AllenLowe

allright, here's deal to test you Dexter Gordon lovers who have abused me over the years: anybody who buys $25 worth of CDs will get the Dexter Gordon listed above thrown in for free - and I mean thrown in -

All prices include shipping first class in plastic sleeves. Email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is my paypal address. James Blood Ulmer: Odyssey. Columbia. $6 Bill Frisell/Kermit Driscoll/Joey Baron: "Live" : Gramavision: $8 Dave Brubeck: Plays and Plays and Plays (so what else is new): OJC: Solo 1957. $6. The Great Bluesmen At Newport 1959-1965: Vanguard: $7. The Resurgence Of Dexter Gordon: Jazzland: $7 (how come, if everybody loves Dexter so much around here, that I've NEVER been able to sell a single CD of his?) Ralph Burns: Bijou: $7 OJC Laverne Baker Sings Bessie Smith: Atlantic: $10 Dave Brubeck: Dave Van Kriedt/Dave Bryubeck Quartet: Reubnion: OJC: $7.

some little company has issued the Johnny Dodds Paramounts, which are stupendous - ALSO - if you can find the Johnny Dodds/Kid Ory LP on EMI, reissue from the 1920s with Lil Hardin, you will not believe the sound. Somebody in England clearly found the original masters on these, and it's like being in the same room with the musicians, except it's 1927. Stunning stuff. as for gospel, Clem, I spend my days listening to shouting, mumbling 1920s and 1930s guitar evangelists. It's truly the only time I feel I've gone to heaven (of course, I wonder why the the fuc* it's so damn hot there) -

Paul Bley has a line, to the effect that jazz critics always think the music has ended, but that there's always a next thing - a big problem is age and obligation, the inability to keep up with new music due to day gigs, kids, mortgage debts, time, etc. A bigger problem is personal frustration, whether on the part of a musician who has never really achieved recognition, a business person who feels that he can no longer keep up with trends, or a writer/critic who feels irrelevant to current audiences - with the added risk, to quote Sartre, of "confusing disillusionment with truth." The reason that, in my piece above, I compared my own dissatisfaction with older critical reponse (1960s and 1970s) is that I find this reassuring - that I'm not just getting old, but that I'm dealing with a condition - bad art - which is timeless. On the other hand, Clem cites fascinating music with which I'm only peripherally familiar, and this is a good reason to be cautious about making blanket statements. I have listened to a lot of new music, some of it purported to be on the cutting edge, even though it ain't (thinking about current folkies, which correspond, stylistically, closer to my current musical inclination than jazzers; also groups like Comets on Fire, which I found to be quite disappointing). Some of this, for me, is listening fatigue - 40 years of constant music, which has distorted my own sense of perspective. I suspect that this is true for a lot of others who post here -

I'm a little late to this party, and out of my depth in terms of some of the music Larry and Clem are talking about - I have, however, been suffering from listener fatigue for some time; the trick for me is to differentiate between what is my problem and what is the problem for contemporary musicians - but I have been thinking about this a lot and want to be so bold as to post a section of what used to be the liner notes to a CD I have coming out, hopefeully in January - a lot of this did not make the cut for space reasons, but it does reflect my current thoughts, for better or for worse: "As I listen these days to a lot of contemporary music (thinking, among other things, of Public Radio’s World Café) I am struck by how bad so much of the writing is – lyrically we seem, on the neo-folk-rock/indy rock side, to be stuck (in the way of old 1930s and 1940s social-realist novelists), with a kind of outdated, dusty, realism. I hear in this music a surplus of badly written, false-sounding Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylanisms and other tired folkie phrases, likely artifacts of the rise of a post-literate generation. When musicians who write (and who live, from a literary standpoint, in an a-historic vacuum) only listen to other musicians who write, it tends to make the product sound in-grown and narrow. It reminds me of my theater/drama school days: than (and now) a lot of talented writers had primarily television and melodramatic films as their frame of reference, and their writing – intelligent, fluent, sharp, but shallow – showed this (I see the same general problem in much of today’s independent film). Maybe I am a dinosaur here, but I wish new writers had more of a sense of language and spoken rhythm, and it wouldn’t hurt them to read Ezra Pound and George Buchner. Just as it wouldn’t hurt latter day cineastes to include Bresson and Antonioni in their Tarantino-saturated play lists or as supplements to the graphic novels that line their shelves. From an instrumental standpoint, a lot of the alt/music players that I hear have neglected to really learn much in the way of new music/creative improvised musical techniques, of extemporaneous playing and the creative use of noise. It’s too easy these days to send massively sustained notes laden with fake digital feedback lapping against the studio walls, to wail in a synthesized electronic way, to mistake modernist or post-modernist gesture, gimmick and mannerism for true style (as in a lot Sonic Youth or all of Beck). Too much of what I hear is really the same old/same old, dressed up with contemporary references. The resulting creative dilemma is not, of course, confined to the pop and rock field, as jazz musicians and other improviser/composers also struggle, with very mixed results, to stay creative. For this side of the music, process has come to dominate in a way that merely reinforces the received clichés of free improvisation, much like 1960s hippies and hipsters, in seeking new ways of being and behaving, ended up by defining the parameters of a new kind of conformism. The result, in the sphere of sonic experimentation, is a generation of great musical theorists (see the magazine The Wire, in particular, and many of the groups featured in the jazz magazine Signal to Noise) who can talk the talk but who are MUCH stronger on sonic theory than practice. They do come up with great titles and philosophical parallels, but the music invariably disappoints. Formalism has indeed run amuck. It is as though some performers have decided that the idea is sufficient, that execution and artistic rigor are secondary considerations (when considered at all). The result is the persistent failure of performers/creators to differentiate mannerism from style, gimmick from idea. Eric Bentley pointed out long ago, in the realm of theater, that the author of a play was not just a flailing typist seeking pure emotional expression but a thinker, too, an intervening intellectual force. Most significantly, Bentley never tried, in theatrical terms, to isolate intellectual content from the emotional deliverance of the work. So should it be with music: intellect and emotion, like form and content, are aspects of the same consciousness, and any attempt to separate or divide them either degrades the work or leads to artistic and intellectual hollowness (anticipating, as I am, a counter-argument that I am missing the emotional or emotive aspect of some contemporary work). This does not have to be a fundamentally conservative concept, as it applies, in one way or another, to virtually every successful modernist or avant garde movement of the last 100 years. ...I was recently reading Kyle Gann’s very smart collection of critical pieces on contemporary/classical/new music. Though I’m not well versed in most of the music he was covering, I was struck by a fairly regular reiteration, by musicians of that other school (other, that is, than American pop/vernacular/blues/jazz etc), of the idea of the necessity of finding, in musical terms, a truly American voice. I have heard and read this before, as it was debated by the American “classical” avant garde even before World War II. And though I admire a great deal of the music produced by such musicians, I am always somewhat bewildered by the mystification of the concept of an American “sound.” This is, after all, something that “unsophisticated,” semi and illiterate, uneducated, enslaved and indentured Black and White rural Americans began to devise and develop some 300 years ago. Which is not to say that people like Conlon Nancarrow do not have something important to tell us musically, only that, when it comes to Americanism in sound, they live in a musically gated community. Within that community certain kinds of minimalist, neo-vernacular gestures seem to have arisen as a response to America-in-song, and I appreciate some of them but also find a lot of them to be mired in by-now clichéd, glib concepts of rhythmic repetition. Apparently some composers view such repetition as representing an accurate musical analog to “modern” concepts like the “factory/machine age” (sic), or as replicating vernacular ideas of musical rhythm, sonority, and space. To me, however, this represents not “real” life but a somewhat delusional and out-of-date liberal presumption about working-class music, working-class life and the banality of working-class and plain old American day-to-day work. And it tends, also, to come from people who have not really had to do much of that work (eg, from composer Annie Gosfield’s web site, describing a recording she’s made: “a journey through shifting industrial environments… uses junk percussion, lush sonorities, odd drones, twangy guitars, and driving rhythms to suggest a cacophonous industrial din accompanied by the crashes and bangs of heavy machinery.” Seems she had a residency somewhere in Germany, though I am presuming she meant to connect with working people throughout the world, particular those in Amerika, who, after all, when it comes to matters of taste, have nothing to lose but their chain-link fences. And let’s not forget Laurie Anderson, who tells us that, to get back in touch with America, she went to work for a while at a McDonald’s. Maybe Lou needs to work more). But than again, there’s also the composer Harry Partch, who, bemoaning the classically layered harmonies and academic-complexities which have descended in Western music from Bach, wrote: “The ancient Greek and Chinese conception – as old as history - that music is poetry, has deteriorated…even when words are used they are merely a vehicle for tones. The voice is just another violin or another cello… with this metamorphosis…the ancient conception…was obscured, left to folk peoples – sailors, soldiers, gypsies…troubadours, Meistersingers, the Japanese Noh and kabuki, the folk music of England and our own southern mountains, the pure Negro spiritual (not ‘symphonized’) - hearers are transported not by mass but subtlety…the true music of the individual.” Which is a nice, and decidedly non-anti-intellectual, antidote to not only certain kinds of musical elitism but also to their equally false, social-realist, popular front opposites. Partch is thinking of a real and actual people’s music, of the kind that reflects a life lived, not along the jaded lines of “been there, done that,” but rather in the realm of thought, experience, ideas, and imagination. And, as Partch points out, the aesthetic ideal he is proposing has already been realized by hillbillies and bluesmen and others in touch with American thought and speech. In his prophetic, brilliantly prescient view (he wrote the above in 1941) anything and everything are ripe for musical picking (though I will say that even Partch seems to have that peculiar blind spot for the vernacular which seems to be most characteristic of academics; his anti-dance-band pronouncements – he found such things to be commercial corruptions of African and other exotic sources – reflect not only the excessive zeal of the newly converted but also, ironically, an academic-like misunderstanding of the complicated communal and socio-commercial functions of jazz and other forms of vernacular-sourced performance. Likely as a result, his own works, fascinating twists on conventional tonality played on self-made and eccentrically tuned instruments, show an odd lack of awareness that he was, in actuality, trying to reinvent the wheel: the sound of his own tunings are less interesting than the off-kilter tonality of the down home country players from whom he might have more efficiently and directly learned to apply the essence of African and Southern tonalities. If he had spent some real time listening to that rural and local music he might have saved himself a good deal of trouble, as the theoretical basis for a non-tonal – or pre-tonal as Larry Kart calls it - approach to American music had already been well established). Partch, for all that, was in no way guilty of stylistic dilettantism, an unfortunate contemporary outgrowth of some current musical schools, like new psychedilia/drone/world music/sonics. Though I tend to disagree with Wynton Marsalis on nearly everything, I understand his skepticism about World music and it’s glib absorption by contemporary musicians; such gestures are, in my experience, rarely earned by the quality or depth of music produced. So it is, as well, with much of the new freak-folk-psychedelic movement (which, despite this, has real possibilities, I think) and with some other contemporary musically avant and roots niches. One gets the feeling that few who produce such things have really listened to and absorbed the music of the “old weird America” for which they advocate, to either the black and white hillbillies who recorded so prolifically in the 1920 or to the free jazzers who sprouted so quickly in the 1960s. They seem instead to have picked up the music at second and third hand. In musical terms this does not necessarily matter or even have to matter, though there are often definite and significant musical side-effects. And what is most irritating is the way archaic styles and stylists are cited, in publications like Signal to Noise and The Wire, with so little real understanding, like names dropped in a post-modernist gossip column. ...Reading back through these notes, it occurs to me that my complaints about the contemporary music world differ little from criticism made by past generations of critics about contemporary arts, and sound suspiciously like many of the things that the theater and literary critic Richard Gilman was writing about in the 1960s and 1970s (no coincidence, that). As they say, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, the last time as repeater pencil."

"Everyone knows that jazz musicians are drunken drug addicts." well, maybe only 70-80 percent of them - the reall horror story about Pepper Adams, if it is true, is that it has been said that his wife, when she found out he had terminal cancer, basically took everything and left him - don't kow, however, how accurate that is, though I've heard it from more than one source -

here's a tragic one - Jaki Byard told me (though I have no other corroboration) that Eric Dolphy died because, when he went into insulin shock, the people around him (he was in Europe at the time) assumed that he was a junkie and that his problem was drug-related. So he was treated incorrectly and died - not 100 percent sure this is true, though Jaki was usually a pretty reliable source. If so, it is someowhat ironic, given that the Europeans, whom we generally see as enlightened in racial matters, had many of the same stereotypes -

somebody who's a big jazz fan and and whom I used to see at Barry Harris's gigs in NYC gigs is Jerry Stiller - also, years ago Al Haig used to play at a fancy restaurant in NYC called One Fifth. One night, around 1980, he says to me "look over there" and sitting at a table, watching intently, was Dustin Hoffman.

about 10-12 years or so ago I worked a party in Connecticut for William Styron's birthday, with Harold Danko on piano - at the party were Carly Simon and Miar Farrow. This was right after Mia's big fight with Woody Allen, with him sleeping with the daughter, with the divorce, the custody trial, etc. My suggestion to the band for the first song was "Woody and You." Nobody else seemed to think this was a good idea -

"What Monk recording next?" sorry, Monk isn't recording anymore -

also, "I Feel Pretty." I wish Trane had never done it -

"Now that Your Gone" - if I hear one more jam session version of this I'll go beserk -

thanks to all who have ordered stuff from me recently - everything will have gone out by the end of this week and I apologize for general slowness, as I've been back in the studio recording and mixing (not to mention the old 9-5 gig) - the company's still sending me a few review copies of Devilin Tune that I can sell at discount - not much left - however, there is one of Volume 1 and there are two of Volume 2 that I can offer at the un-sealed price of $35 shipped media mail - email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address -

don't forget ? and the Mysterians -

All are CDs: prices include shipping first class in plastic sleeves - Annette Peacock: An Acrobat's Heart. ECM. $5. Bill Harris and Friends: with Ben Webster, Stan Levey, Red Mitchell, Jimmy Rowles. OJC. $5. Stan Kenton's Innovations Orch with June Christy, Live From Sweets Ballroom, 1950. Bud Shank, Art Pepper, Shelly Manne, Laurindo Almeida, Bob Cooper, Maynard Ferguson. 2 CDs. Jazz Band. $ 9. Hank Garland. Jazz Winds from a New Direction. Sony. $5. Paul Horn Quintet. Something Blue. OJC. $5. email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address.

sorry guys, here's the cast: Miles: Owen Wilson Mrs. Miles Davis: Paris Hilton Gil Evans: Gary Coleman Old Man Time: Chesty Morgan Hip Young Woman Standing Outside of Birdland: Brittany Spears Cop who Beats up Miles Outside of Birdland: Mel Gibson White Guy who Helps Miles When the Chips are Down, Thus Saving his Life: Steve Guttenberg. White Girl Who Shows Miles that Love is Still Possible, Thus Saving his Life: Heather Locklear Young Woman Who Takes her Clothes Off in the Last Scene, Thus Saving this Movie: Carmen Elektra you gotta be daring - it IS a jazz film, and you have to bring in the people - and that covers every possible demographic -

I love you guys - and I can always get another dog -

yeah, that's my winter resolution; will not be goaded into any more organissimo fights no matter how vicious the attacks on me or how pervasive the incidents of character assassination or how many of my dogs that you kill (you know who you are): CDs for Sale: (All Prices Include Shipping First Class in Plastic Sleeves accompanied by Smiley Faces and Hallmark Cards): Lee Konitz: From Newport to Nice: "Live" recordings from 1955-1980, with: Russ Freeman, Henry Grimes, Johnny Smith, Jimmey Raney, Jimmy Rowles, Rene Thomas, Attila Zoller, Red Mitchell, Shelly Manne. Philology. $9. Pentangle: The Pentangle Family: Double CD Anthology, includes early Jansch/Renbourn sides. Castle: $8. Van Morrison: Astral Weeks. Has Richard Davis and Connie Kay. How can you go wrong? Warners. $6. Gram Parsons: Another Side of this Life: The Lost Recordings 1965-1966. $6. Sundazed. paypal preferred. Email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address.

the problem with the Bridge is that it never seems to get going - and I think it is his weakest studio date up until that point (and maybe until the late 1960s) -

Shipp is an absolutely amazing musician - suffice to say he can do anything - give him a tune that's open and free or a set of chord changes and he makes something out of it. I don't think there's any musical context in which he would not be able to fit in -

not to worry - think about Django and his fingers -

"sigh" just when I said to myself, don't start any more trouble on that board or Alfredson's gonna kick you off... but... I've always thougght The Bridge was one of Sonny's weakest albums. He sounds constrticted, never seems to get going. I much prefer the Jazz Standards recording from this period - this is not a flame -

I'll fix it for you Chuck - first I'll need: 1) Your social security number - 2) your credit card number 3) your bank account number 4) your mother's maiden name 5) your shoe size and not to worry, this is a secure server -

Prices include CONUS shipping first class in plastic sleeves - email me at alowe@maine.rr.com, which is also my paypal address. Gerry Mulligan: New York December 1960. The concert band live, with Don Ferrara, Condoli, Travis, Brookmeyer, Willie Dennis, Gene Quill, Bill Crow, Mel Lewis. $9. Jazz Anthology. Gerry Mulligan Live In Stockholm 1957. With Brookmeyer. Moon Records. $8. Tubby Hayes Quartet and Orchestra. The Swinging Years. Jasmine. $6. Michael Bloomfield. It's Not Killing Me. $7. Tommy Ridgley. The New Orleans King of the Stroll. Rounder. $5. MJT +3. Harold Mabern, Walter Perkinds, Bob Cranshaw, Frank Strozier. Koch. $6.

gotta add - ditto to Clem on the Strausbaugh book - and I love the old Amos and Andy Television Series - one of the few things that employed black actors back then; more important, genuinely funny -