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AllenLowe

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Posts posted by AllenLowe

  1. youy know it's weird - but I hate that damned instrument - I love the older players, and Lacy, Bechet, etc - but I cannot listen to the instrument post-1970 no matter who's playing it or how well it's played. I'm not defending myself, as a matter of fact I throw myself on the mercy of the organissimo body, but it's come to be like the jazz flute for me - I hear it and go on to the next cut - anybody else like me here?

  2. just to let everyone know - I believe I have shipped all orders, as of yesterday - I did get a little confused as some orders I shipped out in advance and some I did not - my apologies in advance; if you do not get your Percy Franc CD by, say, next Monday (and it should be sooner as everything went out first class) - shoot me an email at alowe@maine.rr.com -

    thanks!

  3. just to add, I actually don't think Byas sounds that modern on those early Dizzy Recordings - he plays great, but is clearly from another generation - the tenor in those years is largely caught as an in-between instrument stylistically, thinking also early Gene Ammons with Dizzy's big band. Than there's Don Lanphere with Fats Navarro, more purely modern sides (maybe 1948) - and at this point we have Moody and Sonny R. - hey other old guys out there, are there any other early modern tenors I'm missing (also maybe Ray Abrams) -

  4. well, I think you're reversing cause and effect - I think the Byas we're hearing in 1944-1946 is, at this stage, reacting to the boppers - hence the slight modernization of his sound. Lucky Thompson also first recorded early 40s (I think, or maybe 1939), with Jonah Jones (Commordore I think) and he is also, at this point, primarily a swing tenor, but than a few years later is changed by the modernists - but neither was, out of the gate, a modernist. If we had to pick one, I would say Dexter Gordon, though (and I don't want to start a separate fire storm here) I never found his playing very compelling at any period - given the Savoy recordings, maybe the first bebop tenor player was Bird -

  5. well, I really would not call him a bebopper at this time, but someone who had effected and was effected by beboppers - better to look to Moody or Dexter Gordon or Sonny R. for early beboppers. Byas's tone and rhythm and associations (and repertoire) really hold him apart. And by the way I don't think that Byas/Webster album is really all that good. Webster sounds tired and Byas sounds tense -

  6. HANK AARON HANK THOMPSON HANK KINGSLEY HANK HANK HANK HANK HANKERHANK WILLIAMS, HANK WILLIAMS JR. HANK WILLIAMS III I GOT A HANKERING FOR HANK HANKHANKS HANDKERCHIEF HANKIETOM HANKSHANKS TOMTOM HANKS HANKSTOMTHEHANKS ARE COMINGTHE HANKSARECOMING THE HANKSARECOMINGHANKENSACK

  7. look, Max has a real history, and he cleaned himself up considerably after the 1940s-1950s (a quote from a pianist I know: "when you were walking down the street and you saw Max coming, you crossed the street.") Still, I think we jazz people tend to overlook some of this stuff, and I don't think that's right. And yes, he did beat up Abby Lincoln.

  8. I will say, respectfully, that to consign Don Byas to "second chair" is utter nonsense - he is one of the GIANTS of the tenor, and you are looking at the wrong period to realize this. Listen to the Savoy's from middle 1940s - some with Max Roach. Amazing stuff, influenced Sonny Rollins. Harmoncally very advanced, predicting bebop clearly. The 1960s stuff is interesting, but has an odd tension that is never really resolved - I think his problem was that like a lot of ageing musicians, he was worried about keeping up with the times and was trying to change his whole rhythmic approach. I even recall remarks he made about Coltrane which indicated a clear jealously, based on the fact that, as he knew, Coltrane was very influenced by him, as were hundreds of tenor players -

  9. I have great respect for Max musically, tempered, however, by the fact that he is another jazz/woman beater - if you don't believe me, ask Abby Lincoln. This stuff has been swept under the rug too much when it comes to jazz musicians (thinking also about Miles and Ben Webster) -

  10. Larry, please elaborate, if you feel like it, on your response to Couw. I for one feel that all music has to evolve and change and offer novelty - that it has to ask new questions, to cite Alain Robbe Grillet of the new novel - as a matter of fact, when it comes to the arts, I believe in change simply for the sake of change -

  11. His adaptation of Enemy of the People was a complete perversion and misunderstanding of Ibsen - I like the Crucible, but it was based on a fundamentally inept parallel with the McCarthy era - as Eric Bentley has pointed out, while there were, indeed, no witches in Salem, there were Communists in the US. Which is not, before you jump to any conclusions, a justification of McCarthyism - it is just to point out that Miller did not have the vision to come up with an allegory that made actual sense. On the other hand it is his best play. Death of a Salesman has power, but it is, finally, a cloying domestic drama. After the Fall, as I said, is a mess and intellectually dishonest, poorly written and full of post-Marilyn apology and rationale. There are some other bad ones: View from the Bridge, The Price (which does have some good writing), Incident at Vichy. He also wrote some appallingly bad short stories. His ouvre is not a distinguished one.

  12. I don't have experience with that particular program, but I will say I have yet to hear a program where normalizing and using digital means to control peaks works very well - the problem is that the program just looks at the wave form and doesn't really hear it. The best way, in my opinion, is just to do the whole thing by ear -

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