Simon Weil

Well, no, not a business decision. More like a mix of a desire for money (largely unconscious) and a desire for adulation (seen as proof that he was getting his message across). I think there's a lot of truth in this. But inevitable, no I don't know about that. I mean there's all sorts of tangential forces operating on people to drag them off their path - by which I mean the place where they are artistically fully expressed. I think, when you are on that path, there is a kind of rightness to it and I don't think these records have that. There is a somewhat lost quality (not totally lost, he's still there) to them. I've never really bought that - about the old time religion messing them up. I mean it's some weird psychological stuff working through (maybe) religion, if it's that. I think it really did break his heart that no-one (or very few) in America listened to his stuff and was moved by it. In a sense it's about religion, but it's also about an artist, who's not really satisified with being an artist. I mean he wanted to be ultra-avant-garde and yet be famous and this is really an impossible combination (at least it is 99% of the time). You can get to be famous years later, that's the standard thing. Ayler was a guy who loved creating an impression - someone called him a peacock. I think that's what dragged him into making these records, mostly. That desire to have people looking at him. But it didn't happen. He didn't please the mass audience and he certainly didn't please the avant garde fans. I think that's the tragedy. Well, I don't disagree. At least not mostly. Simon Weil

Passion....vitriol...If you want passion and vitriol, all you have to do is go to, well, all the people who've hated Ayler over the years. Check out Ted Gioia. He positively rages at Ayler. And this is about the free soloing Ayler. This is what people get passionate about, for or against. If you love it (and you do love it), then you lament its absence - and that's where your angst comes from. If you hate it, well you hate its presence as Jazz. I mean passionate music produces passionate responses. Simon Weil

I don't think these are bad records. I'm sure it is right to say that he wanted to reach a wider audience. Of the last three, I have two and they sound constrained, like his spirit was pushed down into this narrow stylistic tube and forced to operate within those veins. If you could say the previous two spheres (The Sunny Murray and Don Ayler bands) were arterial - the music flowing outward, full of life and expansive - this return to the source (his formative years in r+b) can't really encompass the expanse of his spirit as it had developed. That's what I think is wrong with these records. Simon Weil (His whole thing is about returning to the source - the golden age myth. It just didn't work for him. I don't think you can go back. Not really.)

There's a story in Leroy Jones' "Tales" - "Now and Then" which is based on Don and Albert Ayler: It's one of those uncomfortable things. Simon Weil

Well, it's a mixture of fun and "Serious as Your Life". Some of the fun comes in the off the wall ensemble playing - which is just full of the chaotic joy of life. He also has a way with themes which has a charm all of its own. He was very concerned to give people something they could tap into with these. Plus you get the preachy tone of his sax, which is an endearing mother all on its own. Oh, I mean, you are supposed to have fun. Simon Weil

For me, the thing about Ayler is he's basically throwing away western forms in the quest for the animating Spirit of the Universe (The Holy Ghost in his terms) - as something emotionally immediate. What you get out of that is either: 1) Terrible chaos or 2) Emotionally corruscating music Personally I think (2) - He gets as close to seeing God/what really makes us tick as is possible. Simon Weil

He was so committed to this messianic view that, if he'd survived, his music would have had to have changed. From a music which saw the New World as imminent and Truth to be spoken now to something more restrained with the New World still to come. It would, I guess, have become less raw. Perhaps more drawing on available structures. You could argue that his "RnB" records were a bridge to that, though somewhat unsatisfactory in themselves. I don't know, he sounds so lonely on those late French live records - it's just, maybe, he needed someone he believed in ito tell him it was worth going on. This is why, amongst many other things, Coltrane's death was such a tragedy. He was such an inspirational figure - a personal friend to Ayler. But now all we have is the music. And the music these guys made, by Ayler throughout his career - and by Coltrane from Ascension on, still hasn't been absorbed properly by Jazz. So perhaps its time is still to come. Simon Weil

Oh, he was doing some Blindfold Test thing and they played him a cut off that album and he went batshit, talking about how "they shit on Ellington! They shit on Duke!" or some looney-tooney crap like that. Same as his infamous comments about Braxton in a similar context many years earlier, only his sense of "outrage" was even more f-ed up because he'd had more than enough time to figure stuff out and obviously hadn't. God, what an idiot. Doesn't look like I'll be checking out his music any time soon. Guy What comes out of guys' mouths and what comes out of their horns are different things. As a rule. I mean if you can say it why bother to play it? True across the arts. Simon Weil

I think Jim gets it right - that is the early records are the one that counts and also that the band was important as a showcase for Julius Hemphill. One of the sleevenotes even has an insightful sleevenote about some A-G music by Stanley Crouch! But then he was a kind of cheerleader for David Murray. Me I'm not a Murray fan. Like Hemphill a lot. I think the mix of the four musicians is what made the band...and then they kind of ran out steam. Crouch goes on about the kind of existential nature of the music - kind of these four guys making music above the abyss - which is my take, near enough. Because there's no rhythm section, this is music that all the time feels like it's fighting falling into nothingness - which fits with the Crouch view of the world, even if, I guess, the non-blues elements don't. Hemphill is steeped in the blues - and that's what makes early WSQ, roots it, for me. Simon Weil

I think he was a "spirit of the age" director (and a very fine one at that) - to echo Brownie (kindof). And I think Nashville will last because it says something very deep about the US in our time. Mash was a coming of age film for me. Simon Weil

I think the box is plastic - at least in the edition I've got - called a "spirit box" from discussions here earlier (as I recall). I don't think you want to get too wound up about the packaging. I mean faux (plastic) spirit boxes aren't spirit boxes. The music, on the other hand... Speaks about things you won't hear elsewhere... Simon Weil

Happy Birthday to a great Guy. Simon Weil

My glass would be half-empty if it didn't have a crack in it. Simon Weil [Good luck to CJ Shearn] I mean, damn. It's on these occasions that I truly, painfully feel that my generation of improvisers (the twentysomethings) is hardcore screwed (won't stop me from playing, though...). Y'see, my take on this is that it's not just Jazz. There's something weird happening right across culture. So, for me, Bush is representative figure. The sort of oppressive/repressive political regime he's put in place since September 11th speaks to and for some wider oppressive cultural force. That is to say the sort of speaking to the lowest common denominator that Bush does is the spirit du jour. But the lowest common denominator is only a part of society, a part of people. If it wins, yes, it's the last days. But that doesn't mean it's going to win. I mean you can fool all of the people for some of the time. And then.... Simon Weil

This has nothing to do with AAJ. But.... My glass would be half-empty if it didn't have a crack in it. Simon Weil [Good luck to CJ Shearn]

Happy Birthday, Chris. Simon Weil

Only Mandel is mentioned of those guys, but that part of the book kind of dissolves into more or less inconsequential "can't we all get along" talk anyhow, plus the issue of Marsalis/Murray/Crouch/JLC is framed almost exclusively in racial terms. That bothers me less, though, than the air of "I just give up" that this final portion seems to radiate. For example, the final three sentences of the book are: "Jazz criticism ... is nothing less than the rowdy conversation that gives jazz its incisive edge in shaping the contours of America and New World modernity. Jazz criticism is the noise -- the auditory dissonance -- that gives the music cultural meaning. May the noise forever clamor, and may we listen and learn." Sounds like a university president addressing the graduating class. BTW, I love "...the noise, the auditory dissonance...." It's like "the dirt, the unclean matter that soils." I actually think "can't we all get along" is core to his vision. My impression, looking at the Marsalis etc passages, is that he's informed in that core approach by Tom Piazza's writing in Blues up and Down ("Lincoln Center and It's Critics Swing Away" is footnoted). Piazza's a kind of Marsalis apologist who disappears the ruthless authoritarianism of J@LC's vision. You just can't get along with it. It either wins or not. Admittedly I've only got the book this morning, but my impression is that it is kind of trenchant on the surface (He sees it as having an "incisive edge" I imagine) - and is attractive for that reason - but underneath he won't bite the bullet. Or, at least, not in the present. Simon Weil

What most bothers me about this passage is the anonymity it reduces Feather and Hammond to. It's like they only exist as nexuses of social forces for Gennari. It's kind of daft, in that one remembers them as clearly defined individuals. I'm making the point because it seems to lead to a greater one about deconstruction and the perils of that approach for Jazz generally. The fact is Deveaux's book strikes me as somewhat like that, as taking away from the individuality of the musicians to make for his case of socio-economic basis. I think that's why I don't like it, because the multiplexity of the musicians' characters gets lost in the mix. Other people will talk about the aesthetic basis of Jazz, but for me it's really about people. When Claire Daly says "Oh, there I am," she really gets to the heart of it. I mean, surely that's what Jazz is about in its origin, at least in part, the assertion of (some) black people's identity in the face of a system that seeks to deny them it. And, in a world which seeks to make people more and more anonymous, we still need that. Not just blacks. Simon Weil This makes me think of Taine's history of English Literature. It has always been criticised because it left personal genius out of the account, treating Skelton and Shakespeare on even terms. But Taine was using English literature to find out something about what it was like to be English, so he was concerned about what the different writers had in common, not what separated one from another. It's legit to seek this sort of information from any kind of art, because it doesn't come in a vacuum. It's even legit to seek it exclusively, within a context in which others are seeking other information exclusively. If that approach were the only one, it would lead to wrong conclusions. But as part of a whole range of approaches, there's no reason why this shouldn't be regarded as equally interesting, provided one recognises that, like the view that concentrates solely on aesthetics, it's only part of the story. MG I've done some work on Wagner's antisemitism and at one point I was trying to connect it up to Hitler. The problem was I couldn't get any sense of who Hitler was (apart from being evil and etc.). So then I didn't know how to weigh the various statements Hitler made about Wagner. I couldn't decide if he meant, or to what degree he meant (if at all) the things he said. See, that's what personality does for you (or at least for me). It gives some sense of groundedness - this person would do that sort of thing (or would be acted upon in that sort of way). Because Deveaux leaves that out, the sense of the people involved, it just leaves all the analysis up in the air, for me. I just think you need personality. Simon Weil

It strikes me like the sketch for a character in a novel. Simon Weil

I've thought about this some more, and I just want to go back to: What most bothers me about this passage is the anonymity it reduces Feather and Hammond to. It's like they only exist as nexuses of social forces for Gennari. It's kind of daft, in that one remembers them as clearly defined individuals. I'm making the point because it seems to lead to a greater one about deconstruction and the perils of that approach for Jazz generally. The fact is Deveaux's book strikes me as somewhat like that, as taking away from the individuality of the musicians to make for his case of socio-economic basis. I think that's why I don't like it, because the multiplexity of the musicians' characters gets lost in the mix. Other people will talk about the aesthetic basis of Jazz, but for me it's really about people. When Claire Daly says "Oh, there I am," she really gets to the heart of it. I mean, surely that's what Jazz is about in its origin, at least in part, the assertion of (some) black people's identity in the face of a system that seeks to deny them it. And, in a world which seeks to make people more and more anonymous, we still need that. Not just blacks. Simon Weil

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted. Well, if you scan Gennari's home page at the University of Vermont, he's an Associate Professor of English. So that deconstructive paragraph probably comes out of his experience of literary criticism - I mean it would be an absolutely standard bit of criticism in that area. I'd say it's sociology-based. As I was trying to explain, Gabbard's is psychoanalytically based (his brother's a psychoanalyst). One looks to the outside world (society) for explanation, the other to the internal world (the psyche) for the same. You're actually [con]fusing the two, when you say "Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice". I get the impression that you think there's one mode of thought running through NJS into Gabbard and Gennari. But, if you look at Gennari's home page he has an article "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies," in BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25 (Fall 1991). This is likely to be the article that generated his book. As it was written 15 years ago, his core way of thinking must presumably have been in place then - and probably a few years before. I can't see how NJS can be made responsible for it, unless you want to place NJS as a recognisable movement back in the late 80s. The closest thing I can think of to "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat"" is Tom Piazza's take on primitivism. Is he an NJS writer? Simon Weil

As this thread has turned out, I think people have got worried unneccessarily. In that Gabbard takes a pyschoanalytic approach, he's going to say things that bug people. But I don't think he's at all representative of the deconstructive approaches in Jazz. Gennari kind of distances himself and there's nobody else doing anything at least vaguely parallel in Jazz scholarship. In general, post-modernism is antithetical to universal explanations of the sort Gabbard proposes. So he's sui generis in Jazz. What I don't see is why, given all that, Larry posted the Gabbard quotes from Gennari. It gives the impression that Gabbard is representative of Gennari and of the whole deconstructive movement in Jazz overall. I'm just wondering if Gennari used Gabbard to spice up his text. Simon Weil

The thing is it scares the living $hit out of most people, that Gabbard stuff. He's written a book with his brother called Psychiatry and the Cinema, which is really good (my local library even has a copy). The guy has good insights, no question about it. The trouble is, if you go and see an analyst, you're volunteering for this sort of stuff. Not so if you just pick up a book. I've talked to Gabbard via email and he's an OK guy, but I think he's writing stuff that the vast majority of the Jazz audience finds intrusive. There's no question it's judgemental, his style. I wouldn't called it finger-wagging. To me it sounds more serious than pseudo-solemn. If you write like this for a Jazz audience, you're going to go way out on a limb. He's taking big risks. But I guess I admire his courage. It's easy to get humiliated. So far, I find Gennari rather characterless as a writer. Simon Weil

There is an extract from the Gennari book here. I find it a bit odd, in that he seems to have two sorts of style. There's his, rather engaging, storytelling: And then there's his analytic schtick: Gennari seems to move pretty abruptly between the two, which makes this an odd concoction - in that no way does the preceding stuff justify the abrupt leaping to conclusions of "the Ur-stance of the jazz critic" lines. The problem is not that he leaps to a conclusion (he might have a point), but that by couching it in this analytic language, he presents it as kind of scholarly and disinterested. If he'd wanted to do that, the preceding paragraphs would have had to have been analytic casebuilding instead of storytelling. I don't know... Simon Weil

If you could find parallel use of words to "shrewdly" or "tellingly" only used negatively (say "innocent" or "crass" or whatever) about people in the past that would be handy in making your point. Or maybe it's just implicit. It's a platitude to say that we are wised up to contextualization now. I mean that's just the cultural trend of the last 40 odd years. The bigger question is does it make us wiser now - and in what areas? I'd have a job believing that Martin Williams, for all his flaws, wasn't a greater critic than Gennari. Anyway, I've ordered this book - so I guess in 2 or 3 weeks I should have my 2p's worth to add. I'd want to know how he deals with Stanley Crouch, who seems to be an example of us not being wiser now. In fact he seems to be a sort of Jazz fundamentalist whose relentless agenda-driven certainty is a reaction to the institutionalisation of doubt that underlies much of the deconstructive movement. Boiing boiing, whir, splat. Simon Weil

I think the question of authority is central to this, but I see it a bit differently to you. Essentially, I think you have two competing forms of authority: Larry's which comes from being there, watching the music being made and commenting on it so excellently over so many years that he built himself a reputation as a quality critic - And: Gennari's which comes out of succeeding in the world of the academy and, as such, relates to scholarly working over of events from the past. If Jazz goes on as it is, i.e. with nothing much happening (at least on the Ornette Coleman. Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong level of change), the major sort of valid writing about Jazz will, more and more, be reworkings of the past - because the future of Jazz will have stopped. So this is about how Jazz will be perceived in the future. Larry gets to say that Gennari is disappearing important bits of the past, and Gennari gets to say, no he's merely correcting the historical record. And when, 20 years from now, someone reads this stuff, he won't be able to tell which is right - because authority disappears like the wind and all you have is opinions. I do agree with Larry that he has to call it like it sees it. Simon Weil