take anything NPR says with less than a grain of salt.

Like Sangrey said, like I've always said: this place is a musical wasteland, Austin notwithstanding as long as the suburbs keep their distance, and even those days are numbered as long as Perry is still in charge. Why the hell defend it? At least Sangrey is still somewhat optimistic, which is a helluva lot more than I can say for me.

Edited by Big Al
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If it's damn near...unanimous that XYZ isn't as great as those who came before, where's the beef? What is there to get upset about? If we're all saying the same thing up to and including the REAL point here, doesn't the disagreement come down to "I know it's not as great as BLAHBLAHBLAH but I like it anyway"?

The reason there is a disagreement is that SOME people around here (and I won't mention any names...<clem!>...<clem!>...sorry, I seem to have something in my throat) frequently imply (and even state outright) that those of us who dare to enjoy a Redman, a Lovano, a Mehldau have something akin to rocks in our heads. I still recall the time that SOMEONE (...<clem!>...<clem!>...dang, there's that cough again) stated directly that those of us who enjoyed Dylan's "Modern Times" had been "duped." I find such suggestions offensive in the extreme (and don't start the whole, "Ah, so you can dish it out, but you can't take it" thing again. I'm a hypocrite. I know. Me and Eliot Spitzer). I like what I like and you like what you like and I honestly don't think that anyone, be it Chuck or Chris or Allen or whoever - no matter what their "cred" is - has a right to tell me or you or anyone that they are WRONG to like what they like. And for the most part, most of the folks around here DON'T tell us that something is wrong with us if we like something they don't. They might mock it, but that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how SOME people (<clem!>.....<clem!>....damn...can't seem to shake that cough) DO tell others what they should do, think or listen to.

Just my $0.02. Take it or leave it.

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I think you're taking Clem's posts a lot more personally than you need to. He does make one think.

(edit: for Alexander)

I know. The guy rubs me the wrong way, what can I say? I ignore his posts most of the time, but when he makes up a big part of a thread (like this one) I just can't look away. It's like a car wreck on the side of the road.

His annoying hipster "look-at-me-I'm-so-cool-because-listen-to-XYZ" schtick pisses me off. Can't explain why.

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UNFORTUNATELY, "the Chicago School" (sic), which sucks more than it doesn't

I've ignored this thread for a while 'cause I don't want to offend some friends but checking the current page to get the tenor of the arguement, clementine's above statement caught my attention and prompted a response.

UNFORTUNATELY, all scenes suck more than they don't. Never forget to wade thru the ephemera to get to the real deal. Part of the journey and the results are worthwhile.

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