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Prince is dead


rostasi

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Yeah, the whole disconnect between not wanting to do anything than just stand there and play and then getting upset about strangers not wanting to just stand there and watch somebody who is just standing there and playing...I dunno, that's a lot of just standing there, I think there's a fear of exercise driving that. :g

And you know, if a cat is really delivering some deep, spellbinding shit, they WILL sit there and watch it. But otherwise, existing as an active part of some broader social fabric/group/whatever is a prerequisite for ANYBODY giving a shit about you besides yourself. Hell, even the outsiders try to belong to each other, at least the ones who anybody knows about do. Even the EXTREME outsiders, the ones who hate everybody, if you've heard of them, it's probably because they found a group of people who don't hate them in return, and BOOM, social fabric established.

Now, you get to talking about "popular music", there are a LOT of social fabrics there, and if you can't either wear or appreciate one, some, or all of those fabrics, you will not know what the fuck you are talking about unless it is to say anything other than "I don't get it". End of sentence, end of story. Personal Honor kept intact.

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Absolutely. All art should be approached that way because of how insanely subjective it is. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's complete and utter shit. Because someone does, and probably more someones on top of that. 

Using the Pop artists being mentioned here, Michael Jackson, Prince, and David Bowie's music didn't really float my boat. But I could easily pick out a handful of songs by each that I could listen to over and over. So did I "get" them? Probably not, but I also didn't just dismiss them out of hand. 

And yes, the dichotomy of if it's Pop than it's shit, but why isn't Jazz more popular has been a source of amusement to me for years. You reject being in the club, yet sit around and whimper wondering why nobody invites you to the club. 

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FWIW I love Stevie Wonder's beautiful melodies (especially those from the '70s), and perform them regularly. I am planning to record Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer as a guitar solo next Monday.

His melodies and changes give one plenty of meat to improvise on. I heard Talking Book at 17, around the same time I discovered Charlie Christian. They are both part of my consciousness. 

My other favorites by him: Where Were You When I Needed You?, Visions, Lookin' For Another Pure Love, You and I, Isn't She Lovely?---Many others. Been playing them for years, and aim to continue doing so...

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3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Yeah, the whole disconnect between not wanting to do anything than just stand there and play and then getting upset about strangers not wanting to just stand there and watch somebody who is just standing there and playing...I dunno, that's a lot of just standing there, I think there's a fear of exercise driving that. :g

And you know, if a cat is really delivering some deep, spellbinding shit, they WILL sit there and watch it. But otherwise, existing as an active part of some broader social fabric/group/whatever is a prerequisite for ANYBODY giving a shit about you besides yourself. Hell, even the outsiders try to belong to each other, at least the ones who anybody knows about do. Even the EXTREME outsiders, the ones who hate everybody, if you've heard of them, it's probably because they found a group of people who don't hate them in return, and BOOM, social fabric established.

Now, you get to talking about "popular music", there are a LOT of social fabrics there, and if you can't either wear or appreciate one, some, or all of those fabrics, you will not know what the fuck you are talking about unless it is to say anything other than "I don't get it". End of sentence, end of story. Personal Honor kept intact.

This is funny but it's also very, very real. If you really want to talk negative energy, I used to work with a musician who would engender confrontation with the audience--just set out to play the loudest, most irascible shit possible with zero regard for audience accessibility. Like you say, there's a whole ethos of outsiders who operate under these pretenses, and it's rooted in these cases in a paradoxical sense of belonging. The guy I'm talking about, however, would play in this way in a preemptive attempt to rationalize the disdain of the audience--i.e., "They're going to hate me anyway, so I'm going to hate them first."

The thing is, working in and around both jazz and experimental music(s), I run into a lot of folks like this and I would struggle to name anyone who didn't get hurt by the prospect of audience apathy. The simplified version of this is that no one really wants to be disliked, let alone hated.

Unfaltering devotion to high-minded aesthetic ideals and a deep-rooted desire to be loved are sometimes compatible, sometimes mutually exclusive. Negotiating the tension between "compatible" and "incompatible" is treacherous. I have actually seen this drive people mad.

I find it fascinating that late 20th century jazz has this intense preoccupation with the dynamic between musicians and critics when I've always felt that this relationship was fundamentally solipsistic. Does anyone actually sit on stage and say, "Man, the critics will love this"--or rather, "History is going to evaluate my contributions so generously." (Actually, yes, but only so long as we're talking about madmen.)

"Art music" and "pop music" are only really different things insofar as the strategies for communication (or lack thereof) differ. While I'm the last person who will vouch for the notion that more audience = better, I definitely disagree with the argument that less audience = best. I mean, do whatever you're going to do and hope for whatever you want to hope for, but take your lumps if you made your bed in them. If you want to be unabashedly crass, don't complain when you have millions of fans but no one takes you seriously. If you want to play music for both yourself and only a handful of dedicated colleagues and listeners, steel yourself for the inevitability that you may very well just get what you want.

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Seriously, if you choose underground, embrace underground. If you cannot embrace it, don't choose it. Thinking otherwise...where is the math that shows that leading to a happy life? Not happy as in Madison Avenue Etc. but happy as in you are at peace with yourself and your choices that you are doing what you do out of the need to do it (call it love, hey, doesn't bother me), not the need to be Stuart Smalley or some shit like that.

I don't believe that Genius Is Pain, nor to I believe in The Tortured Artist. I do believe in genius, and I do believe in pain, and I do believe in tortured and I do believe in artist, but I do NOT believe that those words inevitably fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. To that end, if you choose to be in investigator rather than a replicator, embrace frustration as a cost of doing business. If that's gonna be a problem...probably not the career choice for you.

I mean, I get that life is not fair and that the game is rigged and all that, but the underground is a place to be be able to strive to deny that, not to affirm it, especially not willingly and/or enthusiastically.

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Seriously, if you choose underground, embrace underground. If you cannot embrace it, don't choose it.

Quoted for truth. 

You knew what you signed up for, it's disingenuous to whine about it later. 

That goes for both artists and fans alike. 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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Oh, I know there are plenty of people who don't know what they're signing up for at first. Especially people who come into it from the outside (which is to say, from the mainstreams of society).

But at some point, hey, like the man says, do the math.

And really, at some point, as long as you're paying attention, pay attention to at least some of that popular shit, go ahead and Venn Diagram it on out. Know your neighbors, you don't have to invite the in for popcorn and Netflix, but geez, not everybody/everything that is in the "popular" circuit  is a total idiot, examine that Venn diagram closely, or else you'll find yourself listening to talk radio all day long because today's music sucks and all that. Talk radio! ALL DAY!

It's funny, though, talking about Bowie, MJ, Madonna, and Prince. I've never really gone full-deep into any of them, but pretty much dug MJ a lot, that voice, those moves, and even when he got waaaaay weird, the music was...felt. Michael Jackson never lacked for feeling. Bowie, had an appreciation more than an actual engagement, but, you know, again, a lot of feeling there, one does not play that elaborate a game with identities and their conscious/calculated reinventions without feeling a reaason to do it. Much respect. Madonna, hey, oh well, some fine singles, but mostly, about the image for me, sociology mega-trumps most of the music. But again, I respect that, because she knew that people were paying attention, and she payed attention back, she was not just vapidly absorbing all the fame, she was vibing it back. Not everybody does that, and that's one reason why there's so much wreckage of various types. If you're gonna be vain, cycle that shit back so it doesn't blow up inside yourself.

But Prince, hey...I couldn't keep up, was not really incentivized to keep up, not with all of it, but I loved that cat, because he was a geek who won, and won convincingly in all the ways that matter to me. Or as some friend of mine said around the time of Dirty Mind, "that freaky little motherfucker is FUNKY!" Freaky and little, and even motherfucker, grounds of ambiguity or worse, but FUNKY trumped all, and ok, take Junie Morrison, you might well need to know about that music, but Prince forced you to know about his music. Prince did not surrender, except, maybe at the end with those maybe painkillers, and damn that sucks if true.

Take a lesson, people who want to not be unpopular!

 

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My favorite non-jazz or non-free improv music is the band that played for more people than any other musical outfit in the history of the world.

as far as some of the comments regarding subjective reasoning, I do *know* that Duane Allman was one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived and it has *nothing* to do with an opinion.

as is the case with Peter Brotzmann when it comes to playing a horn

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I doubt Duane Allman would make the top 25 best guitarists list of 99% of the people. 

I appreciate how you consider yourself an outsider, on the bleeding edge of obscure hipness. And while I certainly have no problem with that, it still doesn't mean your claims trump popular opinion. It actually makes SURE that they don't. And it's actually kind of funny/sad: you actively look down your nose sneering at artists you feel are inferior, yet the other side doesn't look down their nose and sneer at your precious artists. They're simply not aware of them because they are painfully niche, and meant for very few. 

I don't know, it's almost like feeling you're one up on everyone else because you have this secret that nobody else knows. But at the end of the day, does it really even matter? Enjoy the artists who speak to you and leave the rest out of the picture. And realize that, ultimately, you "know" nothing. 

And The Allman Brothers played for more people than any other music act in history? Where did this fairy tale originate? 

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Just stop it with the straw man arguments, Steve. Do not attempt to insult my intelligence with such amateur bullshit. 

Nobody, and I repeat for your benefit, NOBODY is saying if something isn't popular it isn't good. 

No, the only person here making such a specious claim is you, in that if it's popular it's most likely shit, or at least far inferior to the obscurities you deem sacrosanct. And you won't even OWN that fact, which really throws you into trolling territory. 

See, I can easily listen to Brotzmann, Michael Jackson, The Grateful Dead, and Prince and appreciate all of them equally. I might prefer one more than the others, but consider none of them shit. So what makes you special, again? 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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On 29/04/2016 at 8:15 AM, MomsMobley said:

fasstrack, thank you for your senstivity though I respectfully sugget, for starters, you read the interviews in that AAJ link that Uli posted (props especially to Craig Taborn.) ANY / every musician, all genres, ANY / every artist any medium has much to learn-- much to be in AWE about-- in Prince's career. I can understand how certain white people-- let's call it truthfully because I daresay you can't find ANY (credible) black artist who'd dismiss Prince--

pull up Mavis Staples' tribute last week for one example, funny she's saying how she was gonna be cool when first introduced to him (and think how many folks Mavis has known) & when it happened, she immediately broke, ooooh Prince!--

but look to yourself and your own limitations first. Miles was correct and that only a fraction of the story.

Even 'mediocre' Prince is what? Oh, he only does 3-4-5 of the 7-8-9 things he can do extraordinarily well.

Give Brotzmann or Sonic Youth (hah hah) twice Prince's budget and put them on any worldwide stage, see what they come up with. Ghost of D. Boon (& living, humble Mike Watt) would laugh at any suggestion they were superior or even equal to the prodigal talent, force, work ethic, restless invention of Prince.

We gonna front on Maceo here too? And this a 'mere' live showpiece

And while we're in a blues bag, which Prince didn't over pursue on record compared to the after-party live shows

deep dark as (yet different from) any John Lee Hooker, any Bobby Bland, any James Brown or James Hendrix...

that Prince virtuoso singer / arranger / producer / conceptualist no small factor, hah.

Thank you, 'Canarsie' :g Sorry, not interested in reading that. Thanks anyway...

Edited by fasstrack
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Prince was an amazing talent and musical presence, no doubt. 

For some reason, I have never been much of a fan of his singing voice.  I would probably listen to him more often if not for that.  I do love dancing to some of his stuff, especially Musicology.  

RIP to a true original in a time when originality was in short supply.  

 

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18 hours ago, jlhoots said:

More than one person doing that in this discussion.

Not sure what "popular" means or has to do with the whole kerfuffle.

Nah, it's pretty much just one person. 

And if you don't know how being popular comes into play, then you need to go back and do some reading. I know fasstrack deleted his, but all of Steve's are still there. 

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2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

Nah, it's pretty much just one person. 

And if you don't know how being popular comes into play, then you need to go back and do some reading. I know fasstrack deleted his, but all of Steve's are still there. 

Thanks for your "advice". :cool::wacko::huh:

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Do you actually have anything to add to the conversation, or are you just here to show off what a fucking dick you are? 

If you're too stupid to figure out where popularity worked its way into the conversation, then pardon me for suggesting you take the time to find out. Folks like Jim and I didn't start talking about the comparisons between popular and obscure just out of the blue. 

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On 29 April 2016 at 0:25 AM, clifford_thornton said:

Being transgender and cross-dressing are two different things.

Really! Tell me about it. Tell me more about Gender Dysphoria? 

3 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

 One can only wonder where Brotzmann stands on Prince. 

He probably stands in a bar in some German Beer Hall with a schooner of that Elephant beer saying.....

"Preence, Preence,..... das ist gut. We jam in little bar in Munich das nicht. Preence is a motherfucker!!!" 

Edited by robertoart
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