AllenLowe

Ken is alive and well, hand is functioning fine; I played with him over the summer.

I know what you mean; with some players the stretch to "change" can be destructive and forced - I do think Cannonball came by these changes organically; he really seems to get the new music in his own way. I will add that the psychological aspect of this is that bebop was, for a lot of players, a bit of a prison; one very interesting thing we hear in some beboppers in the '60s, '70s and later is a kind of harmonic impatience; they seem to be trying to discard conventional approaches to chords like an old skin (Ammons is another very interesting example; Moody, too). I find the resulting tension to be quite musically satisfying.

I'm with Jim on Cannonball - his very late things show a real start to changing his approach, even if in subtle ways; maybe partly the result of his cocaine years, but the later live things with Ammons, Black Messiah, show a radically changing musical consciousness, more aggressive, less worried about lyricism. Also, as his ideas changed, so did his use of chromaticism, which is somewhat essential to that kind of near-polytonalism.

I remain sonically wary; since Zev botched the Wes Montgomery with distortion-inducing noise reduction. Can we hear a sample?

I would differ slightly, from having recorded a lot; the room can make a huge difference, sonically; I am very fussy about this, and if the room sucks sonically, nothing will make the recording sound good.

actually all good music exists outside of society. That’s what makes it good.

thanks for mentioning - we will also have Catherine Russell in as a special guest on October 31 to discuss some classic performances.

excellent book. Jarrett is very knowledgable.

I know that album, yes, and to me a cut like this is part of the problem and tells us what is right and wrong about her playing; at the risk of pissing people off, to me it has all that fake bluesy-ness that makes more 'out' players feel like they've got a grip on musical roots; in a weird way some of it reminds me of Oscar Peterson, full of gesture and mannerism but with little sense of the deeper resonance of the blues through touch and phrasing; kinda drives me up the wall, but more importantly, it drives me to seek out the real thing; in this cut, when she just plays, she's great, but there's too much of those false-blues-cadences; they seem to be planted there to reassure her audience that she knows the 'history" -

I will give it another shot.

interesting, because "galvanic" is not a term I would use to describe Myra in the few times I've seen her. At those times (maybe three occasions) there was always a point at which she attempted to be 'bluesy' and, to my ears, was as funky as Wonder bread. On the other hand, when she just plays she does OK.

The Bud Spangler who broadcast this is, I believe, RJ's - uncle?

did you mean "good grief" as in "that's not so great?" Personally I found the arrangement to be overripe.

1) just to note, he is talking about digital tape. 2) and....my own experience with old DAT tapes is not good, in more than one case the music on them has just vanished (including, to my heartbreak, an outtake of me with Doc Cheatham recorded at a rehearsal at my house in 1990 or so). So, this makes me nervous, though I suppose the tech has improved.

the question to me is whether audience offense is a good or bad thing; a response to being challenged or to not being challenged enough? I got a death threat once as a result of a recording I made, but to this day I am uncertain as to how I should feel about it -

there is an amazing live cd with Rene Thomas from '64 at the Bluenote which I just ordered. Pony is my favorite kind of alto player - thick, dense tone, lotta chords, very mobile but incredibly soulful.

his point, too, was that all such claims - that you have to play for THE AUDIENCE - were coercive, a way to ensure conformity. Which is closer, I think, to your point.

Walter Benjamin had a brilliant discussion on the concept of audience - his basic contention was that it was foolish to always talk about 'audience' as though it was a finite, tangible, definable thing; in truth, he said, there are so many different kinds of audiences that any attempt to pigeonhole the reality of such was a hopeless task.

1) always admired Shorter, though his own recordings never held my interest much. I suppose it's just a case of having a different musical outlook. Glad that Jim is here to really, and brilliantly coherently, explain the arc of Shorter's development. 2) it was hearing Shorter with Miles (in person in '69 and then of course on all the recordings) that opened my ears to Shorter's greatness as an improviser. As a composer, as I sorta mentioned above, he was, for me, to be admired but rarely listened to. But his work with Miles is other-worldly, to say the least. 3) glad that Ethan came here in person to advocate for himself. He is his most articulate defender. 4) best line of the day from Jim: "this whole "general audience" thing is the last step before total state-sanctioned patronage." Shades of Walter Benjamin; kudos to Jim.

it is. I know him well.

it is his name, let's leave him alone about it. He is one of the nicest people in the business.

true, and, Larry was pretty elaborate as well in explaining, in great detail, his statements.

well we all make judgements sometimes, absent the full picture: "A nothing review (that I wasted time reading) about a nothing book (that I won't waste time reading)." I will check it out; turns out he's a Facebook friend. I just wish he would either explain or cut that line.

just reading this thread; I am pretty much with Larry, and I have to say that the statement "But those bars [in which jazz musicians played "in the so-called golden age" of jazz] were hellholes, and the musicians, especially the African-American musicians, were jerked around. The clientele for these dingy joints were posing hipsters or disappointed men who hated their bosses and took advantage of their secretaries, like the characters in a Richard Yates novel" is for me a complete disqualifier in terms of being able to read or take seriously anything this guy Stephenson says or writes. Sorry, as I know he is a friend, but that graf represents the worst kind of sociological trendy cultural writing, from liberals who see the music and the culture as symbols rather than art and who think that by spreading this kind of thing they can prove their progressive bonafides. .

thanks, that'll work -