AllenLowe

she probably wouldn't have known - but nobody wanted to take a chance -

years ago I played for William Styron's birthday party up somewhere in Connecticut (had Harold Danko on piano) - when in walked Mia Farrow. This was not long after her famous battle with a famous comedian over an affair and child custody. I said to the band - how about we play "Woody 'n You" ? they refused -

hey look, if I found Bob Dylan on MY front lawn I'd call in the militia -

all you guys out there who can't play saxophone better than Kenny G - I guess you can no longer criticize him - of course, it may be difficult to find anyone who can't play better than Kenny G -

I'm always a little ahead of the rest of the world. It's a burden I have to bear.

its heartening to hear, per Larry, that such organization can or has happened. The reasons it so rarely happens are probably more complicated than those which I indicated in my last post; it's just that, in my life, I've been around this block too many times to have any confidence that it might happen on any large scale. Ultimately it's a money issue and might be resolved with enough resources; but with the arts in this country, most money goes to organizations and what ends up in performers' hand is a matter of trickle down economics. In Portland nearly everybody is playing for free, even in venues where the bar/restaurant owners are taking in thousands of dollars per night. My feeling has always been that if you are going to work for nothing it's better to organize your own performances in alternative spaces, where at least you know you are getting an accurate accounting. It's more work in the short run, but more musically and financially rewarding in the long run.

geez, what happened? Forgot to pay your loan shark?

it's time for real and practical tactics - as one navigates the non-profit world one realizes that they are unable to really do anything but hold conferences and establish committees. It is one of the things that has killed the music, as a LOT of resources and money have been squandered in this way. I spent a few years with the New England Foundation as they wasted all the money given them by the Leila Wallace Fund to, allegedly, change the way the music was organized among non-profit presenters. All the cash ended up going to the same old same old acts - good acts, yes, but musicians who did not need the subsidy - when I objected strenuously to what was happening I was "rotated" off the committee - about 2 years later an internal auditor for Leila Wallace issued a report which was highly critical of the way the money had been administered, and who, as I heard, gave the same criticisms that I gave. But they would not let anyone on the outside see the report. that's why I think we need to just do it - sponsor venues and performers, and match the two. But I truly believe that, at this point, it is a hopeless task. If the non-profits can't do it, how can we leave it to 1) musicians and 2) club owners, who bare basically 1) flakes and 2) businessmen?

the original sound on that pieces was not good - so hopefully it has not been over-restored -

to sum up - the only way to make jazz and improvised music viable (and I don't really believe this will ever happen) is to 1) locate and identify the network of clubs who book the music 2) organize them into a national coop 3) tap into some better known musicians who believe in the coop idea, as basically bait for lesser knowns; 4) locate and id the national audience; there's enough there for sustenance, even if they are small in numbers compared to some other forms - 5) book this network of clubs on a national basis, and make sure bands and clubs share the work and don't, as usually happens on local scenes, monopolize one club and kill the scene through overexposure and boredom - that would be a start, but it will not happen in my lifetime, as, in my experience, musicians are too self-destructive professionally, and can never really look at the big picture - they will just grab all available gigs, and will not do anything that appears to benefit them less than others -

actually I did figure it out - go to my earliest posts -

I think, also, fasstrack is talking about two different kinds of new music. There certainly are hundreds of academic composers who sound exactly like that - like musicians who have spent too much time on the inside, and their music (and I am treading a fine line here between a certain critical idea of living forms and anti-intellectualism) sounds it - dead, no sense of real life, an intellectual pose. But I would stay away from the term "useful" which, to me, summons up visions of Stalinist demands that a work of art must fit into some pre-ordained sense of social order and purpose. There are many other great composer, jazz and otherwise, some even academics, whose music is much different than that which I described above. And there was Jaki Byard who was one of the lucky ones - a great modernist and re-caster of traditional materials into forms that were not only challenging but thrilling musically. Now of course I have seen the reverse kind of snobbery, of musicians who, working with newer ideas, look down upon the old as automatically dead and limiting. This is usually related to ignorance and just plain lack of any historical frame of reference.

did they pay the musicians?

c'mon Jim, we wanna hear about it -

for a second I thought it said "Cat Anderson" Park -

my brother and I were thinking of going, but then we heard how far traffic was backed up on the New York State Throughway. And hippies always annoyed the crap out of me. I DID go to the first Grateful Dead concert in Central Park in 1967. That was terrific. and I accidentally attended Duke Ellington's funeral - but that's a weird story - And I played on stage in Bed Stuy the same night as Eubie Blake's coming-out concert (he'd been retired for a long time). I met Adolph Zukor in 1968. but I missed Woodstock -

why does it hurt when I pee?

"Do you smoke after sex?" "I don't know; I never looked."

I actually think he was a better guitarist in his later years - with some exceptions I find the earlier stuff to have too many Django-isms, little gimmicky patterns which he repeats over and over - and which he seemed to have dropped whenever I saw him play on various tv shows.

just gonna add,and you can decide if it's relevant or not, that sometimes things do come out of nowhere, or at least seem to - which is like the way Joe Albany described Charlie Parker to me - and the way I feel about Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, Ornette Coleman, and certain writers - which does not mean that they have no history or frame of reference, but that their antecedents are insufficient to explain their particular power and innovations. Too often, I think, we assess things under the cliched concept of "continuum". It's like saying "there's nothing new under the sun." Personally I think there's lots of new things under the sun, things that, sure, can be seen in relation to other things, but which cannot be seen clearly and fully in this way. In many ways I take my cues from the old Susan Sonag essay "Against Interpretation" in which she says, essentially, that critics too often force their responses to new thing in terms of that which they already know. In doing so they tend to pull the work from its new and unfamiliar context, in favor of a form that they can more easily grasp.

I don't know - I only met Baker once, and he was real skinny - not a curve on him -

I'm a Bobby Troup fan myself -

I had the same problem a few years back - nobody was paying attention so I doused myself in gasoline and lit a match - didn't, however, really have the desired effect - though now I can play like Django -

wait, I thought those duets were Lonnie Johnson with Blind Willie Dunn -

I'm reading too much these days, dipping into the following: (a lot of this is re-reading): Lawrence Levine - Black Culture and Black Consciousness Bio of Zora Neale Hurston (can't remember the author; I'm at work now) Mystery Train - Greil Marcus - best discussion of the change in hillbilly music through Elvis that I've ever seen Mules and Men (by Hurston) - lotsa folklore, the real thing - I think I may become a voodoo priest Guitar Man - can't remember the author; lousy book anyway, the guy doesn't know basic music history John LaPorta's autobiography - this one is ESSENTIAL for anybody who is reading this; hilarious stuff on Tristano; reminds us about Zita Carno, classical pianist, first Coltrane transcriber, baseball fanatic Aline Crumb's autobiography - R. Crumb's wife, has the same problems for me as his work - great drawings, mediocre writing - Kentucky Ham - WIlliam Burrough's Jr - in which the son proves that he is a FAR better writer than the old man - Kerouac - early stories - interesting, more as autobiography, like Vanity of Duluoz Mingus - by Janet Coleman, Al Young - the Janet Coleman stuff is terrific -