AllenLowe

"if he doesn't write negative reviews I will not take him seriously." I don't know, Joe, how we could take that out of context? but you're entitled to your opinion. Personally I'm a kind pf guy - I think McDonough's brain is half-full.

actually, I don't want to be immodest but I think I do a better job than Schuller does on Western Swing -

Chris - a little bit llike Condon's remarks about bebop - "we don't flat our fifths, we drink 'em," if I remember correctly - also, Sonny Rollins apparently resolved never to read his notices again after reading Schuller's (very interesting) analysis of his solo on Blue 7 -

this all comes up as I am trying to finish up my rock and roll history (1950-1970); here's one section on Dylan, who I do think ran out of ideas in about 1968 - "In terms of repertoire Newport was Dylan at his best. A great deal of his talent has always been melodic, an odd thing given how anti-melodic his singing is purported to be. In truth he had a gift for creating simple but memorable blues-like songs, diatonically constructed with the occasional surprising, if very basic, chord change and the even more occasional violation of formal expectations. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, with its nicely inserted and altogether appropriate middle section, is a case in point. Dylan, whatever his stylistic quirks, always had a firm sense of where, technically, he wanted to go. And that, ultimately, may be the source of his most satisfying music making. Ironically, given his folk-poet reputation and pretensions, the most salient characteristic of Dylan from this second period is not his lyric writing but his music, his absolute group fearlessness and willingness to open up his songs instrumentally. On albums like Highway 61 Revisited and than Blond on Blond (and than in his live appearances with The Band) there is an engaging sense of willful and not quite joyous, anarchy. He was writing too many songs, and though there were some brilliant hooks, lyrically it showed; musically he was in the process of defining a new idiom, and making musical connections with as many logically-brilliant free associations as any jazz musician of the day. The jangling guitar lines, the phrase fills moving in and out of the front line, as though adjusting to the music’s constantly changing depth-of-field - all are part of his suddenly new musical m.o. When he tells Michael Bloomfield, at the session for Highway 61 Revisited that "I don't want any of that B.B. King shit," he means exactly what he says, to distance himself from the more conventional phraseology and methodology of the blues. Newport was the clarion call of his arrival. This was his New Deal, and if one were inclined to make such apocalyptic pronouncements, that day (7/25/65) might be seen as the true start of modern rock and roll. It’s a somewhat oversimplified way of looking at things, but Dylan’s heresy was one true sign that musical boundaries in rock and roll were coming down, overrun and trampled by the new hordes; if anybody was really surprised, than they hadn't been paying enough attention. If Dylan’s prime motivation was to get more people to listen to him, to become the rock and roll star of his Minnesota fantasies, than more power to him. All eyes, which had been looking in his direction, were now focused solely on him, on what he would do next, what songs he would write and what kind of albums he would make. Always aware of the necessary hipness quotient, and conscious of how much of his elliptical pseudo-philosophy other people would or would not tolerate, he now became more and more personally insufferable. It mattered little that, in interviews and in the film that came out of his 1965 British tour, Don’t Look Back, he came across as narcissistic, shallow, and just plain nasty, because now he was the point of focus. The most astonishing thing was, given how repulsive and obnoxious his filmed behavior was, that he let it out for the public to see. Like some fame-hungry figure in a Frederick Wiseman film he seemed less concerned about why he was the center of attention than the simple fact that he was. The practice of songwriting was a different matter, and of major importance to his growing myth. Though he always tended, in his lyric writing, to alternate insight with preciousness his writing now, more than ever, had the burden of meaning, much as he might disavow such claims. He was the new seer of rock and roll, and his voice could be heard in just about every prominent group, from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to Simon and Garfunkel. Under pressure of deadline, to get out one song after another and assemble his albums, he began to indulge, more than ever before, his tendency for glib poesy, for words and phrases that had little reason for being beyond pseudo-symbolist fantasy. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t; language for its own sake was a legitimate technique for the songwriter, but Dylan’s language was often as not clumsy and awkward. In this scheme of things it was OK to rhyme heat pipes that "cough" with a radio station playing "soft", (Visions of Johanna) as long as the audience was with you, as, with Dylan after Newport, it was. On in-person recordings from tours made in the middle 1960s Dylan is like a king at court before his subjects, condescendingly tolerant and arrogant at the same time, the most elite of the anti-elitists and very conscious of the natural privileges of power. Everything and everyone else, from Woody Guthrie to old roommates like Mark Spoelstra and Dave Van Ronk, was now, in more ways than one, in the past. Unlike the old Dylan, exhumator of and grand re-designer of the folk tradition, the new Dylan was his own self-contained model, his own and sole source of history and tradition."

let me add, by the way, John Szwed and Lewis Porter to this list as two real academics who not only know the music but also know how to write about it -

I don't think we should shy away from negative reviews, if they are written without spleen and with clear attention to the material at hand; otherwise the whole idea of critcisim is negated. On the other hand I can see that sometimes it is better to just leave a small independent musician alone - the problem for me is that even in the better jazz journals everybody likes everything; I won't mention any names but I was removed, about 10-12 years ago, from the reviewing staff of a good and independent magazine because there was too much stuff I did not like (I wrote one review, in which I lamented the need for all musicians to write all of their own material even when they were compositionally limited, and I called it "Why Does Bad Music Happen to Good Musicians?")

there is some problem, ironically or not, with Schuller's level of technical knowledge, I think, and his ability to write histories - I talk about this, I think, somewhere in my own book but basically I think certain levels of technical knowledge sometimes overwhelm less empirical values like taste and critical instinct - for all my respect for Schuller, if I want a second opinion on a musician or a performance I will more likely turn to non-musician/critics like Larry kart or Giddins or Francis Davis or Bob Blumenthal, whom I believe have a combination of writing skill, personal taste, historical perpective, and just plain smarts. The problem is that some non-technical writers get themselves into trouble, and Giddins is the best example of this; whenever he tries to show off with some personal citation about harmony or other chord-change issue, he invariabley comes off as half-assed if not mistaken. Martin Williams had a problem in this area, and Dick Katz told me Williams would never acknowledge a technical mistake. So one has to come to all of this having read a lot of the backgtound material and having listened to too much music (trust me, it's a burnout process) - though I've never asked him about it, I think Larry kart clearly has some musical background - Loren Schoenberg is one who has vast technical knowledge and good aesthetic judgement - Chris Albertson not only knows the music but he knows the musicians and has learned the music in the best possible way, by being in the middle of it all - unlike most academics - on the social end, as I have said before, I believe one needs to know the social context but not let it overwhelm aesthetic judgement; I often cite my unofficial mentor, the late Richard Gilman, to the effect that good art creates an alternative history, a narrative that is outside the socially verifiable - and though I have tried to read a lot of academic writing on music it ultimately tends to suffer from a convoluted kind sociological rationale, which neccesitates a writing style that is at once both impermeable (read: intellectual rationalization) and opaque (read: WE NEED TENURE!) -

Schuller is brilliant but sometimes misses the forest for the trees - let us say that he sometimes misses the emotional element, or even the entertainment side of jazz - I think of his homophobic comments, in The Swing Era, about Pha Terrel and the use of the falsetto in African American singing, as though it is some sort of aberration when in reality it is one of the essential elements of that tradition; also, I remember the notes he did to the Buster Smith/Atlantic recording, in which he spent most of his time bemoaning the fact that Smith had been relegated to working in bar bands - though there was an element of truth to his lament, he also clearly had no understanding of the cultural implications of Smith's current way of making a living and tha fact that it may not have been so terribly tragic to Smith himself -

just wanted to mention, re-Hawk and Bach; he was said to be much-influenced by the solo Casals/Bach, and one listen to these recordings confirms this in a very fascinating way - one can hear on these the big Hawkins sound, the vibrato, and harmonic skips -

just saw Charlie last week - didn't realize he knew Garrison -

I met Scott Robinson, by the way, for the first time in a recording studio (it was Randy Sandke's idea to use him in place of a bassist) and yes, he was something -

re-Jaki Byard - in the years I knew him he generally kept the tenor on the piano and picked it up from time to time - particularly when he was the Sunday pianist at Bradleys, circa 1974-75; sure, his tone was not the greatest, but he was so completely original on the horn that it was a wonder to listen to - a slight Lester Young influence, maybe, but just a cascade of smart ideas, lines that could only come from the mind of Jaki Byard - I can still hear that horn and it's been over 25 years since I actually heard him play something other than the piano - and there are few actual HORN players of whom I can say that -

somehow reminds me of when I saw the Mothers at Columbia U. in 1968 - Zappa called out to the audience and Sam the Sham came on stage and they did a letter perfect version of Wooly Bully. I've always thought that, for all his clear contempt, Zappa had a not-so-secret affection for pop culture and rock and roll; I also heard him, that night, do an absolutely gorgeous blues al la T. Bone Walker.

favorite was the Jessica Simpson lip-synch disaster -

just saw a clip of Buckley on tv, from 2004 - "Cheney is a first class public servant." guess some things never change - so much for his differences with the new Republicans -

actually to get serious here briefly, I think they should listen to CDs at least twice; not only that but I'm convinced that few listen to the entire CD even once - there's too much stuff, and the same is true of book reviewers; I continue to read letters to the editor in which it is obvious that the reviewer, having missed essential info, skimmed - as a matter of fact, I have a feeling that one of the reasons I'm having trouble getting my current CD reviewed is that it is actually 2 CDs and requires some actual concentration -

"I'm innocent, I tell you, innocent..." tell that to the twins - and don't forget next month's check - I'm not made out of money

"That's how I got high at a Foreigner concert. In 1987." Hey - that's where I woke up -

actually, I knew all about that (I interviewed his twice-removed second-cousin's bastard son for That Devilin TUne) - and I have a whole chapter on it in the book. But since neither of you guys have purchased it directly from me you missed the footnote on page 84, chapter 11 - as a matter of fact, on page 97 I reprint the MRI that shows Lipschitz's brain injury from Bolden's blow - they were bedmates at the asylum since it resulted in brain damage. Had sex twice a week and gave birth to Scott Yanow -

nothing wrong with posting about your work - there is a sense that it's basically a floating advertisement, especially as you also don't answer private emails -

did you say birdshot or birdshit?

"pretend to be Larry Kart" if you don't mind all the paternity suits -

all that rings a bell - we indulged prior to arrival - I was suffering something of a sensory overload - I do remember a lot of voices, kids arriving, very communal feeling - and than I woke up and it was 1987 -

few people know this, but the E in Ellington is silent -

hey - I know the answer to the question asked by this thread - there are no minimum qualifications to be a jazz writer (might even be an oxymoron) -