AllenLowe

hey Fasstrack - I will have to disagree on this one - Barry did tell me on one occasion (back in the 1970s) that he did not like recording, and I did hear him so much on the 1970s/80s as to be frustrated by his recordings (though two of the Riversides come closest - the Jazz Workshop and the trio with Elvin Jones - also, a nice later "live" date at Maybeck) - I think, also, he is difficult to record and this is reflected on some of the 1970s records - his touch is so subtle that on some of those mixes he gets a little buried in the rhythm section - when I heard him at Jimmy's (must have been the early 1970s) he was in a duo with Wilbur Little - no one was listening, and it was like hearing him play for his own edification, almost like practicing at hime - and was the best I ever heard him sound -

glad that you mentioned Green - he would REALLY be my nominee for worst notes - pseudo-erudite, elliptical in the worst possible way, generally FOS -

and if his kid records one more version of "Tomorrow" I may have to kill someone -

though I do get a little tired of the naked pictures of his wife on every cover -

"I was going to mention a set of notes that offended me, but then I realized they were written by someone who's registered on this board, so I'll hold my tongue. (Not Kart, Albertson, Lowe or Sangrey.) Have great respect for this person as a musician; he just oughta get somebody else to write the notes." now wait...I though Jim's notes on that last Organissimo CD were pretty darn good - especially the reference to 96 Tears -

thanks Larry - I don't know if you've ever read Richard Gilman, a theater critic (and a former prof of mine, who is now, sadly, dying) - but he makes much the same point, I think - arguing against critics who are always trying to put art in a convenient social context (think also Sontag, "against interpretation ") - this is important stuff - as Gilman says, art really offers an alternative history, ""a counter-history, the generation of a psychological and aesthetic alternative to the prevailing artistic and social order". There is also what Beckett has said in describing an artist, "he has nothing to say, only a way of saying it." Beckett's book on Proust is quite brilliant in this regard, and many of the same points are made by the French novelist Robbe Grillet in "Toward a New Novel." Coming to grips with this kind of thind changed my life, my whole approach to composition and performance - Gilman used to have a little saying when someone questioned the so-called "reality" of a character in a play (like, for example, Didi and Gogo) - someone would say, who are these people? They don't really exist anywhere, they are unrealistic. Gilman would say, "they exist on the stage." You can really make a parallel between this and people who attack new music as being outside of accepted creative/artistic contexts; this is how they went after Ornette in the early days, and Ayler, and a thousand others (and still do so - see Marsalis/Crouch, two heads on one critical body) -

well, ok, I didn't wanna do this, but if you guys insist - I'm the one on the right -

on the other hand - his clarity and depth, playing solo at that birthday party, tells us something else important - because it is also true that the best playing I have ever heard from Barry Harris was when no one was listening - at the bar Jimmy's in the 1970s, and one day after one of his classes when he was basically practicing and talking to me over his shoulder - so we need to worry a little bit about what that recording light (and the presence of an audience) does to a jazz musicain - I know from experience that when the tape is rolling the brain seizes up in odd ways -

a lot of Evans's issues resolve around his addictions - and the question might be, did the addiction cause his self-centeredness, or did his self-centeredness cause his addicition - this is something people have been arguing about for years with alcoholism, about cause and effect, and I don't know the answer. At the end he was definitely committing a slow suicide, shooting coke and retreating deeply into himself, complaining regularly about lack of recognition - strange, since he was in incredible demand at the time. The other thing we need to think about is the depression that ran in his family; like a lot of people in that era he was probably medicating himself -

I'm a little tired of that song - however, Al Haig used to do a 3/4 version of it (in the late 1970s) that was quite nice -

Evans is a complo\icated subject, and Larry kart's essay deserves to be read because he certainly captures the ambivalence I've long felt about Evans's playing - I got to know Evans's wife pretty well in the late 1970s and early 1980s and met Evans on occassion - if you'll forgive the amateur psyhologizing, he was a brilliant guy who suffered fits of what seemed to be a kind of narcissistic depression. He was completely self-directed on some occasions, talkative and fascinating on others, and I do wonder if the strange variability of his playing reflects this. On his 50th birthday his wife gave a party and Evans sat down and played, unprompted, Stars Fell on Alabama, and it was absolutely perfect, unselfconcious and relaxed and without artifice (it probably helped that his audience included George Russell land Warne Marsh). Would that he could have translated that directness to all of this recordings -

last episode: Tony is shot dead by Carmella after she catches him in bed with the real estate agent; Anthony Junior takes over the gang after a power struggle in which he kills Syl, Paulie, and Imperioli in hand-to-hand-combat; Anthony Junior than goes to bed with Carmella in a Greek-Oedipul finale; Vito isn't really dead, but living in Provincetown in the Witness Protection Program with Jim Nabors (who used to have a piece of the Rock); Bobby gets shot at the Jones Beach toll booth; the shrink marries Uncle Junior. Sorry to ruin it, but I got a look at the script -

he got shot at at least once - while driving -

well, I don't believe in outing people, but I may actually die of curiousity -

let's not leave out Miles's gay lovers -

"Since the organizer is likely to have to rely on the entire jazz community in the area to get this festival off the ground, she had weigh using you and alienating a lot of the local jazz educators or cut you out and avoid that problem. Put yourself in her shoes." Huh? Local jazz educators? I taught courses and ran seminars in that area for nearly 20 years; what educators are we talking about, the high school band leaders who asked me to give guest lectures, the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, for whom I gave several talks, or the Yale Jazz band director who asked me to guest with the Yale band? Or the Connecticut Humanties Council, who funded my seminars and various other projects? Or Jackie McLean, who offered me a job teaching in the middle 1980s?

will take under advisement, Jim, but I'm not worried about this blowing up, just going on the record - and thanks, Kevin, for those kind words of support - basically I'm aggressive when I disagree with someone (like you), but conciliatory and a good guy if I agree - I ran a jazz festival for 3 years that drew approximately 100,000 people per year, hired all musicians, coordinated all city departments - yes, I must be very hard to get along with. Just talk to the people I've worked with over the years or whom I hired than, like Max Roach, James Moody, Tony Williams, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Freddie Hubbard - I must have been quite abrasive to have not only taken care of those guys but to have restored a reasonable pay scale for the local acts we hired (the previous promoter was paying the local bands $50 per night, flat rate - and that was for the whole group). The Hartford thing was a bunch of small minded musicians who basically strangled that city's jazz scene by grabbing all gigs and keeping everyone else out - this was common knowledge in that city and basically led to the audiences fleeing the local clubs there in the 1980s. I got more musicians working in New Haven than anyone else at that time; and I don't believe in blackballing people who disagree with you or taking credit for ideas that are not your own -

well, you know what they say about things that go bump in the night -

well, it's true, I was not the first to gather this material and I will say I stood on ths shoulders of some giants like John RT Davies - not to mention people like Chris Albertson or Chuck Nessa who have shown us repeatedly how to not only understand jazz history but also how to present it -

thanks Mike - it was really a question of courtesy and consideration - I lived in Connecticut for 20 years, ran one of the largest jazz festivals on the East Coast for a time, employed a lot of musicians and, as anyone who knew me will attest, was always helpful to other musicians in finding work - I never attempted, basically, to take all the work or tried to keep anyone out. (I also quadrupled the pay scale for locally-based musicians at the festival that I directed). Unfortunately, as more than one jazz player will attest, musicians tend to get a little petty when fighting for a small piece of a shrinking pie. I was happy to counsel the Litchfield people, but it stuck in my craw when they not only took my advice and idea but than hired some musicians who clearly advised them to exclude me. It's a kind of politics that is unbecoming to the field of jazz and I don't care how good a bass player Mario Pavone is but the guy needs to get some ethics - (oh no - I mentioned a name; what an unfortunate slip) -

well, I think Stone is a damn good film maker, but suffers from some bad scripts - and in this one he'll suffer from the presence of Nicolas Cage, who is the WORST actor, stiff and talentless and hopelessly transparent -

just to bug Dan Gould, I am going to bump this up - buy one or I'll hold my breath until my face turns blue - and than you'll be sorry -

so go bump yourself -

Dan, you're really out of line in your comments - I bumped that thread because you responded to me in a way which made me seem petty and which made my comments seem insubstantial - and your comment stood for some time by itself because I was at work - so what I did was restore this thread to a position where people might understand better why I might be miffed at the Litchfield festival - any "bump etiquette" is pure BS -

some people do their best work after they die -