AllenLowe

well, watched Frisell last night on the Lincoln Center Bristol sessions thing, and it was the worst and blandest crap I ever saw; really annoying; though at least they did flash on the screen at one point: "Do not listen to while operating heavy machinery."

well, I mean is that 1) the piano is really the answer to almost all musical questions, or at least the ones that I ask; and that one learns a lot about jazz by pounding at it from different keys (pun intended); what I mean by the other is that 2) if you learn to play chromatically but still keep whatever root there is as a sonic center, you will learn enough to apply to a lot of musical situations; so it can also be in D; take those 12 tones and put 'em out and take 'em back; leanr how an E7 triad can be made to fit a D tonality, as can an F sharp and a G sharp.

I recommend sitting a piano for about 30 years to start; that gives you a visual. Intervals are my weakest point, due to some pretty severe math disabilities that I have. But there are compensations in learning theoretical ways to navigate harmony in a chromatic way; meaning - C chord; c chromatic scale; build a chord or scale on each interval of the chromatic scale, but not in random ways; rather, learn to connect these fragments and resolve them back to the C (this, btw, is one of Bird's secrets, I've always felt; his incredible ability to make consonant and melodic phrases out of distant and connected intervals). that's the way I do it, but it does not work for every one.

she's kinda the Rickie Lee Jones of Europe.

only if he pays.

I do wonder how well Baraka's writing holds up; the little bit I see around almost always to me has flashes of insight but then is sunk by the weight of its own rhetoric. when I have more time I'll spend more time with it, perhaps. though I have read the Dutchmen, which I feel is not a good play. though it might be, as Norman Mailer suggested with Andy Warhol's film making, that often bad art has a real influence on good art; and so we see people like Greg Tate, who clearly feels that his very existence as a writer and artist was predicated on Baraka's work. the anti-semitic thing bothers me more and more, I gotta admit, despite various apologies and explanations. It just to me is a kind of pandering that was foreign to people like Ellison and that seems to exist, even in recantation, with a wink and a nod.

it is a little...different. Packed in a 7 inch LP case; worked out economically, and I think it looks good (favorite quote, from my wife, who will kill me if she knows I mentioned it in public: "It looks almost professional." I may use that as my lead blurb).

thanks Chuck. Now if I can only get a gig somewhere; on the other hand, strangely enough, my lack of gigs has probably improved my writing. Made me just sit at the damn piano for about 10 years.

I do believe so - look in the mail in the next 5-7 days.

everything is out; media mail, but it should be received within a week, I assume.

thanks - the pre-orders will be out by Wednesday (yours went out today); I can still offer a discount, a little less than before - $25 shipped in the USA, $37.50 to Europe. my paypal is alowe5@maine.rr.com

from Ken Shimamoto's Stash Dauber blog: "Allen Lowe is one of the most illuminating thinkers-about-music currently working, and he always goes big: imagine if Alan Lomax and Harry Smith had also been musos. While he's not doing actual fieldwork the way those two worthies did, he's curated a series of multi-volume, multi-CD excavations into the recesses of American music, and written books to accompany them (or vice versa). A familiar of Anthony Braxton and Julius Hemphill, he also makes some of the most compelling jazz records to be released in the current decade. Mulatto Radio... is nothing less than one man's attempt to reimagine the whole history of jazz (and every other music he's ever heard). It's an exhaustive and exhausting collection of pieces intended to evoke different facets of the jazz past, embellished by the musicians based on what they bring to the party. Over the course its four discs (and he says he has another three in the can), Lowe creates a Burroughsian cutup of the jazz tradition, juxtaposing century-old two-beat rhythms with whirlwind, post-bop solos, or playing modern, Monkian melodies with Creole band instrumentation, including the best use of the banjo on a modern jazz record since Vernon Reid picked one up in Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society (and Ray Suhy's playing bebop on the axe). There's lots of great playing here from a large cast; particular standouts include Suhy (a guitarist to be reckoned with, who demonstrates that monster chops and gut-level expression are not mutually exclusive), protean pianist Lewis Porter (who performs solo as well as in ensembles), titanic AACM tenorman Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (who appears on a half dozen tracks -- his last recorded performances), clarinetist Ken Peplowski, tubist Christopher Meeder, and the leader himself, whose encyclopedic knowledge of jazz style comes to the fore and whose vocalized, bop-inflected tone hardly sounds like the work of an academic. It's really a composer's record (imagine if Duke Ellington was Jewish, trapped in a New England backwater, and unable to play except in the recording studio), and while Lowe provides copious notes explicating each piece, the music stands on its own merit, rewarding in-depth exploration."

there's actually a long Anti-Defamation League thing on line with a lot of old citations of Baraka's statements, writings etc; I'll see if I can get the link. here it is: http://archive.adl.org/anti_semitism/baraka_words.html#.UtRv2vYaAi8

this part of Baraka is, indeed, not only offensive but beneath him, I think; and it's disturbing, yes, just like his long history of anti-semitism. I recognize it, just as I recognize Jack Kerouac's anti-semitism and late-in-life right wing politics. And Zora Neale Hurton's opposition to Brown vs the Board of Education and HER anti-semitism. but as Tom Lehrer said, ".....everybody hates the Jews." also, I think, his mention of Auschwitz in the WTC poem is a smokescreen, his way of covering his ass (to mix metaphors).

in my one encounter he was extremely nice and personable; and I love the early poetry; someday, however, when enough time has passed not to offend anyone who is still mourning, I will do a detailed critique of Blues People, which has some very insightful sociology and a lot of bad history; my best recommendation on Baraka are Gerald Early's one or two critical essays; and Hettie Jones' book. Also, Ralph Ellison's review of Blues People.

did you know that song was written about Shana Alexander? (trivia note of the day)

Sonny is a mess - when I used to go to hear him in person I would filter out the rest of the band - finally, this got to be too much work. One night in Binghamtom he did play Strode Rode like the end of the world, but that was it. Need to listen to a lot of the RCAs; he has moments back then where it's not only rhythm nirvana but harmonic complexity of the most amazing and deepest kind. It's a pity, in a way, that he became so popular; I'm glad he made the cash but he also decided he was going to move to some imagined middle ground. And the sound of it is sometimes just horrible, I am very sad to say,

restraining order.

some day Sony will do the box that Al Kooper told me about - lots of unrelease Bloomfield, acoustic, electric, Travis-picking. or maybe they won't.

wow; Konitz was wide awake on that one. Nothing like 16 bars to make you say something; Sweet Georgie Brown?

it actually is not the No Noise that muffled the sound; back then NoNoise was basically only a de-crackle and not a de-hiss; what you are hearing is 2 things - 1( the way the original Deccas sounded - very crisp and bright, but little reverberation; that was the way that label sounded in those days; check out the 78s - 2) bad EQ; as I've said in the past, too many engineers have no ears for jazz - though one reason the highs are rolled off on these is because the No Noise de crackler distorts so quickly on high-frequecy transients; but it was still possible in those early days of sound restortation to do decent transfers; those engineers were just too lazy.

many are quite good but, as JAW pointed out there are sonic problems; mainly through the use of no-noise, which will often respond to sudden transients with a horrible crackilng sound, ususally on brass (this is true on a bunch of them; IIRC it's all over the Bob Crosby, sporadic on the Armstrongs, bad on the Chick Webb); shameful and completely unnecessary, the result of engineers who set the program at a constant level of noise reduction, walk away, and are too lazy to re-do passages with problems.

actually the Daily Show did the same thing a long time ago - shots of multiple news shows basically reading from Republic talking points -

never mind, got it.

om that Fundly thing, for some reason I am not locating the place to donate; is there a direct link?