ep1str0phy

My very good friend John-Carlos Perea has been operating in the sphere of what might be considered Native American/American Indian jazz by virtue of 1) just being American Indian and 2) crafting music that overtly amalgamates traditional idioms and modern jazz concepts: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=18616 His music takes after Jim Pepper (about whom John-Carlos just finished a mammoth dissertation--don't know when it will be out in the ether) in this way, and like the saxman (I've most often played with John-Carlos in situations where he plays bass), J-C leans toward a modal post-Coltrane bent. I can't speak, in any truly informed manner, of what seems to be a very clear visceral and technical relationship with Coltrane modalism and American Indian musics, but I've spent enough time in/with/around Asian American and American Indian-centric ensembles to know that Coltrane's ideas do resonate with many non-Western cultures. As with anything else, the Asian American diasporic post-jazz scene within which John-Carlos and I, often (but definitely not exclusively), operate has it's own share of venues and "gets." It does feel like it occupies an obscure cultural niche to the extent that it isn't as confontationally weird or image-conscious as the rock/free improv/free thrash scene, not tidy, apolitical, and virtuoso-oriented enough for the mainstream/post-bop jazz scene, and (is) too "inside of" the museum, university, and any variety of ethnically-conscious communities to attract the better part of the young music going public (who maybe comes into it expecting or being apart of the strident self-involvment/individual emphasis of youth culture). The barriers aren't really there by force, but they do seem to be there by some sad default.

Just listened to Nessa's amazing Saga of the Outlaws while cooking dinner, Odyssey of the Oblong Square on the way to and from teaching today. Beautiful stuff bolstered by some very interest rhythm section work. Appropriate in some way, maybe--I was composing at around 4AM this morning and churned out something I dedicated to Steve Reid. There's a fine line between weird, swinging backbeat and all out no wave/disco thrash, but Reid walked it magnificently and its great knowing those lessons are left for us to learn...

Oh man--just listened to Rhythmatism again, and it's a monster. Reid actually makes it OK to turn the beat around--or, rather, when it happens in a way that sounds "unintentional," he straightens up like a pro, with an African level of natural logic. The last time I heard someone futz with rhythms with this strong a brains/balls ratio was listening to Blackwell with Waldron a few days ago. Crazy. And that band is a mother.

I was supposed to play one of these concerts with Eddie and/or Lewis Jordan but was pre-booked elsewhere. Eddie's been pushing this cause and there's a lot of heart behind it; it certainly deserves all the support it can get. One thing I will say is that some of the most health-minded people I've ever met have come out of the Bay Area creative music community. A clear message here--and it extends back to and, somehow, parallels the ethos of healthfulness that Coltrane favored--is that the value of healthcare and taking care of one's health is not an abstract concept--it is and has been a pressing concern among many of my friends in and out of the music community. --and, not to rant--but this isn't an issue of creative types not wiling to take the "straight" job which will get them insured. These are, in many ways, my "folk"--and there are world class musicians out here working 2, 3 jobs to make ends meet, support their families, and continue creating. When you magnify these issues by the sheer difficulty of securing new work these days, how hard it is to obtain suitable work hours that will offer health benefits while retaining the hours necessary for you to continue working in your originally chosen profession (music), the social flimsiness of private contracting and how difficult it is to offer up an accounting system that in anyway makes your myriad private students, night gigs, etc. look good on paper, the bursting-at-the-seams dilution of many urban music scenes, period (compounding the difficulty of obtaining music work in the first place), and also how pre-existing conditions have played a role, for so long, in obtaining insurance (the musicians we know and love so much are often a) old, b) nursing bodies failing due to poor health coverage in the first place, and c) suffering from some sort of psychological issue), you have a recipe for problems. All the more reason the classic virtues of communal action and self-betterment are needed now more than ever, and why endeavors like the one above are so valuable.

Resurrecting this thread for two reasons: (1) I've been threatening to unleash my revision of my Blue Notes thesis for ages, and it's finally happening; planning on having it done within the month. I just re-read/revised the first half, and it's maybe unwieldily large (roughly 100 pgs., leaning heavily on what happens before the "classic" Brotherhood splits), but whatever--sheered too much off of it anyway. (2) Maybe more relevant: completely off my guard, Enja reissued Makaya & the Tsotsis--a 1974 album featuring Heinz Saur, Bob Degen, and Isla Eckinger (alongside Makaya Ntshoko--formerly of the Jazz Epistles--appearing later amidst the Blue Notes arm of the diaspora on the Nick Evans/Radu Malfatti album Nicra--a tiny classic--and on Johnny Dyani's Song for Biko--a bigger classic--and he was of course active elsewhere, albeit extremely elusive and more difficult to pin down, paper trail-wise, than even his Blue Notes compatriots). It sounds, for the life of me, like no other "South African jazz" or improv album I've ever heard, although it merits some mention in the breadth of Elton Dean's modal/scattered rhythm enterprises with Ninesense. Degen, playing in an idiom somewhat closer to Circle-era Corea than the effusiveness of Keith Tippett or Chris McGregor's rolling, clustery abstraction (both of which, I'll admit, I prefer), is the x-factor here; he reins the music into something much more studied, more in the idiom of Coltrane (quartal/quintal harmony accompaniment) or the Blue Note inside-outside school than anything of the dark, modal freedom of Dyani/Abdullah Ibrahim or the Blue Notes's rough-hewn ecstasy. In a way, it sounds like a lost ECM album--beautiful and energetic--at times impressionistically abstract--but often missing that crackling, righteous edge that makes the Ogun catalog so wonderful and idiosyncratic years down the line. I will say that that, had this been a trio album, it would have been insane; Sauer has a chaotic hold on Rahsaan's multi-saxophone concept, and Eckinger has a bold energy and slippery intonation that remind me of Reggie Workman and Dyani. At its best, the band is able to integrate these diverse energies--Degen's icy precision, Sauer's craziness, and Eckinger and Ntshoko's sheer heaviness--into a lucid, weighty art, venting the tension in magnificent spurts of energy while never, ultimately, exploding completely. Which I suppose makes it unique... I'm glad to have heard it, to have a richer picture of one of the South African jazz's more enigmatic and multifaceted performers.

Yes, not to derail, but... Hill is not Monk and in the burly baroque-ness of his lines probably has as much to do with Herbie Nichols or Waldron (maybe more with Waldron?)--but--he does have an almost-Monk-caliber mastery of space and time--not to mention an air of detachment that is deeply, darkly un-Monkian (not to be confused with passivity, btw). Dixon, too, has a preternatural control of space and a similarly detached character. They could have done some wonderful things together. You could go one route and pair for contrast (Hill + Shaw, or--more diabolically--Hill + Hubbard), but Dixon and Hill share an emotional and sensory space that is really singular to me. (I was going to say that they were on the same "page," but I think Mobius Strip makes more sense.)

I think what freaks me out about Reid's playing--and I will have to revisit those classic--and classic is probably the proper term--sessions in order to flesh this out, is that he doesn't sustain the pulse like either a bebop or any iconic free drummer I can think of. On a lot of that stuff he'll accent the downbeat (and maybe the 3) harder than the 2 and the 4 (as per bop convention)--sometimes eliding this inversion of the "natural" syncopation with elements of bop or post-bop vocabulary--sometimes not--but in doing so creating some weird effects: seemingly splitting a fast tempo in half, simulating a highlife rhythm, superimposing sustained, super janky open hi-hat hits over a medium fast or fast tempo (sounding something like a Motown backing track flown in over a Miles Davis record). He kind of sounds like Tony Williams and gets a lot of the basic elements of his sound from that school of thought, but he's clearly running his own show and, because of that, probably gets a way with a hell of a lot more; I think this stuff would be much more liable to "win" you notice from Miles than playing too loud or leaning on the tempo. Kind of reminds me of something Louis Moholo said to me, which was that mbaqanga (South African urban music in mid-late century) didn't have any cymbal work--so when it came time for him to do it, he just went "screw this" and added the cymbals--the ultimate F*** you, of course, being playing almost nothing but cymbals and bass drum on a lot of his classics in the idiom (Dudu Pukwana's In the Townships. I think Steve Reid must have come out of a similar psychology... whether it was frustration with convention, technical limitations, technical virtuosity, a desire to play "like" a different kind of music, whatever--there's a palpable sense that timekeepers like this, who self-consciously tinker with the rote plans of attack, do so because they both can and should. (Which is why, at the end of the day, I'll always have a positive impression of Steve Reid's playing--much more so than an uber-virtuoso who was too scared to perform anything but incremental change... I mean, this is music and not universal health care.)

I haven't listened to it in a while, but I remember for a while thinking that Strange Serenade was one of my favorite Hill discs. I think it circumvents the chastened "Blue Note free" sound that keeps even some of the craziest sessions on that label--with the obvious exceptions of Ornette, Cecil, Cherry, and maybe some McLean--professionally in check. That disc, in a way, amalgamates the powerhouse "free" Hill of the Chained sessions or Compulsion with the grainier, more unstable ESP-disk sound. I'm glad you pointed out, Clifford, that he's using the Bill Dixon rhythm section; Waits and Silva retain that airy, floating quality here, but Hill forces them into a sort of emotional "active" state (approaching some of the general elements of energy music but retaining clarity of line and some degree of harmonic scrutability) . It all sounds kind of like a Dixon-less Bill Dixon session on steroids, in a way.

I'm on the boards so intermittently these days... I always seem to be dreading the RIPs that may or may not be there. Reid's music with the likes of Charles Tyler and Arthur Blythe has occupied many fine hours of mine these past few years--it was nice to see a resurgence, with Four Tet, before the sun set. Reid had a brawny, tight of the groove in even the wooliest of spots--really unique--in certain ways presaging broken beat (exploited, to some extent, in the Four Tet collabs). I'll refrain from words like underrated, master, and lost genius since the frequency with which they're bandied about upon death kind of cheapens both the meaning of those phrases and the genuine, living contributions of the dearly departed in life--but, seriously, I don't think I've ever heard a drummer who sounded quite like Steve Reid, which goes a very, very long way.

On top of what has been mentioned already: Ornette actually appeared on both Haden's The Golden Number and Closeness, playing trumpet on the former and alto on the latter... I believe he appeared on Joe Henry's Scar- On a Rolf Kuhn album called Affairs- On an album by French singer Claude Nougaro (a brief and highly-paid guest spot)- (with the Blackwell/Haden/Izenzon quartet, I believe) on Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band album (the one with John)- -an Al Macdowell Time Peace album- -and also on the bewildering Lou Reed The Raven project, on which he essays a finely-hewn solo in the Prime Time mold. Reed spends the remainder of the album bemoaning his decaying testicles.

We take our karaoke very, very seriously. I've seen some crazy stuff go down over one too many coronas and some lumpia shanghai.

Crazy, weird--I just recently got into a Dewey kick and, lo and behold, this thread works its way to the top of the heap... I also just recently got a hold of The Struggle Continues--not what I was expecting at all--was hoping that it would be a well-recorded, at least mildly avant session in a more restrained mode than that of the Impulse! recordings--maybe something like Coincide--but I was pleasantly surprised. It's a lot closer in character to his later 80's/90's albums, following a pretty consistent formula of standard, a couple off-kilter "standards" pieces, a hard blues, one or two "free" pieces... ...what puts this one over is that, for once, the band is recorded terrifically, the pieces are consistently interesting (offered energetic treatments by the ensemble), and the band is top notch. Helias is a pillar of strength in the Charlie Haden mold, but with exceeding technical facility and slightly more rhythmic mobility--not Haden's degree of "soul," but a lot more flash. Charles Eubanks acquits himself well--as well as with Rashied Ali, I think, though he's always struck me as a slightly muddy McCoy Tyner disciple... I think his melodic resolve is his big virture here. And Blackwell is so, so hard in the pocket that it blows my mind--this might be one of my favorite performances of his, facile, effortless, but also extremely punchy and rhythmically insistent, just the right bit of "rush." --Though, I can see on that album why Redman might be considered one of the few "uncapturable" on records--a recording will sound incomparably thin compared to a truly big, live tenor sound. The excellent sonic image of the ECM doesn't blind me to the fact that he probably sounded in a different ballpark in a live setting. As it is, he is very clearly one of the finest melodists the music has ever produced, and his talent for lyricism with even the sparest of harmonic materials has always impressed me. - Count me a fan of Musics, though I think I may like it less now than on first hearing. I think part of the problem that the sound (I have the CD) is so unbelievably thin and lifeless--Dewey's is a sound music and would do best with a big, true sound like the ECM's. I love the opening bossa, but I also think that Dewey's forays into "Giant Steps" territory are a little forced and unnecessary. For all the issue of Redman not being able to play changes, I think he's an excellent ballad player, and he wrests and forgives all the pathos out of "Alone Again (Naturally)." Makes me think of those people who turned into/back into "standards" playing after the revolution ended. I think that Shepp was, secretly, always that way, but maybe lacked at an earlier juncture--maybe still does--the sort of technique necessary to excel in the Parker continuum (a friend played for me I Know About the Life, and it was by far, by far, one of the saddest things I've ever heard.). Dewey I got the sense had something to prove to himself, which is a real shame--reminds me of (I'm paraphrasing) something Leo Smith said, to the effect of "they're" always trying to get you to do something other than what you want to do.

I think at this point it may just be easier to evaluate the avant-garde strain on the merits of lucid and very obvious systems--the same way someone might say person A or B isn't making the changes to a chord sequence of bebop convention--than it is to simply praise or write something off on the basis of it being some unknowable, wonderful or awful thing. Something that I do find at least marginally comforting is that I find that a lot of younger players won't make big technical allowances for free playing these days--but then won't really prejudice those styles, either. A lot of "avant-garde" technique has become a part of the technical repertoire/arsenal--I'm often surprised that this stuff is understood and employed as well as, say, funk ideas or bebop--but, then, not written off mindlessly or easily, either. The bad edge of the sword is that when everything gets reduced technically, you lose a lot of what made that music interesting in the first place...

Not necessarily "ballads," but slow and very contemplative--Grachan Moncur III on Evolution. Then again, Grachan's playing on Jackie McLean's Destination Out!--especially the sublime, unbelievably moody "Love and Hate," is probably up there with the best of them.

Definitely earlier. How many 1970s jazz albums have you heard that seem to be lacking the "real" meat on the bones? Not only poorly (and cheaply) recorded, but poorly conceived as well. This seems to be true, I believe, more in the area of the avant-garde, where people are especially quick to heap the word "genius" onto music that sometimes is too difficult for the music consuming public to understand. "If we don't get it, it must be great". I hear this often, and while I do agree that criticism is often more slack when it comes to the avant-garde, I only rarely hear people use the word "genius" or connotations thereof in reference to a musician or work that isn't elsewhere, and with some frequency, appreciated and/or dissected with some degree of critical aptitude. In other words, I don't usually hear people go, "genius!" when it comes to some marginal India Navigation album--almost always this goes in reference to something that is either part of an established critical canon or, by its own internal logic, undeniably well-realized (like Nonaah, which seems to get that a lot, a 70's Cecil Taylor solo album, or Braxton's Arista stuff). On the other hand, especially on this board, for example, people are pretty quick to call out bullshit on controversial--or, if you want to call it that way, "marginal" and harder to quantify--genius. I remember some shit going down about Arthur Doyle a while back, and the camp was divided in a heated way. I think folks are quicker to recognize when the genius nomenclature is bandied about more liberally, so that can't be a threat- Now, in terms of people quick to heap the word "genius" onto music that is difficult for the music consuming public to understand--well, hell yes. Charlie Parker is hard to understand, and I don't know how many people on this board wouldn't call him a genius. Same with Coltrane and, to another extreme, Hemphill. And there doesn't need to be a discussion, I think, about whether genius is a function of mass recognition. ...I certainly hope that most critical appraisals by the allegedly well-informed don't follow the logic of "If we don't get it, it must be great"--I mean, the devices of the avant-garde are digestible to such a degree at this historical juncture that I'd be pretty surprised if everyone who does dig this often less palatable strain didn't have some sort of coherent criteria to go by. You'll hear it again and again by a lot of the AACM guys, who have the scope and purview to call out the prior wave's excesses for what they are/were--"No such thing as free," or some permutation of that. All music must by nature follow some organizing principles--or, at least, I am 100% confident that a lot of the most celebrated "out" jazz does.

I guess it took someone really pointing it out to get me to do it, but I really, really listened to the Hemphill big band album today--I've had it since I was like 15, haven't thought too much about it since--and it is a motherfucker. I can understand where you're coming from, Allen, in terms of seeing this album as a potential "solution" after energy freedom-- It grapples with issues of instrumentation, ensemble inter/independence, and improvisational liberty with the postmodern flair of the AACM generation--the kind of "kitchen sink" sense of anything possible that doesn't get annoying or draw attention to itself. It's almost how "in" the album sounds while being drastically, rule-breakingly out. There are chord changes all over the place without ever sounding like a conventional post-bop record, and I think a lot of this has to do with how detailed--freely detailed--the ensemble is: -a perfectly balanced use of twin guitars, oftentimes simultaneously comping--this degree of harmonic complexity, which would usually cause a trainwreck in a jazz ensemble of any size, is elided by the timbral freedom exercised by the guitarists. Oh yeah--no piano, and there's electric bass. -Solos that both ride the changes and sound apeshit out--my impression is that part of the reason this works is that, although many of the central melodies are consonant in an almost square way, and though the basic harmonic foundation of most of the pieces is pretty simple, the group harmonies are packed with dissonant extensions/superimpositions. Sometimes the band sounds like a series of moving clusters. -Speaking to the quote about Hemphill being the "Ellington of the avant-garde," what would in other hands sound like tightly-packed, crowded ensembles come across as surprisingly light--part of this has to do with the mix, to be sure, but the band isn't trying to achieve a homogeneous blend--it's individuals playing at together. -Some of Hemphill's arrangement choices are just fucking weird--and this definitely happens on a dime. Moving in and out of swung time at the drop of a hat--and just when it sounds like it was something the drummer felt like doing on the fly, *bam*--the ensemble drops right back into something else. I was listening to "Bordertown" on the way back from the grocery, and shit pops up out of nowhere in the rightest way possible--there's this WSQ-esque ensemble sax passage toward the end that sounds totally dropped in, but instead of disrupting the flow, it ratchets the energy up in a really exhilarating fashion. --and the facility with which Hemphill and the band accomplish this almost insults logic--the same sort of feeling I get when listening to early Art Ensemble, right when Moye joined the band, and he's already anticipating and doubling everything the soloists do. I mean, shit--I'm so high on this album right now, having attempted to listen with new ears--thanks for pointing this one out, Allen.

Something really startling to me, living with these recordings the past couple of days, is that the most cohesive tracks--compositionally, in terms of group dynamics/responsiveness, and improvisational fluidity--are by and large waxed by musicians whose approaches weren't exactly challenging the status quo. Sam Rivers had been working in his idiom since the early/mid 60's, the same with Sunny Murray (who rides the wave of energy improv on Wildflowers truer and more directly than anyone else, IMO). Ken McIntyre, who, listening more closely, kicks maybe the most ass out of any of the traditional "solo" voices on these sides (his spotlight on "New Times" is blisteringly forceful), recorded opposite Dolphy, for chrissakes. On the other hand, many of the musicians here who might elsewhere be understood as the most innovative and fresh exponents of post-energy formalism--and a lot of them are present--don't shine so bright. To be fair, Wildflowers doesn't supoort the notion that avant-garde jazz is (from the liners) "incohate bleating," but it doesn't really challenge the norms of energy/modal free jazz, by '76 themselves cliches, very successfully, either. (The comp does illustrate a sense I've had of late that all the chaotic juju just sort of drained out of energy music somewhere in the early/mid 70's; there's all of the bluster, but none of the baptismal scariness, of Ayler on these recordings.) I think that's why I like "Chant" so much--it's maybe the only side on Wildflowers that actively challenges what were then still-prevailing forms and works as a cohesive performance. You could even argue that it challenges the artists' norms, as well; although Roscoe and the Art Ensemble had been operating in an idiomatically dialogic, silence-based music of contrasts for yeeeears before the late 70's, I think the degree of exactitude and brutal logic found in compositions like "Chant" or "Nonaah" was really unheralded at that time. The other pieces that do take serious formal risks on these recordings, like the Braxton piece, the Dalta Akhri piece, and Hemphill's, are just way too sloppy to get across the point that something new was going on. I kept thinking, listening to Wildflowers, that if something both as idiomatically complete and fresh as the Braxton Arista small group sides, something off of Air Time (especially as ascetic as "Subtraction"), Afternoon of A Georgia Faun, or a piece from Wadada's Kabell box were to show up, it would stop me dead in my tracks. There's a knifelike precision to a lot of that music that even now, I think, poses issues for composers and improvisers (and composer-improvisers) to grapple with. While I feel many of the skronkiest abstractions of 60's free jazz have been digested into the mainstream, there is a very large reluctance, or maybe inhibitedness, among even many young radicals to come to grips with the sonic innovations of 70's improv--and many who try to do this don't play in the cultural area of "jazz" at all. (I'll be happily proven wrong when I hear an Ayler tribute as ballsily sober as the second half of the AEoC's Phase One.)

A little late to the party since I just obtained a copy/first heard these sessions today, but man am I surprised at how variable the quality of these sessions is. Saga really was an outstanding moment at the festival. Some moments are very, very good, maybe only a couple truly superlative, and just as much of what works, IMO, falls flat. All this raises a series of perceptual questions--most notable among these being whether quick absorption of materials hinders one's enjoyment of the recordings, whether the ensuing decades of recapitulation/recycling of certain among Wildflowers' musical practices will negatively affect one's perception of the music that existed at the time, and whether it's really fair to evaluate these excerpts, shorn of context, alongside often similar-sounding, but otherwise largely unrelated, recordings. For my sakes, I'm going to say that listening with modern ears is about all I can do--and, granted this-- (1) I'm surprised by how much of this music sounds homogenous/similar--a criticism/observation that could be leveled at bebop or hard bop or burnout or whatever--let alone "contemporary" free jazz that follows in this lineage--but not quite what I was expecting. Much of this may have to do with duplicated personnel. I think it's more on the level that none of these sides are quite as distinguished/fully realized (due to the limitations of the compilation medium) as the artists' contemporaneous full-length albums; it's a lot of cut-and-burn excerpts, oftentimes a common breed of intense, detailed, but at the same time breathless free-time/fast melody improvisation. (2) Alan Douglas mentions in the liners that (paraphrasing) the loft jazz period was the last time anything new was developed in jazz, and I'm slowly, more and more, inclined to agree. I think that much of this has to do with my frustration at how much of the jazz left has, as of late, come to observe the "cutting edge" of the music (the jazz right often doesn't give a shit)... when we're celebrating hard-grooves and cyclical lines, observe how these overtures to hip-hop/mainstream popular music conceits were already being activated/celebrated by musicians of the Wildflowers vintage--obvious debts held to Julius Hemphill and the BAG constituency, the AACM, and--hell--Randy Weston, Dave Burrell. Also--talk about future of electric guitar this, etc., etc., etc.--not knocking anyone, but the now anonymous Michael Gregory Jackson was doing this in Braxton's band in the 70's. There is nothing contemporary jazz guitar heralds are doing, save for sheer advancements in hardware, that gets substantially more complex than what Jackson accomplishes on Wildflowers. Which is, again paraphrasing Douglas, not to say that there aren't any good albums or artists these days, just that the whole concept of "new" or "future" (versus tangential) directions is sort of ridiculous now. (3) There is very, very little A game on these sessions, and this with more than a passing familiarity with these very A game musicians. -Sam Rivers's feature is great, on par with many of his sessions from this vintage. -Air's "USO Dance" sounds like a fine set closer, but extracted from a full concert, it doesn't articulate just how creatively this band dealt with structure, both composed and improvised, and hierarchical rhythm/front-line relationships--the piece could just as easily suit the approach of Rivers's band. -Ken McIntyre, a favorite of mine, would sound almost entirely out of place were it not for his ensemble's atypical instrumentation; as it is, he does a fine bit with conventional jazz form and brings a little authority and seniority to the environs. -New Dalta Akhri starts out fucking strong, but the piece seems to lose focus about midway; the group is heard to better effect, in a much better formation, on Wadada's Kabell recordings. -Sunny Murray's band actually kicks ass. I'm not overly fond of this rendition of "Over the Rainbow"--I think it's been more completely realized, in this idiom, elsewhere--but "Something's Cookin'" is maybe the strongest, ballsiest sheer "blowing" piece of all the Wildflowers recordings. -Perhaps I'm too partial to Roscoe, but "Chant" is for me the out-and-out strongest thing on Wildflowers. Virtually all of the preceding <3 hrs sounds immediately obsolete once Roscoe gets down. It's not flawless, and there appears to be some sloppiness transitioning between sections. But it is ambitious. This piece blew me away on the reissue of Nonaah, and it loses none of its balls--it maybe gains a pair--in the trio context, where the tension of the melody line gets magnified by virtue of rhythmic contrast (the drummers are in full gear). The performance pretty clearly employs sonata form, and the formal strictness of it is really piquant, in light of the preceding few hours of explode. Roscoe's focus on discreet musical ideas and techniques concentrates the energy of the performance, expends it much more efficiently, than even the most exhilaratingly bashy music elsewhere on the compilation. Also, and this is supposedly the AACM's marker of individuality (not really evident elsewhere on Wildflowers), but "Chant" makes extensive use of space and silence--shuffled off to the end of the compilation, as if to inform the listener, "oh shit, you can do that?" -Elsewhere there are a lot of noble experiments, but I think almost everyone on the set can be heard to better effect elsewhere. Julius Hemphill kills it on the earlier, ragged but beautiful and innovative Dogon A.D., but it's hard to get a sense of his genius approach to arrangement or orchestration here. Braxton and Cyrille's pieces, in particular, don't pack much punch out of context (very surprised at how relatively lackluster Braxton's piece is here). I don't know if even "Chant" is an essential piece in the oeuvre of the artist--not when Nonaah exists, or even something as early as Sound, or his very ambitious, less clearly jazz-related compositions these days. Rambling again, but there's little great, some good, a lot of OK, and a hell of a lot of "interesting, but so-so" on this legendary set. Which, if you're documenting a milieu versus a musical concept or outlook, makes sense--but I might recommend before Wildflowers any one of these artists' prime solo works to someone trying to figure out what made 70's jazz so great.

I think that that Tzadik disc is fantastic--actually one of the strongest offerings by several of the performers involved (particularly the Dogon/Raw Materials-ish trio with Ehrlich). The compositions are uniformly strong and played with gusto... I may actually prefer this to some of the Hephill sax group sets that don't have Hemphill playing on them. It's weird to think of it now, but it's (gradually) becoming more apparent that Dogon A.D. may represent Hemphill's "greatest" recorded legacy--not necessarily best, though it's clearly one of the best, but without a doubt the one that seems to have the widest influence among younger musicians today. Virtually everyone in my extended musicians network knows this recording--and many came into it independently. I'm wondering if Berne's subversive online "deployment" of the album added anything to its status (this actually predated the "sharity" blog explosion, IIRC). 1234-1234-123... 1234-1234-123... (it also sticks in the brains)

I know--this isn't really good stuff to go off of, but- Purely watching hands (and as a guitar player who actively plays this stuff), George is definitely not soloing in the first video and Paul is on bass. But--a solo is happening at about 1:30. There are some 16th note figures ([da-ga-da-ga]-[duh] or some permutation of that) at around 1:45 that correspond to the solo, and George's hands are clearly visible--he's not playing them. Since the guitarist that is visible isn't playing that part, the other one (John) is the likely candidate. On the second video, the guitars are interlocked and for whatever reason George is more forward in the mix--but, the bluesy line (the part with the string bends, the 16th note figure, etc.--clearly the solo on the album version) is being played by John. I think that the 12-string is dominating because of the balance, but it's technically playing the accompanist role that it does on other versions of this tune.

And cutting away when it's your turn to play.

OK--this is ridiculous to the extent that every live video of YCDT cuts away from Lennon at the guitar solo, but in this one: YCDT Which is pretty clearly live, George isn't playing the solo. In this one: This one: YCDT You can actually catch a second of the solo, but it goes by so fast that it's hard to tell if it's George or John (by George's right hand, it looks like he's playing the rhythm part, right down to the psuedo-lead chording right before it cuts to Ringo). Enough to convince me, but then I always get thrown off of juries...

It's a logical leap, but the fact that Lennon syncs to the solo makes me think that it was his to begin with. (Unless there's another instance of John/George trading solos for live syncing. For the hell of it?) Too much youtube after late? Yes, I think so. This video would seem to confirm your suspicions, TTK: Not really - I am pretty sure that is a lip-synched performance. DId you notice there are no microphones for the singers and the electric guitars have no chords coming out of them? Also people in the audience dancing only inches away from Lennon and clapping hands and yet those sounds not picked up. Finally, this sounds exactly like the recorded version. I rest my case.

The balancing-a-trumpet-while-playing-bass thing reminds me of the rumored Rahsaan trick of balancing an upright bass on his head while circular breathing. Also: not enough instruments.

Reminds me a lot of the Monks' "I Can't Get Over You," which employs a similar rhythmic conceit: Funny how raw the early Beatles actually do sound in comparison to the much more overtly dark and aggressive Monks; on a purely aesthetic level, the Beatles at their most grungy can stand up with the best garage rock. (And I for one think that the Monks were one of the hardest swinging rock groups of the day.)