SNWOLF

lkaven (Luke) - could you tell me more about Zaid Nasser, and direct me to some recordings? John Litweiler - I know nothing about Absholom Ben Schlomo, am intrigued. Could you give me some directions to pursue; and what's the best source for records that showcase Earl Fouche and Glyn Paque?

In terms of listing great rock recordings, that would be a subjective affair - as in jazz; would take another thread to do it properly; and I've already gone off-topic with this. The music and mentality which you've ably satirised belongs to one small strand of the rock world, and the over-complexification side of it tends to be taken up by tasteless techhead boffins or airheads, or that classic male-ego species: the stunt-guitarist. A one-dimensional virtuoso in classical and jazz, due to social context and instrumental timbre, will always fool a few shallow highbrow twits; but in rock, with the exception of some aspergered zappophiles, it's a dreadful treck through finger-tapping and other crimes against music which are transparently risible to all.

Thanks for introducing me to Ronnie Ross. I'd never heard of the guy before - clearly I've got some digging ahead. I'd heard his baritone, of course, on that Lou Reed song, and enjoyed it: the right tonal intersection of cool - like Mulligan; and hot - like Pepper Adams, for the jaded nostalgia of the the music. Always wondered who that guy was, but never being enough of a Lou Reed fan to have an album with credits, never checked it out.

I'll look out for that one, Late. Cornelius - with regard to Rock as a springboard for later jazz investigation - there's wankers in any field. Jazz musicians and listeners often look down on the theatrical, charismatic, and emotionally immediate gratifications of rock, but within that aesthetic mosh pit there's music as equal in artistic achievement as anything jazz has produced. I started out listening to jazz. But before I got into jazz it was traditional Japanese music and German synth stuff - suitably precocious and pretentious material for a 12 year old, I guess. When I finally stumbled upon rock it was a love affair that has run in tandem with jazz ever since. I think half the sneering dismissal of rock by jazz fans is that for many jazz fans their aesthetic is highly cerebral, an emotionality of appreciation that likes complex, slow burn restraint or, in the case of freer material, a more pointilistic diffusion. In contrast to this rock just sounds dumb. In the case of a lot of it, even the best of it, it is! So what - pull out yer butt plug and enjoy yourself! But with other material it's a complexity of emotional depth and subtle nuance. That's right, you can have subtle nuance when your amp's turned up to 11. Many jazz musicians make the same mistake with regard to great rock that many people have made to abstract and expressionistic art: "My kid could do that!" etc. Well their kid can't. Just because something is superficially simple doesn't make it stupid, or easy. Any more than the pseudo-primitivism of a Brancusi could be pulled off by an idiot. A lot of jazz attitudes to rock have a historical foundation of sour grapes: the white, middle-class, college kids who made up a large part of the market for jazz switched allegience to rock, chiefly because rock had more middle class practitioners who gave it an arty, bohemian agenda. Some of the animus towards rock is clearly psychological: many jazz musicians are socially awkward, charisma-free introverts who, in the jazz field, not only have an outlet, but have an outlet that allows for considerable technical virtuosity and, in some cases, real artistic eloquence and depth. And they're making nothing compared to some moron kid with his contrived poses and institutionalised rebellion. A jazz musician like this is usually not going to be immersed in a cultural milieu that will give him access to rock which has real artistic substance and enduring value. And so he isn't going to know, to look, or care. And this jazz musician is not likely to be of the temperament where he goes to a nightclub and dances all night to rock, hip hop, dub or whatever, and so can appreciate the unadulterated pleasure of music whose chief aim is to entertain or alter consciousness, and yet, despite this apparent "vulgarity", there is an extraordinary degree of musical skill involved in doing this music well. Most of the rockers though, who eventually graviate towards Mingus, or other visceral players, are making a reasonable transition. Inevitably, some of them are just getting off on the surface emotion (like beatniks and hippies who loved Coltrane because of his emotional power, but who had very little artistic insight into what he was doing). People who gravitate towards rock when they're young are, with the exception of the more obvious, egregious scenesters, possessed of a fairly physical and emotional romanticism, and at a youthful age, when hormonal agitation compells a search for transcendence, that transcendent rush is acquired potently through music - the more primal and yearning the better. To someone of a more equable temperament, all this would strike them as pathetic, anti-intellectual self-indulgence. It's only as someone much older that I can appreciate Lee Konitz for example, who when I was a teenager stuck me as an anaemic wimp. I like Joe Lovano, but there's no way in hell I would have appreciated him a few years ago, I would have found him too burnished and avuncular. So the point is, although many jazz afficionados like to see themselves as relatively objective critics, we are all slaves to our temperament, sensibility, and idiosyncratic cognitive styles. And these features change with maturity and experience. But I think baseline sensibilities do not change, they are modulated, diversified, seasoned, complexified, but very rarely do they radically change. Some people only want to listen to mid '50s cool jazz. Some people won't listen to anything except the most abstruse free-jazz. Some people think Wynton is God. And if they're are jazz fan that can type, they'll make their case, immoderately, like I do and like most members of jazz forums are inclined to. Now, I like Iggy Pop's music, but there's no way in hell I'm going to spend time in an Iggy Pop forum (I had a brief look around once - it was gruesome. Not because the people were stupid, but because they were at the age where they had to be as inarticulate as possible to hide their middle class backgrounds. Doesn't make for great conversation)

I don't know exactly how you gauge visibility, or lack thereof, but I love Marty Ehrlich's playing. He's got a wonderful, full tone, doesn't have an overbearingly cutting edge, yet his playing nonetheless possesses a unique vehemence. He has an odd musical imagination without it being irritatingly "quirky".

It's a great track, from a great album. But (and I'm thinking in terms of the remastered CD with extra tracks) it doesn't quite have that sense of urgency and startling invention that initially impels the album. Deep Night may have its own nocturnal eloquence, but the creative and emotional heat has diminished. The extra tracks, while intriguing, seem to me fatigued afterthoughts.

Sonny Clark was greatly admired by Bill Evans. The feeling was mutual. Bill Evans even liked - in fact loved - the assymetrical punctuation of Thelonius Monk, and he had no aversion to the soulful shout of hardbop, so I guess I'm still intrigued why his own playing veered towards lace and pastel. You can't blame impressionism, or classical music, which many jazz musicians loved. That would be like saying Faure inevitably would lead to Miles Davis' trumpet attack on Jack Johnson. You can't pinpoint sensitivity and introversion, since most artists are sensitive and introverted, whatever masks or repartee they learn to employ. I even went to the trouble of reading a biography of Evans, "See How My Heart Sings", which gave me no psycholocical clues to Evan's' wounded retreat from life, his desire to escape into a cute, soft-focus, high-brow tweeness.

I love their trio outings. I've bought most of their commercially available material, and I've got a bootleg that I cherish. They're relaxed and friendly, without it becoming a smug and tedious mutual admiration society. That's really hard to pull off, and they do it with a sound that's light and open yet rich with subtext.

I thought your stoned alternative take was pretty hilarious, it reminded me of many such THC experiments I've done myself, with fairly nebulous conclusions, but it was fun at the time. The most annoying thing about alternative takes on albums is they put them after the original track. It might make sense sequentially, but aesthetically it ruins the feel, the ebb and flow of the music. Sometimes alternatives takes are wonderful, even superior to the main track, due to previous time constraints on the original LP, but in general they're inferior. So as a listener, you hear one creatively inspired track followed by a b-grade successor. I think it would make a lot more sense to put the alternative tracks at the end of the CD, as an added extra, a jazz treasure trove. JSngry - I hadn't put a great deal of thought into the sequencing of the music on opposite sides, and how that was commensurate with the overall imagery, but as an overall aesthetic product, with or without neurochemical aberration, and cinematographical vistas, that sounds as good and affectionate summation of Sonny Rollin's impish impulses as I've heard in a while.

Master Nessa, my impudent inexperience clearly renders me, to paraphrase Lester Young when referring to Pee-Wee Marquette, half a motherfucker. I will meditate on the koan you have gifted me.

I found his abstruse mathematical symbolism and laboured neologisms a bit forbidding and sidestepped Braxton for years, until I heard that album he did with Sam Rivers and Holland, Conference of the Birds. I love that album so much. And I found myself entranced by the oblique skeins of notes Braxton erupted with. Part of me was saying: I shouldn't be liking this. The other part, soon to become the dominant part was saying: this is fucking magnificent! I still haven't heard much. Sometimes you can hear that he's out of practice, and his saxophone tone sounds like shit, yet his unique ideas hold your attention. A recent album I heard, and loved, was with him playing with Marty Ehrlich. Except Braxton was playing piano. What a weird piano player, like he was playing mezzotint clusters. But it worked, in fact it was great.

I didn't know about that one. It looks like it's in the same series as "Pepper Jam", another live album, with a similar colour and typeface graphic layout on the cover. If anyone's heard Pepper Jam I'd love to know whether it's worth ordering.

This is who I really like: there's nothing fancy or pathbreaking about his playing, but it's deep and it swings and it has a searching, brittle toughness to it - Mal Waldron. On those live dates with Eric Dolphy he drives the rhythm section with the same jubilant force that Bobby Timmons does with Cannonball Adderley. Later on Waldron's playing gets more spare, oblique and knotty. I read an interview where he stated that after giving up drugs he went into a severe depression, got hospitalised, and got ECT for it. Unfortunately, he was one of those people who didn't just get short-term memory loss, but experienced massive long-term memory loss, so had to learn the piano again. Hence the difference in the fluidity and texture in his playing.

After initially sounding a bit furtive and muffled, Jackie McLean achieves one of the fattest, baddest, nastiest tones on his horn ever on this record, although I feel the album starts to sag a bit half way through.

With regard to Wynton and Branford, I went to a lot of trouble to listen to their albums, and be open about their music. It annoyed me that people put them down in a reactive, ideological fashion because of where their own aesthetic and political sensibility positioned their preferences. I will admit, occasionally, a sneaking like for Live at Blues Alley. And my favourite Branford solo - this might seem a bit left field, but there's a track on Decoy, an otherwise cheesy fusion offering by Miles Davis, that has Branford Marsalis doing this particular solo that is utterly bizarre, strange, serpentine notes often at odds with the harmony, but it's so poised and perfect, while generating real momentum. In terms of the Major Period, the Golden Years, of jazz - yeah, they're gone. But you have to realise that jazz then was more stylistically coherent, it was still relatively new and so that sense of freshness and development was more obvious and linear. Now it's a highly marginal art form, and very diverse - in an at times disputatious and ghettoistic manner. Most of the links to popular culture are gone. Even Glen Miller, and Paul Whiteman had more going for them in their day than today's Smooth Jazz offerings. One of the major features that has changed is that young rebels are not as likely to graviate towards jazz. They're more likely to sample it, or ignore it altogether, in Hip Hop, Electronica, Ilbient and so on. Within jazz, the rebels these days a more likely to be contrarian nerds than axe-wielding Young Turks. There's certainly plenty of exceptions to this, but generally that's been my observation. A young rebel in search of a visceral musical kick, a sense of deviance and otherness, is likely to find mainstream, conventional jazz too whitebread. The irony of course, is that when that music was originally played it was out on the edge. Warmed over leftovers just don't pack the same punch - the young and hungry go elsewhere.

With regard to Branford, I don't want to sound like I'm putting him down, because he seems like a good guy, and he's certainly an excellent player. But I don't buy into the hypothesis that, "It's already been done by the geniuses that once roamed the earth, nothing's left except homage". There's always new players coming up with new ideas. Sometimes they're virtuosos, often they're not. The generic, and derivative players are more likely to become virtuosos because when there's not much intellectual and creative energy being channelled into something fresh, they become practice room pedants obsessional about mastering the past. As to Wynton. I don't deny his virtuosity. I respect his technical accomplishments. As a man, hustler, politician, publicist, enthusiast, demagogue, rhetorician - I actually admire his (frequently risible) bluster, and the depth of his committment, his achievements, his obvious deep feeling for the music. His playing leaves me cold. He just sounds like a mimic. He impresses me most on fast hardbop numbers where his sharp, fast mind, and extraordinary chops, can dazzle. Everything else sounds like morbid, sepia-toned pastiche and mannered self-importance -"I'm such a humble servant of my higher power jazz I don't need to SHOUT HOW HUMBLE I AM ABOUT AMERICA'S ONLY ART FORM. DID ANYONE HEAR HOW HUMBLE I AM?" In terms of emotional depth, there isn't a great deal in Wynton. It's surface effects and cheap emotional mugging. In terms of discerning Sonny Rollin's underlying sadness. Well, that's often the problem with people that have got the wit and intelligence to appreciate jazz - there's a kind of emotional dyslexia that goes with it. Sonny isn't just "sad" on the ballads, there's a pervasive melancholy that accompanies his every move. Even in interviews he's moaning about the state of the planet. Like a lot of deep-thinking, deep-feeling creative people, there's a distinct shade of blue that lends weight and pungency to his playing. Wynton will play a "blues" effect; Sonny will PLAY THE BLUES. It's the difference between acting a role, and living a life.

Regarding the Yeats quote - yes, it's a great quote, I'd never heard it before; I'll try to brand it in my brain. Pepper and Coleman. Aside from the Ornette Coleman track that Art Pepper plays on Smack Up, Pepper liked Ornette's music early on, and gave him encouragement. Years later, Ornette Coleman was doing a concert, spotted Art Pepper in the audience, and invited him on stage and introduced him as one of the few people that had supported him and believed in him when Coleman was being denounced in all quarters as a bullshitting charlatan. Years later, Pepper is on record as saying that he loved Coleman's music, but didn't want to go in that direction himself because it didn't suit his personal aesthetic.

Late - you expressed that very eloquently.

Chuck - by "medicated" I assume you mean the cocaine he was using to supplement the methadone. By that stage he was probably so fried that he needed some sort of stimulant to reanimate what was left. I've known people who have been on methadone for lengthy periods and, although it takes away (sort of) the craving for smack, it has the effect of dulling, sogging out the emotions and so people on methadone sometimes get into speed or cocaine to feel a bit more alert and alive - more EMOTIONAL. And emotion was Pepper's aesthetic stock in trade, especially in later years. Cornelius - Yes, I agree with you to a certain extent. I think when Pepper was not inspired, or in good physical shape, he probably was going through the motions, doing the musical equivalent of bad method acting; overweening, empty emoting. There's a bit of that on his documentary DVD. Except for shred of Patricia, he's not in the zone, and he overcompensates. He's in bad physical shape, and his tone is thin and dull. Other aspects of his playing, expression-wise, I don't believe are "ugly" in the way, perhaps, you intend that description to be used here, or the way people often use that term with regards to music. Coltrane's tone was regarded as ugly by many critics, listeners, and musicians, for a long time, because of it's unsentimental, abrasive timbre. What is "ugly" and what is "astringent", or even "dissonant" expressionism? I believe a lot of Pepper's playing that some would find "ugly" is in fact intensely, uncomfortably, beautiful. "Ugly Beauty" to borrow a term from Monk. The path from pretty, to beautiful, involves an aesthetic that is subjective and peculiar to the individual listener. There's moments on Village Vanguard, and San Francisco Samba, where Pepper is really reaching for it, it's a vocalised howl of stark, raw emotion in places. To some, that would be self-indulgent, ugly, nihilistic - even instrumentally incompetent. But to those who are willing to travel with him aesthetically and emotionally, it's art of the highest order. It's vicious in its intensity. And even though it sounds dangerously unbridled, it's under magnificent control. That's the mark of a top-rank romantic artist.

Cornelius - no the lines Sonny played were usually not idiotic. They were occasionally silly, funny, but with a broad, swinging, tensile creativity. That is, before the future cul de sacs and pregnant pauses that assailed his playing as he got older. There were quite a few melodies - Toot, Toot Tootsie, for one, There's no Business Like Show Business, and others; later: TV themes, ditties, stuff he used as heads, stuff he worked into his solos. I don't think any one else could get away with it, but he did it with such an imaginative, free-associating brilliance. As for Branford. I've never seen him live. I've read interviews with him, listened to interviews, and he comes across as a no-bullshit, straight-talking guy. Seems generous-spirited, but no fool, with a strong sense of the slapstick absurd. I've always felt that his playing is brilliant, has considerably more heart and humanity than his brother's, but there's a lack of depth and gravity. See, even when Rollins is being completely silly and surreal, there's this foundation of strength and seriousness. A powerful, hard-won individuality. Like all great comedians, he's a melancholic.

- youmustbe ----You're right, the knee-jerk contrarian syndrome exists too, the Thou Shalt Debunk to Demonstrate Mojo. In academia they call deconstruction, although that has been getting less and less hip since it's been so brutally satirised in recent years, exposing its fundamental hollowness, irrationality and vanity. I like Newk's Time too. Although for some reason The Freedom Suite bores me rigid. As to Miles going electric, well that malignant Peter Pan was definitely chasing money and celebrity, but he produced some extraordinary music in the process. In the darkly evocative, chills-down-your-spine department, that 70s material was non pariel. But I'm getting off-topic. I didn't know Sonny played on a theme tune. This idea came into my head, when was in town just before, that Rollins appeared on Sesame Street. Is that just my mind bullshitting me or did he appear on Sesame Street? I reckon he could get a few choruses out of that manamana song.

I'm not sure whether anything was committed to record, but they played together on a popular TV show. Sonny's dressed casually, relaxed, in a good, fun generous mood. He moves like a spastic seagull on stage! Here's a video of it: http://www.garlandjeffreys.com/av/70s_qt.html

Youmustbe - - Yeah there's plenty of solemnly-intoned pronouncements made about touchstones in jazz that we're supposed to genuflect to. And everyone has their own peculiar temperament, sensibility, personal relationship to the music, which will determine whether they agree intellectually, strongly agree emotionally, or at a loss for words as to why such shit should stir up such interest. So it appears as if the typical critic learning the ropes is just vapidly parroting portentous statements about singular works so that they'll sound erudite. I think that definitely happens, along with mildly rearranged plagiarism. But sometimes great work just sounds like shit to even the most attuned ears, and at least some people have the balls to dissent. I heard Branford play one of those Way Out West numbers on a broadcast, and I have to say, it was crap. Branford's a good player, a nice guy, and therein lies the problem. He doesn't have the sardonic, ironic, sarcastic, knowing hipness to pull it off. I don't like Bud Shank's version of it either. When you come down to it, the actual music, the basic melodies in what Sonny plays are frequently, even usually, trite, often idiotic. He has this unmatched ability to turn inconsequential fluff into salty, swinging, celebratory jazz.

Well, Westerns are fun, and there's plenty of fun in Sonny's playing. His solos with everyone from Garland Jeffreys to the Rolling Stones demonstrated that blithe spirits and his love of popular music didn't die when age lent nostalgic pseudo-dignity to what were once pop hits. What would his playing be like if he was a sci-fi freak like Wayne? Would we be getting wry renditions of Star Trek? The only good saxophone playing I've heard in a science fiction movie is Stan Getz doing First Song, in Gattaca, but that's another story.

The cover certainly wasn't a mistake, either by Rollins or Claxton. If Claxton's recollections are accurate, I guess Sonny was still young enough for peer pressure to get under his skin. I hadn't thought, except perhaps in a subconscious way, about the iconography of the photo. I just saw it as a visual symbol of Rollin's swaggering nonchalance, while dryly satirising his perceived role model righteousness in the black community. But now I think of it, I think you're right, Leeway, about the subversion of mighty whitey iconography. So who are the real down cats doing the gun slinging round here?