AllenLowe

ditto, wish I was there; Braxton is to me such a completx musician and so changeable, if in sometimes subtle ways - also, personally very open and inquisitive - I'm supposed to go down and see him next month in Connecticut; we've been emailing and lunch is a possibility; for years I've been trying to pin him down for a project. Great guy but elusive - will see what happens -

just to take this thread in ever more confusing directions - I actually remember seeing Boots on some country music show (not sure but coulda been the old Roger Miller show) and thinking, that guy can blow - he was actually a pretty accomplished player and could improvise quite well, as I recall -

bumping - I have 1 left of each volume -

I like Jaki all ways - ever hear the Don Ellis session on Candid? also, there's an incredible solo record on Prestige that has never made it to CD, I think - I heard Jaki play solo quite a few times and it was always an adventure, but he was also a great group player. A complicated guy with an amazing sense of humor, as well - he was also one of the most honest people I ever met and said some very interesting things (I know I've quoted this before - but I said to him once "why is Don Ellis so under-appreciated?" Jaki's answer: "because he's white.") I did try to pump him on a few occasions about Eric Dolphy - all he said was "he practiced all the time and he was a nut."

I have 2 more of each volume (1-4) that I can ship media for $37.50 each - conus boxes are opened but all is mint and un-played - paypal preferred; my paypal address is alowe@maine.rr.com email me at same

look, the comments about Nabors and Hudson were gross and uncalled for - a schmuck is a schmuck is a schmuck, as the saying goes - it's one thing for his loved ones to mourn him privately, as they should and will; it's another for us to praise his public persona without knowing what he was really like - a dose of truth is always good, so thanks, Chris -

sorry to be so slow to respond - I sent him a copy after I met him at a pop music conference in April - I was quite happy (and surprised) at his response -

too many tenors - that's why I switched to alto -

good thing his first name isn't Berry -

doing ok, getting nice reviews - biggest thing sales-wise will be to get some non-jazz, mainstream press; also working on Jewish music sites -

actually, his name was Murray Amani - the Jewish/Italian tailor (he took the "r" out of his last name to avoid confusion) -

yeah, it stings a little bit - especially as I would not compare myself to Beefheart, but for a much different reason; I would say our lyric aims are much different - still, hard to complain about a review like that - on the other hand, it did get me thinking about how to approach some new songs I'm working on -

I rarely use the term (it IS overused) but Hendrix was a genius - consider the fact that virtually every rock and roll recording of the last 30 years owes something to his ideas - not to mention the whole pedal/effects industry -

good week for reviews - this is part of a larger review that will appear soon, I am told, in Signal to Noise by Stuart Broomer: "The same iconoclastic wit and intelligence that shape That Devilin’ Tune are evident in Lowe’s latest work as a musician, Jews in Hell: Radical Jewish Acculturation. Lowe is an accomplished saxophonist who has previously populated his CD with performers like Roswell Rudd and Doc Cheatham, and his interests in musical history manage to inform his sometimes abrasively contemporary work. In 2001 Lowe took up guitar, and it’s as a guitarist and singer of a rough-cut post-modern blues that he primarily appears here. It’s raw music, a kind of alienation-celebration of the acculturation suffered by baby-boom Jews growing up in America in the 1950s and 1960s. For Lowe, no ax is too small to grind . The liner booklet has him referring to his high-school vice principal “a cretin named Floyd Kenyon.” One sub-title is "All the blues you could play by now if Stanley Crouch was your uncle," while the other refers to a local Portland, Maine venue called the Space Gallery that won’t give him work. The Velvet Underground are a central theme and influence, with songs about Nico and Lou Reed: “Walk on the Wild Side” turns up in “Where’s Lou Reed?” with “And all the white girls go…LouLouLou LouLou…” Elsewhere Frank Zappa’s “Peaches en Regalia” gets referenced in “Failure”—“Failure is my face in the mirror.” Lowe summons up real power on songs like “Goyishe World,” a rock-driven tune on the hoary subject of Christ-killing, and his themes and music possess more power than the petty grievances might suggest. It’s a compound world populated by Doc Boggs, Blind Willie Johnson, Doc Pomus, Lenny Bruce and Delmore Schwarz—at times it feels like Trout Mask Replica, but done by a vastly inferior lyricist and a much better saxophonist. Marc Ribot is a guest, turning in a couple of superb unaccompanied solos on Lowe compositions, but he’s also a key to the Lowe guitar style, a blues-rooted sound, but full of sudden surprise, whether it’s a bend, a note choice or a sudden key shift. Matt Shipp appears as well to contribute unaccompanied piano, while there’s a fine wind trio composed of Lowe on alto saxophone, Randy Sandke on trumpet and Scott Robinson on contra-bass clarinet. Their “I licked Bird’s Blood” (the background description of Joe Albany might have made its way into That Devilin’ Tune) sounds like a Dolphy tune. Lowe’s extended alto solos overdubbed over minimal keyboard accompaniments are sweetly luminous interludes, though the liner booklet provides darkly comic film treatments for them to accompany (the most beautiful playing occurs on “Soundtrack Theme from the Film Jews in Hell”). The liner notes possess the same interest as the end-notes to “That Devilin’ Tune,” managing at one point to connect Bix Beiderbecke and Dadaist word games. Anyone preferring live mind to dead mind (I think the phrase is Ezra Pound’s) will welcome Lowe’s work. " -Stuart Broomer my wife particularly likes the references to "petty grievances" and "no ax too small to grind." I don't like that "inferior lyricist" thing, but at least I'm better at something than Beefheart. Now, tell me, as I quote this in my literature, is it dishonest to cut "vastly inferior lyricist" ? ah, what the hell do you guys know? just wait 'til my next CD oh evil organissimo-ites - I can keep this revenge thing going for years - yeah, that's the ticket: Allen Lowe: The Revenge Series. The possibilities are endless -

I tend to look back at myself at any earlier period and decide I didn't know anything at that point - so it's probably now; so much new stuff to write and play, if I can find the time (and I have to) -

" there's a thing that happens with young people - say people around 22 - where everything is fresh and new to them. Like there's this whole world of potential. And then, after a while, they settle down - and that newness goes" scary thing for us old guys, but too often true - something to fight and fight against - but than, that's a whole new topic in itself -

about the Carter band - I'll call Ed Berger at Rutgers - he knew Benny very well, and he of all people might know details - I probably won't be able to reach him until next week -

and here's another account, differs somewhat from what I heard, but even better: From a July 15, 1990 Detroit Free Press profile: And he is equally proud that the Michigan Legislature this year proclaimed him a "wholesome, traditional" man of "honesty, integrity, loyalty and patriotism." But Nugent wanted no part of Vietnam. He claims that 30 days before his draft board physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days, he ingested nothing but Vienna sausages and Pepsi; and a week before his physical, he stopped using bathrooms altogether, virtually living inside pants caked with his own excrement, stained by his urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment, he says, although the Free Press was unable to verify his draft status.

here's Ken Levine from the Huffingon Post: "Ted Nugent? Legal guardian of a 17 year old Hawaiian girl to avoid statutory charges. The man who got a draft deferment by reporting to his draft board with a week's worth of excrement and urine in his pants ..."

the Columbia solo recordings are wonderful - in the film Straight No Chaser there are plenty of great clips of his playing from that era - now, the last time I saw him (Central Park, maybe 1970) he was basically comatose on stage - but than, that was the beginning of the end -

yes, 4f was a medical rejection - the info about Nugent I got from an article a while back, and I'd have to research it (it might turn up on google) - as for the cocktail, I don't know the ingredients - however, Curley Russell told me that a lot of the guys in Benny Carter's band did the same thing - as he told me, I think (and this conversation was 30 years ago) it was some combination of benzedrine and alcohol and who knows what else - uppers versus downers, guaranteed to wreak havoc with your metabolism and blood pressure and heartbeat (if it didn't kill you). Unfortunately those guys are all dead (meaning Benny Carter's late 1930s, early 1940s band) - though maybe it's buried away in some book or oral history. I can make some calls (maybe talk to someone at Rutgers) to see if anyone ever went on the record -

what Nugent neglects to mention is that, to avoid the draft, he took the classic 1960s drug cocktail so he could go to the draft board with his vital signs run amuck - and so he, too, received a 4f deferral. biggest damn hypocrite in the world. The 1960s can't be summed up in sociological cliches and catch-phrases. I tend to agree that the "hippy" movement was, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, just another middle-class conceit. HOWEVER - the politicization of that generation had the kind of complicated and ripple effects on social and political norms - from basic ideas of feminism to the overall change in attitudes toward homosexuality to affirmative action, to changes in the social service bureaucracy, and much more - that make this more than a "yes" or "no" argument. as one whose life was forever altered by the Vietnam war, by public figures like Bobby Kennedy and Allard Lowenstein and Martin Luther King, I would suggest that one should make more informed judgements about that era. The Big Chill it wasn't -

I'd go as long as they didn't give any of my money to the Collective - a title which is a misnomer if there ever was one -

slight off topic, but another nice response to my work - from an interview the writer Stewart Broomer did with Anthony Braxton: Braxton says: "I’m a big fan of Allen Lowe, and I think Allen Lowe as a scholar and as a musician is very important and I think he is deeply misunderstood because he doesn’t hate himself. Now if he hated himself, and hated TransEuropa, then he would have a more successful run, but he is misunderstood because he wants to include the input of the great transeuropeans who have also contributed to the music – it is not understood – and the idea of European Americans being connected to the music is looked at almost as if it’s a racist proposition, or some diabolical political plot to destroy the essence of the music, when in fact, as far as I’m concerned, my research a long time ago made it pretty clear that we don’t talk of the historical aspects of the music correctly, that jazz has been etched out and defined as a vehicle for African Americans..."

I understand - good source or not, however, the CEDAR distortion should not be there - whoever did the restoration just got lazy -