AllenLowe

well, we're all suffering from pianist envy -

well - and I honestly felt this way even before they gave me a good review - I think they, along with Cadence, try more than any other publications to keep up with what new musicians are doing and saying. It doesn't always (or even often) work, but at least they are engaged with that world. I find this somewhat satisfying and, as I said before, important as documentation, at the very least - another interesting thing is that they, unlike most jazz publications, seem to have made a special effort to deal with women musicians. We forget how sexist the jazz world continues to be - after all, aside from me before my operation, how many women post here? Probably can count them on our fingers - if that's your idea of a good time -

never did recieve the French review - do you have a copy? What publication was it in? forgot to mention, also, that Celmentine won the Nobel Peace Prize for that vaccine he developed to cure all child cancers - and how can anybody who has a reference letter from Mother Theresa be all bad? And I'm looking forward to that next on-air interview with Terry Gross - hopefull by than he'll have gotten his Congressional Medal of Honor -

geez guys, S to N just gave me a nice full page review in the fall 2007 issue - so they can do no wrong for me - and I will say, though I have some deep philosophicall problems with much of the new music presented in their pages (I talk about his in my liner notes to Jews in Hell; suffice to say that so much of that music represents a generation that has learned to talk the talk but still plays the same-old warmed-over new-age-sounding, semi-drone cliches; same problem with The Wire. Every year I get that damned issue with the Wiretapper CD of new music and every year I am astounded at how crappy and tired most of it is) - it at least it gives a sense, like no other contemporary music publication, of what people are doing musically, for better or worse. And Bill, don't let Clementine get to you - he and I used to fight all the time, until I found out that he volunteers at the local soup kitchen every Sunday, rescues stray kittens in his spare time, knits quilts with the names of Iraqui civilian casualties on them, hosts a Fresh Air Fund child every summer, runs the local Dachsund Rescue League, runs bake sales for the Junior League, and organizes yearly visits to the fomer World Trade Center for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

how about: "New Jersey: We don't smell as bad as we Used To"

Peggy Cass was an actress who was in a series years ago with some chimps - and than became a constant presence on the game show circuit - also used to do a lot of "local" touring theater - had a raspy voice -

I return to some of my original post on this - the key to doing the music right is knowing it, and I don't necessarily mean sociologically, though that helps - and on this I am something of a fey aesthete; play that hillbilly music after you've locked yourself in a room for 5 years with nothing but hicks and other country boys on the stereo (or really the mono) and when that music comes out of your pores than play it. That's what I did. There is limit to what irony can do as a technique, and I think that we, as a creative society, have hit that limit. It's the reason that I don't really like Chadbourne's country stuff, or Camper Von Chadbourne; and interestingly enough, for all his alleged superiority to the material, Zappa did rock and roll brilliantly, because he really knew it and understood it, and I really believe he loved the music no matter what he said about it. When I saw Zappa at Columbia University in 1968 he summoned Sam the Sham to the stage from the audience. He and the band huddled and they did a letter-perfect version of Wooly Bully. For Zappa, that was real truth, no matter what he professed to think of his audience and the music they listened to. So it might be with Iverson, and Bad Plus. I did hear Iverson play solo about 6 years ago and he was excellent, as a matter of fact he reminded me of Jaki Byard at times. and he did a very nice version of The Windmills of Your Mind.

actually, tits to die for - literally -

there is the recording Brown made with Lou Donaldson - in which he skips to the Lou - (or is it the Loo?).

that woman's a fanatical dick-taker -

must have been something he ATE -

only thing I have is a quote from Dave Schildkraut who told me Bird said to him, "you gotta hear this new trumpet player who plays with big skips."

"It's as though someone were making an enraged charge of rape while attacking themselves fore and aft with a dildo -- and doing so in broad daylight right out in front of the local saloon." ah, I see enough of that at home -

well, I'll think about that - interesting, Larry's comments on Harrison's occasional lack of rationality - because this does explain, as I think back, some weird logical glitches that I've always thought I spotted in Harrison's work, but discounted because he seemed so damned smart - another reminder to always look at things with a cold critical eye, no matter how well established the source - so Larry, I am going to have to re-read your book now -

I'm going to say this here, instead of sending Mr. Kart an email; there are only a handful a truly great critics in American culture, at least as I see it, and he's one of them - the mark of how good that article is, is that, as I read it, I kept saying, "crap, he's right - but I would have gone right past that without seeing the point that Larry saw and makes so clearly." there's only a few other writers who tend to inspire that in me - ironically, one is Max Harrison; Richard Gilman was another. One of the reasons that I stopped writing much was that I felt that in order to do it right, one really has to devote the time, and as I've sunk into the abyss of day-job land, I have less and less time. I now feel even more inadequate - thanks, Larry -

and just to add, that, my fellow Americans, is why, if I ever finish my 1950s book, I intend to retire from writing jazz criticism - it is just not a field for those of us with ADD - we (meaning I) just miss too many details -

good stuff Larry, and through the miracle of copy and paste, your review will keep me thinking for quite a awhile - this calls for some concentration and a few private emails-

last words?

make a left at Mars -

well, maybe I'm a little confused. but my CDs kept getting scratched so I got a new needle - didn't help, and the damn things still sound like shit - I'm going back to vinyl -

are you guys trying to make me feel dumb? well, it doesn't take much - I'll have to ask Chewy for a translation -

by the way, I think 'cover" is an annoying and useless term that should be eliminated from the critical lingo - did Sinatra do covers? Astaire? Judy Garland? Doris Day? Bobby Darin? Norman Rockwell?

there's an old joke, too long to tell here, about a strange-looking animal that had a hypodermic on its head, a Furry with a Syringe on Top -

Dudley Moore was a fine pianist, but his jazz playing was unfortunately in that Pete Barbuti/Oscar Peterson realm of, hammer a lot of 'blue' notes and play a lot of scale patterns real fast, and than you has jazz -

I want to put a personal perspective in here - when I first wanted to fuse free jazz and hillbilly/country music, about 15 years ago, a certain record company owner looked at me like I was crazy. When I finally got around to doing this last year, it occurred to me that the difference between my attitude toward the music and someone like Eugen Chadbournes's (and also Frank Zappa) is that while well educated white boys like those two tend to approach this music with a distancing irony, to refuse to engage it on its own terms, I was determined to do the opposite, to play it in the spirit it was created. Their's (meaning Chadbourne and Zappa's) is a classic jazz attitude toward certain songs - to a lesser extent and in a different way with Sonny Rollins and Monk (and I once had an African American musical historian yell at me, when I said I thought Monk did use some irony, that "Irony is a white concept. He was doing the dozens on those tunes." Bullshit, I said than and now, and the truth was that even with this irony, neither Monk or Rollins ever felt superior to their material) - but my point, anyway, is that, whether you like it or not, the Bad Plus deals with those songs in their own terms, as real material without distancing. And this, after years and years of distancing and musically alienating (and now cliched) irony, is completely proper, in my opinion. Problem is, these critics are putting too much of their own snobbery into their interpretation of the group's intentions -