Hot Ptah

Have the people bashing Metheny heard him live with his current trio? He is playing uncompromising jazz today. The album, Day Trip, is not really representative of the live experience, as for some reason two of the five songs are dirges, and there were a lot more uptempo blowing vehicles when I saw them live.

Quite. As it is indifferent to thousands of other things. I don't see why it should be otherwise. Metheny is falling into the time honoured trap of the middle-aged of believing that only he can see what is of value, that the world as a whole has lost the plot. Last-Roman-as-the barbarians-swarm-across-the-Rhine Syndrome. At a meeting over the weekend I was reminded of this thread (and many others on bulletin boards) whilst reading the comments of one Alvarus, a ninth-century cleric in Córdoba, who grumbled about the way that young Christian men could barely write decent Latin, yet were besotted by Arabic poetry. The era he was living in is now regarded as one of the jewels of medieval culture. Excellent points, Bev. I think it should be kept in mind that Metheny was talking to young music students, giving them some advice. I don't know that his remarks were intended as a published essay on the state of jazz.

The only reason I could not top 400+ first dates when I was single is that I could not get 400 women to go out with me once.

No one seems to have mentioned his 1989 album, Tenderly: On this album, he plays mostly standard tunes, backed by McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Louis Hayes, Al Foster or Herlin Riley on drums, with some string backgrounds. He plays several jazz guitar solos, and Tyner solos on several songs. It is a jazz album. Wonder how it sold?

Not quite a bag or box, but a container of sorts.

Jim Hardin Tom Phoebus Eddie Watt

PM on the way on the HRS set.

I don't share your intense displeasure for his work. I enjoyed his concert last winter. I have heard some vocalese that I have not cared for, especially the silly or cutesy variety.

great album! It was supposed to be this: I wonder if that was taken at Kirk's home. I have read that he had a large album collection and regularly shopped for more.

Gordy Coleman Tony Perez Dan Driessen

My impression is that Metheny was simply telling the students that it will be more difficult than they might have imagined to play jazz for a living, because there is not much of a market for it in today's "culture". and that they will need to be strong and persevere. The rest of the discussion here is somewhat off his point, I think. I don't know that Metheny's point, if I have understood it correctly, is so radical. Richard Davis, the jazz professor at the University of Wisconsin, has been telling his jazz students for decades now that they have to be prepared to play all kinds of music, not only jazz, if they want to make a living in music, because the session opportunities which existed in the 1950s and 1960s have not been there for a long time. That hardly seems like a controversial idea. Except for Metheny's emphasis on the words "hostile" and "culture" and "cult", he is making much the same point, I think. I have read some of Metheny's other speeches and he does tend to go for dramatics, to emphasize a point with colorful or perhaps over-the-top language. Maybe that's what it takes to get through to an auditorium full of students, or what he imagines it takes. In my college teaching experience I have often wished I literally had some firecrackers to wake up some of the students while I was presenting material.

boy, what a skeptic you are! perhaps a skeptic, or maybe a narcissist to think that jazz fans are even considered a demographic. i think more people dislike jazz than like it, so putting Miles et al on the list could backfire and cost him the election. Right, as if McCain has anything beyond "Sing Along with Mitch" on his iPod. Assuming he even HAS an iPod. I bet that McCain does not have an iPod. I have read several newspaper accounts of how McCain does not use a computer, and has never conducted a search on the internet. He has referred to Google as "The Google" in press interviews and his staff has explained that he does not know what Google is.