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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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thanks, Larry, for posting your original: "By "travelogue-ish" I mean that the music often strikes me as overtly pictorial/illustrative in mood, like the soundtrack for a travelogue, and not as concerned with what might be called "language principles" as I would wish. That is, if one's goals are dramatic/illustrative and the "plot" elements/what is to be illustrated are more or less pre-determined, then you'll be making musical choices more on the basis of what will tell on those fronts, which however tasty your ear might be will often be stuff that you and your audience already know/recognize/associate with the moods involved. For an Ellington, of course, a whiff or more than a whiff of the programmatic/illustrative often drove him to the compositional heights, but in my experience that's uncommon among composers (Berlioz might be another one of those). I guess the difference is that with those two the presence of external drama/program fired their musical imaginations as much or more than anything else. But IMO that's a rare thing. "
on the money, as usual - lately I've been trying to formulate a more specific rationale for a lot of music that I am finding dull and problematic; "formalist" is the word I've used, though I once got labeled "Stalinist" for using it (the Soviets used to use the charge of formalism as a way of quashing art that wasn't simple and realistic and representational). I mean something far different (I hope); there are certain kinds of music/composition/performance these days in which the performer has decided that the way to a creative means of expression is primarily through an exploitation of formal elements - as though form can be detached from content, as though the style or means of expression is independent of the intellectual content or the ideas or the deeper structure of the work (in another area, someone who comes to mind immediately is Kubrick, whose later worke, from 2001 on was, IMHO, terrible) - I'm not sure if I am making myself clear enough, but I find it troubling/annoying/boring when an artist finds a means of expression within an art form - say, for example, in music, the drone - and thinks this mere discovery is enough - that it is sufficient to just repeat the gesture in order to make art. Or, to just improvise in an open or free manner; or to just use a scale; or to just use noise. Those are all useful elements, but they can be fed into a computer and looped an-nauseam; the performer/composer is supposed, to my way of thinking, to be a mediator, someone who takes these ideas as form or technique and part of a larger whole in which elements are co-dependent,and orders them in a way that makes the whole into a work of art - and, there is a difference, to my way of thinking, between mannerism and style, between gimmick and idea, which is obscured by a lot of the very amateurish music I hear, particularly in the "alt music" field, in the little alt performance spaces where I've heard a lot of such things -
this does not rule out certain kinds of random and free expression - but without a larger means of organization (and I am very open about what those means can be) you have a very dead-end kind of formalism, I think. Things are repeated over and over in uninteresting ways, cliches are masked by advocacy of formal experimentation and by attacks on those who would even question the expression, as though the very questioning of such things, the very act of holding them up for critical consideration, is an attack on freedom of will and freedom of expression -
and that is my speech for today on why there is so much music in the world I do not like -
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it's a very nice CD, very good sound - I would only comment on Hentoff saying: "I yearn to listen to Bix Beiderbecke directly, so I can hear what Louis Armstrong heard" by suggesting that there's plenty of extremely well-recorded Bix that shows clearly what Atrmstrong was saying - good sound, good transfers, crystal clear - time for Nat to take his thumbs out of his ears -
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wanting to either buy it or trade for it or get a CDR; email me at alowe@maine.rr.com
thanks -
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Braxton has said that Mosca was one of his prime influences, interestingly enough -
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Crumb
in Discography
glad you guys did that but PLEASeE don''t pass over the Geeshie Wiley cuts so quickly; they are the most important on the whole soundtrack - Last Kind Words Blues is one of the most amazing performances in the American vernacular, IMHO - little is known about her, but her recordings are quite amazing -
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glad this came up - Anthony Braxton asked me recently if I knew of any notated Max Roach solos for a class he will be teaching, but I was stumped - anybody here have a source?
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few people know that Saskatchewan is a hot bed of funky soul -
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I hope I have not offended the gods - just in case, however, I will now offer a sacrifice:
the only one left is:
Maynard Ferguson and his Orch. Live at Peacock Lane Hollywood January 6, 1957 - not to be confused with the Fresh Sound; this one is on Jazz Hour, and is priced for $79 on Amazon, which it ain't worth. So I'm willing to part with it for....$25
act now and I'll throw in three virgins and a a goat -
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prices include media shipping:
1) King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and his Era by Ed Berlin Hard Cover New; cover has some minor marks
the only book to read about Joplin. Authoritative and carefully written; none of the usual B.S. And Ed's a nice guy to boot. $12
2) Goin' to Kansas City by Nathan Pearson Jr. Oral history of Saskatchewan. nah, it's the real thing, about KC. Great book. Softcover, like new. $10
3) A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe. Reid Badger. hardcover. New; cover has some marks. An important book. Buy it, you ignorant fools. $12.
4) Music on My Mind: Willie the Lion Smith. Used paperback, somewhat frayed at the cover, pages are in great shape. $8
paypal preferred email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address.
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love this part:
"Yet he balks at questions about the role of poetry in culture. 'hat reminds me so much of the way the young Communists in the days of Stalin at big party congresses would ask, ‘What is the role of the writer?’ ” he said."
He's got it right. My biggest gripe about the arts/grants world in the last 30 years or so is the near-requirement of social linkage - I know many people who have not gotten various grants because their proposals lack trendy social buzz words and references, the kind of social utility that is ultimately, to my way of thinking, a kind of middle-class vulgarity. This linkage has become somewhat oppressive for artists, especially as it tends to require organizations to put so much extraneous stuff into grants as to make the actual work secondary; it ain't enough to just be a good (or great) artist. By these standards, as I told someone recently, Proust, Beckett, and Joyce would have been denied money - though the Nazi party might have qualified as long as they showed they were catering to under-served audiences (ah, those summer nights with Leni's films, munching popcorn and making out with blond, blue-eyed Aryan goddesses in the upper deck of the old Olympic Stadium, surrounded by the disenfranchised masses of under-paid camp guards) -
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that's what I was thinking -
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yes, beautiful and RARE
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just to add, as to the comment that "most artists [being] at their best on their own projects playing their chosen repertoire" - I honestly think that in jazz this is untrue as often or more often than it is true - thinking, most immediately, of the many sidemen of Mingus and Ellington who made mediocre or undistinguished recordings on their own - also, in terms of the amount of bad composition that emanates these days from the jazz world - makes me think that just about everybody I hear would be better off as a sideman -
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Prices include shipping in plastic sleeves, US -
Jimmy Giuffre 3, 1961 ECM (Bley, Swallow)- actually, this one may not be so rare, but who knows? Just expensive everywhere else. It's two CDs and I'll sell it for the bargain price of................................. $25
Don Byas on Blue Star Emarcy - this one is, I think, hard to get - $25
Maynard Ferguson and his Orch. Live at Peacock Lane Hollywood January 6, 1957 - not to be confused with the Fresh Sound; this one is on Jazz Hour, and is priced for $79 on Amazon, which it ain't worth. So I'm willing to part with it for....$25
or make me an offer for all three - email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address -
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buy nothing and I'll keep posting these idiotic messages -
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throw in an extra $20 and I'll send you a picture of Jim Alfredson playing an Emeny Organ -
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throw in an extra 10 bucks and I'll make a threatening phone call to the musician or record company owner of your choice -
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mention Charlie Haden in your email and I'll give you Chuck Nessa's home phone number -
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mention Chuck Nessa in your email and I'll give you Charlie Haden's home phone number -
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purchase the whole batch and I'll throw in 4 kittens and one hard boiled egg -
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that's right - and you're also distracting people from MY sale -
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few people know this, but for a brief time Cybil Shepard was married to Ish Kabibble, the old comedian - worked out ok until she decided to change her name -
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sorry, it has Lush Life on it -
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these are still available - and yes, it is the Japanese issue -
as for the French CD, here's a last chance to find an original - these are going for double this price elsewhere - or half the price, can't quite remember - as for free downloads, personally I hate MP3s - and this has very decent sound -
One For Aric
in Re-issues
Posted
Bill Evans's wife told me Getz, on the road, was always trying to pick up the other musicians' wives - fun guy, he was -