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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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what a tragic story. I never knew how he died, and was hoping it was not the usual musician's drug trajectory story.
Now he's out there with Eddie Costa and Dave Lambert and Clifford Brown, just for starters.
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6 hours ago, ejp626 said:
I think there is a bit of this old man yelling at clouds going on here, but there have also been some serious studies showing that, in musical terms, the hits of the 2010s and 2020s are much less complex than those from the 1960s, 1970s or even 1980s. There is a dumbing down effect that is at play, and it isn't simply a case of "it was better in my day"...
What's sort of interesting or ironic is that there is also a real fear of being sued for copyright theft (often wrongly) and that would seem to me to call for more complex, not less complex, songs in order to demonstrate originality.
it's probably not a popular opinion, but non jazz musicians do not realize how much of the music they admire in the creative/free music scene is simple to play or re-create. I think this is an aspect of simplification which we don't talk about much. I was able to play in that style when I was 16, and play in it sometimes now, but am shocked at how lazy and repetitive so much of it is as supposedly "composed" and performed today. It is the path of lease resistance.
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20 hours ago, JSngry said:
I can't avoid getting bored, that's what's normal. But stagnant? That's like pond scum and shit.
If it's your pond, it's your responsibility to keep the scum away.
but if the pond is huge - really an ocean - the Scum Also Rises.
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59 minutes ago, JSngry said:
Hello.
When I feel myself getting stagnant, I don't blame the culture, I just go look for something else to do. There's always something there.
well, you cannot avoid the stagnancy; if you are a musician, or any other kind of artist, the stagnancy becomes the standard, and makes it harder to function except as a rebel, and rebels are often rejected and prevented from working.
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16 hours ago, Fer Urbina said:
For what it's worth, my copy of their 2-CD set of Alec Wilder's music, which is probably the last thing they ever released, is definitely regular CDs.
F
well, from the way this guy responded to me, I would still wonder; chances are that what they are doing is converting their back catalog to CDR,
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I like the label, but for a while, and maybe now, they were/are using CDRs and not informing anyone. When I sent an email complaining politely the guy who answered got pretty nasty.
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17 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:
Just sent my $ to Allen, looking forward to hearing this. Keep up the good work.
thanks, much appreciated -
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On 3/13/2024 at 2:25 PM, mjzee said:
Definitive is indeed non-official. However, there was another official box set of the Dial material, from Mosaic:
It has all the Bird Dial material that's on the "Atlantic" box (really Savoy, but distributed by Atlantic when it first came out), plus a lot more great music besides. It also has a different "hotter" mastering, courtesy of Jonathan Horwich (whatever happened to him?), which some people (Allan Lowe among others) disliked. OOP, so now harder to find.
So for pure Bird, choose the "Atlantic" box. But it's nice to have choices.
just to correct, not that it was mastered too hot, but that there was a lot of distortion introduced with whatever system they used to re-do it.
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21 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:
Is that pre-bookable? Very happy to do so, if so.
probably not; check back with me in the Fall -
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1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:
Will it be available to download? E.g. on Bandcamp? I don't have a CD player these days.
yes, ESP will set that up.
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1 minute ago, jazzbo said:
Allen Lowe & The Constant Sorrow Orchestra “America – The Rough Cut” ESP cd
This has become my favorite Allen Lowe cd. . . so far (he has new ones coming out this summer). Sound is natural and vivid and the music has grit and grins and gristle.
thanks - I want to mention that this was recorded without isolation, basically live in the studio; I've been talking about this idea a lot lately, and our new project is all recorded au natural.
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Available for Presale
Louis Armstrong's America will be available in August, but I am offering a deep pre-sale discount to help with the financing of the project.
Louis Armstrong's America is meant to evoke, with original music, the musical eras that Louis Armstrong lived through, from ragtime to early jazz, swing, bebop, the jazz avant garde, Dada and rock and roll.
We are going to release 4 cds total, on ESP DISK, in two separate 2-CD packages. It will be real CDs, and each two-cd set (Volumes 1 and 2) will be available at an advanced price of $15 each – or, if you can, both double-cd sets for $25 (plus $5 for media shipping). So if you order one it is $20 with shipping, and if you order both it is $30 with shipping. The best way is to order through Paypal (my address is allenlowe5@gmail.com) but I can also accept Venmo or Zelle, or you can mail me a check. Just let me know.
Participants in the recordings include:
Marc Ribot, Ray Anderson, Frank Lacy, Lewis Porter, Aaron Johnson, Elijah Schiffer, Matt Shipp, Ursula Oppens....and more. There may also be some older cuts mixed in with Doc Cheatham, David Murray, and Julius Hemphill; and possibly Roswell Rudd (still working on some of this) -
thanks, and please order as soon as you can.
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45 minutes ago, mikeweil said:
That one convinces me. Just found a nicely priced copy and ordered it.
just to add, there are some incredible Youtube videos of Garner playing live.
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1) per Dan Gould's question, I like Gene Harris; not my favorite pianist, but a really fine player with a sense of pace and real feeling.
2) To say that someone who does not like OP is "narrow minded" is unfair. My feelings about him are clear, but I probably have more varied musical tastes than about 90 percent of the jazz population.
3) I am a little distressed at the comments that still describe Tatum and Peterson as similar in some ways. Not to pull rank, but as a musician I hear a world of difference, and it is primarily harmonic. Tatum was one of the epochal harmonic masters of American music, and it takes a different kind of listening than that which you might bring to OP or most pianists. If I can I will find Lewis Porter's take on Tatum's brilliance and post a link.
here - start with this. Lewis is brilliant, he writes clearly, and he is a great pianist himself:
https://lewisporter.substack.com/p/tatums-dissonant-avant-garde-side
and this, from Lewis' thing on WBGO:
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Oi, my head is spinning I just read this whole thing again. FIrst, let me say that I love Errol Garner; unlike OP he really swings, and it's a much different matter. There is some pacing, some genuine improvising, and those intros are mini masterpieces.
Next, I would like to apologize to Jim for whatever little feud we had back in 2011. I remember a bit of it, but it is all water under the bridge (unless OP is playing that bridge, in which case it will fly by in a whirl of pointless phrases).
I want to mention Bud Powell - as great technically as OP, no, better - but a real improviser. His lines have an amazing thud and whirl to them, with space and air and true originality. He is the real thing, and i would say that his touch is percussive in an older fashion, along the lines of the way black players have of phrasing with emotional continuity rather than with just scales and patterns. OP just snaps it on and proceeds like a machine, with a supposed clarity that is, to me, contrary to the spirit of jazz tonality. Bud had a humanity to his touch and sound that OP could never reach. Bud's lines breathe; OP's lines charge through like a freight train in which the brakes have given out.
I do find OP offensive, as I have said. It's a visceral reaction at what I hear as artificial. As Dick Katz said once, there's a difference between technique and facility. What OP had was facility, and it does not compare to Tatum, whose harmonic mastery was genius and constantly in motion (Lewis Porter has written beautifully on how and why people misunderstand Tatum).
As for Justin, he has continued to stalk me from time to time, telling me whenever I dislike something that I am simply jealous. That's a great line of argument. As for his complaint about why it is ok for me to severely criticize OP while I take offense at Justin's criticisms, well...if he has musical arguments with me or my music I welcome him. But what he said was deeply and offensively personal.
As for the rest, well, I'm still alive (I didn't expect to last this long when things started to go south for me in 2019) and I try to remain calm, but when you are a musician for as long as I have been and have gone through what I have you tend to feel a little bit raw about certain kinds of insinuations. But I am sorry if my response to those insinuations crosses certain lines from time to time. I have just been through too much to react passively and without response (and many thanks to Dan Gould for what he said in the early days of this conflict).
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for overseas people or Canada, don't give up. I want to get this out there and I should have pricing in about a week or so.
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I will ship anywhere, including North Korea. Though I don't get a lot of orders from there.
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good on a lot of the titles. Per the above question, the documentary is basically a portrait of my current life, through performance, recording, and my various strange health problems.
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As I may have mentioned, I am working on a huge musical project called Louis Armstrong's America. It is a program of originals based on the various musical eras that Armstrong lived through. It is clearly the best thing I have ever done, will be issued on two separate two-CD sets, and be part of a documentary that it being filmed about me. Most of the recording is done, though we have two more sessions. It will be released in September on ESP Disk.
Participants include: Ursula Oppens, Andy Stein, Matt Shipp, Marc Ribot, Ray Anderson, Lewis Porter, Aaron Johnson, Elijah Shiffer, and a lot of others.
(If you don't know them yet, Elijah and Aaron are two of the most brilliant and creative players in jazz, though you wouldn't know it from the critics polls).
So here is why I am writing this; I am going to do an advance sale to help finance some of the production costs. There are, as I said, two 2-CD sets and I am working on the pricing. I should have this figured out in about 2 weeks.
I need your support. You will not be disappointed; this is "contemporary" yet very accessible. If you are interested, at that time, I will determine a way for you to reserve a copy or copies. Just for filler, here are some of the song titles, which may be the best thing about the project; each one is a specific historic reference in itself, if you can figure it out (or, I will tell you):
Tiger Rage
Beefheart on Parade
Roswell's Dream
In the Mode
The 7 Foot Policeman. 3:05
Jelly's Last Breath
Back Home Rag
Pleased
Black and White Fantasy
Calling All Freaks
Blue Mist
Hittin the jaw
Gone to heave
On the Other Side of The Tracks
The Murder of Jaki Byard
The Naked Dancer
Miss Ann Returns
Pullin' The Plug
Shufflin' The Deck (Take FIve, Please)
The Dying Musician 5:00
Mr. Jenkins' Lonely Orphans Band
Apocalypse Nexy
The Old Regulars
Lewis Lewis
Spiritual Impunity
Jewtown Shuffle
Riot on Sunset Strip
Dance of Occupiers
Valley of Sorrows
Pete Brown
Greenwich Village Dada
If You Must.
Poem for DA Levy.
Laughin' Louie
I Am a Woman Again
In a Lonely Place
Love is a Memory
Get Hopped Up 5:45
Sepia Danceteria
Charlotte’s Dance
Under the Weather
Lester Lopes In
Tea With Me
What Did I Do to Be So Blue?
Back to the Sand
I Should’ve Stayed Dead
Bull Connor in Hell
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this is getting silly - the LA Times takes the tack that the piece was "aspirational," as though that has anything to do with whether Rhapsody is worthwhile or not. Ethan is right - Rhapsody is a pastiche of empty musical gestures, fun and dynamic at times, but shallow and musically all surface. I don't care how ambitious Gershwin was; Trump is ambitious. That does not mean anything good.
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Allen Lowe and Ellen Rowe (pianist)
Bill Evans Gil Evans and Mal Evans
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we should mention that Loren Schoenberg was the person who got this made.
I knew Durham a little bit back in the 1970s. Genius writer and arranger.
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On 2/5/2024 at 9:07 AM, gvopedz said:
Some of the people who release LPs (or albums) believe that collectors of jazz music have an above-average income.
I have always had an average income, and I bought tons of jazz. But I have my limits.
Doug Watkins - An Unfinished Journey - by Steve Siegel (Jazz Profiles)
in Jazz In Print - Periodicals, Books, Newspapers, etc...
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it was Doc Cheatham who told me how Percy died; quite awful.