AllenLowe

yes, that's what I've been thinking, just unsure if I'll go that way (depends on how lucid I'm feeling that day ) hoping first to find someone who wants to give me an advance - the problem with the pop publishing world is that most books are either driven by personality (the story of Meat Loaf, that kind of thing) or are academic and have that peculiar, dull sheen of that world's tenured bacilli. but back to Gurley - there are a few astoundingly good guitar solos of his, floating around. Nine Hundred Nights, as I mentioned, has at least one very good one, and the Winterland CD is recommended. As I recall, his solo after the Joplin vocal on Ball and Chain at Monterey is also amazing. Drugs really killed that band (as well as his wife Nancy) -

I have one that's in manuscript and looking for a publisher it covers 1950-1970; but, it terms of published survey histories I would say no, unfortunately, though there are many good books that cover various aspects of rock. but the only real surveys I've seen are by academics like Garafolo (and his is just awful, very ideological as in whites just stole everything) - I am thinking of starting a blog this year, and one of the things I intend to do is point out the good books in this whole area (pop and jazz). (just as an aside, my book was turned down by 3 university presses; at least two of those had political objections, but that's another story) -

that's ok, I agree that he was likely not a big influence, he was very much his own academy - but, you know, people like Martin Williams said the same thing about Lennie Tristano, that his historical importance was limited because few pianists, in particular, followed his lead. But that's a poor way to grade history, I think; it works from the canon of certain kind of hierarchies, which I think are misleading (and how many pianists truly followed Monk?). and on the other hand, we don't really know for sure how much influence Gurley had - I will tell you from experience that rock history is writ poorly and from either warped pop or terminally contextualized academic perspectives. I would be interested to get a more detailed history of that scene before I came to any such conclusions.

bumping, because Gurley needs to be remembered.

that quote is exact and accurate - at his best, his guitar solos are the most truly adventurous ever in rock until that time - way in advance harmonically of Hendrix, even, to my years. There are only a few select places on record or tape where he ventures out, though I'm guessing it happened plenty in person - one has to see that documentary (900 Nights) that was made on Big Brother, also hear the live at Winter Palace CD (which I think I played for Cliff THornton a few years back, if he remembers, and he was duly impressed). Big Brother's problem was that the band was so drug-addled and inconsistent (I think it was Gurley who accidentally killed his wife with a hot shot). But at his best, he was a rock guitarist like no other. You just gotta find the right performances. FWIW, I talked to Nick Gravenites about Gurley a few years ago, and he agreed. and just as an added thought, the best thing about hearing guitar playing in that era that was so hard hitting and aggressive is that it has a wonderful analog sloppiness - meaning that there are no digital stages of sound reproduction to "even out" the wave form and make the volume more uniform - it's wild and wooly stuff, much more organic and connected to human variations of volume and texture (digital tends to make everything more uniform) - here's one good example of Gurley's stuff: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=nzz_vosi1TU and not the most successful performance, but clearly they've been listening to Ravi Shankar play ragas: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dl-6IG3WAL4 here's a quote re: Gurley: "He also was inspired by a 1963 performance by jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. "I heard a lone saxophone raging like a madman," he told the Palm Springs Desert Sun in 2007. "I said, 'That's the way to play, like a madman.'" nobody else was really doing a halfway decent job of translating these ideas to rock guitar, yet - the jazz guys didn't have the touch, Bloomfield tried on East West but, much as I love his playing, he really didn'y have a clue. Only James Gurley.

yes - James Booker is the man. Also, Tuts Washington.

as long as they're not copulating -

"Sorry, typed "problem" when I meant to type "argument." I mean, Ran Blake isn't the only person to have approached openness with conviction" sorry, Cliff, missed this post when you first put it on this thread - I agree, there have been many and differing solutions - what I meant, really, was that I find his solution particularly compelling and idiomatic - as a matter of fact, I think Shipp has taken it even a step further than Blake, though he rarely performs "standards" per se - as is well known here, I have some issues with so-called "free" players, though I have no question that they have defined their own musical spaces compellingly; too many of them just seem to hit a wall, and to not be aware of WHEN they've hit that wall. This is, I know, a rather conservative response to the form; it may be generational, though I think not, given that I was feeling this way as far back as the 1980s; I just think that, eventually, each school runs into the problem of repetition and cliche. Personally I am so bored with nearly all forms of jazz that I have to fight a certain paralysis that sometimes sets in. This makes certain kind of judgments even more difficult.

take the credit - please!

I'm going to sleep with Tiger Woods - everyone else has.

sometime in the 1990s, I think it was, I worked a gig backing Henny Youngman, and he told that joke. I must confess....

are you sure it's not Congressman Pete King? http://peteking.house.gov/

my wife was complaining - she said, "with all these appliances you buy me, an electric knife, an electric stove, an electric drill, I'm always working, I never get to sit down." So I bought her an electric chair.

"And if it is simultaneously offensive to some of our European brethren, then why use it?" actually, I find that mostly Americans seem to be offended - years ago I worked with a drummer whose wife was German - I was complaining about a bass player who was very rigid rhythmically, and I referred to him as a "rhythm Nazi." She actually thought it was quite funny. I don't know...I tend to think it is better to push these things into the open.

I love her voice but rarely like the way they record her, especially after the Mercurys - she has a delicate sound, and I have a feeling they've been using ribbon mics on her all these years, a mistake, given how they tend to soften the focus - she needs condensers, IMHO -

surely you're not comparing Ros to the guy whose playing was likened by one critic as sounding like someone "reading stock quotations"? hey Jason! took me a minute to figure this one out - will send you a mix - send me a pm with your mailing address-

I think you guys are not reading carefully enough - just as there are many levels of racism, there are many levels of facism - that's all I'm saying, and it's dishonest to counter my arguments by refuting things I never said - not all fascists engage in ethnic cleansing - but there IS an element of cultural cleansing that has been advocated by the Lincoln Center crew that goes far beyond just critical thinking, and which speaks to a very dangerously ideological way of thinking. Hence their approval and apparent amusement that a member of a jazz audience would call for an arrest over a performance he does not like. this is all quite clear and obvious - and sometimes, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, you have to exaggerate in order to make the point. This fear of the use of certain parts of the language is puritanical and misses many points. This is not just a first amendment issue.

all right - let's take a few quotes out of context - and edit them - all from Nazis or Nazi sympathizers: "Joseph Goebbels.......(was) repulsed by the 'terrible squawk' of jazz;" another German noted that"'Disgusting things are going on, disguised as 'entertainment;" there was condemnation of "Orchestras that play hot, scream on their instruments..... and other cheap devices;" someone else noted,"jazz was not born in nor has it ever been integrated into European culture." (anybody remember the Lincoln Center condemnation of World Music? This emanates from a similarly nationalist impulse) I am being quite serious, in that a similar hostile provincialism occupies some very different cultural forces here - but the similarities are quite scary in their intersection -

yes, he's non-elected - time to be thankful for small things. And yet - if he were, let us say, dictatorial ruler of the USA - he would be doing things similar to what prior totalitarian international governments have done; especially at the behest of Commissar (Herr) Crouch. I better start packing. This time I'll take the Volkswagen -

how is it a cop out? It's actually the opposite - I am facing the question head on. The technique of condemning artists for being anti-art is a fascist technique. Plain and simple.

me insensitive? Tell that to my wife Greta, while I drive my German Shepard to the Klaus Kinski festival in my BMW (while snacking, of course, on German chocolate and listening to Beethoven on my BASF tape in the Krupps's stereo cassette player) -

instead of finding women he slept with, they should find women he HASN'T slept with. THAT would be news. (and unless I missed 'em, no jokes about "par for this hole" ? or his "putter" ? or whether he's "holding iron" ?

in my experience Americans are much more sensitive about this than Europeans - but I will defer to the thread Nazis police -

well, Nazi-ism started as a political movement, not a deportation movement - so this is not far from its early stages - and it had similarly racialist origins - there's no reason to think that article is invented. They would be subject to libel laws if it were -

by the way, let me tell you WHY Replying to the Jazz Nazis should have been kept as the title of this thread, in all seriousness - the attempt to surpress jazz musicians because their music is in-appropriate, or decadent, or not racially pure, is EXACTLY what the Nazis did - I would suggest - no, DEMAND - that the original title of this thread be restored - let's call this what it is, a Fascist gesture by our leading jazz musician.