Nate Dorward

Cadence is $17, DMG $16...... no idea where you can find them cheaper! Verge is $19 Canadian.

Well, in many cases, but I can think of people who have improved not one whit after decades of writing, too! I just remembered that I'd come across Sallis when I was reading a pile of Chester Himes earlier this year (I think he wrote the intro to one of the books). Right, I'll have to check him out. I think (I know this is probably boring the hell out of 99% of readers but anyway) that rather than confusing people with strictures on the passive, it would be more beneficial just to teach it correctly. It's all about point of view and the placing of emphasis, like most issues of syntax: "Joe Blow was born on January 1st, 1970" (passive voice--"born" is the irregular past participle of "to bear") would be the obvious choice for a bio of Joe Blow; "Marie Blow gave birth to Joe Blow on January 1st, 1970" (active voice) would be more appropriate for a bio of the mother. It's simply a way of shifting the emphasis from subject to object, which is actually very important for coherent narration. (For instance: "After the overdose, he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, where he was pronounced dead on arrival." -- two passives, which keep the emphasis on "him". This is far better than "After the overdose, ambulance attendants rushed him to the hospital, but the doctor pronounced him dead on arrival." -- converted to active verbs. We know who performs the tasks associated with these verbs so there's no reason to identify the performers.) Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.... but then again given the persistence of strange prescriptions about passives & confusion about identifying them, maybe not. Being able to use them naturally is actually the mark of a fluent speaker/writer, which is why it's a crucial stage in ESL learning.

Nate, can you elaborate? It got a 3 (out or 5) star review in the UK Guardian. Guy Yeah, I saw that--I have no idea why (especially since, as I recall, the actual text of the review by Fordham was positive, just the star rating was ehh). It's one of my favourite releases from this year. What I wrote for STN:

& of course you should have And His Mother Called Him Bill, the Strayhorn farewell, if you haven't already got it.

The duo album in tribute to Jimmy Blanton (Duke + Ray Brown) I remember as being very good. There's a lengthy piece on Ellington's private stash of recordings, with a discography, in a recent issue of Coda -- July/August I believe.

No, not yet! Lately a run of Jim Thompson novels (Killer Inside Me, The Getaway,, &c).

Which year did the review appear? I ask because this year McShann's gig was cancelled, which was one of the major reasons why the Montreal Bistro closed. I like Leonard's fiction, though haven't read any of it for a while. It's a little too easygoing for me, maybe (in that I tend to prefer blacker, more fatalistic hardboiled worlds--I'm sure there are exceptions but there are a lot of Leonard novels where the good guys win, the bad guys end up in jail, & the really bad guys get killed). Lovely ear for dialogue, though.

Not as far as I know: it's permanent. I confess I read The Chill & decided Macdonald wasn't for me. Hammett & Chandler are the ones.

The recent Time Being w/ Trio 3 is terrific. Avoid the boring DIW My Friend Louis, though.

Chris--this example is correct, but you are looking at the wrong part of the sentence. The passive is in the second part: "...the data was inadvertently deleted" (form of "to be" + part participle of "deleted"). The first part is not, it's just past perfect again. Of course student reports are full of poor writing--I've marked papers before--but handing students a non-rule about a syntactic construction they can't identify correctly anyway isn't going to help matters.

Chris--I'm afraid neither of your examples is passive voice. Passive voice is "to be" + past participle. "had hoped" is past perfect ("had" + past participle). "...some assumptions were in error" is plain old past tense of the verb "to be".

Well, this example shows exactly why it's pointless teaching students non-rules about the passive voice: the sentence does not contain a passive construction at all. I don't think most students who aren't ESL students will know how to identify a passive construction accurately. Anyway, sorry for the nitpickiness but I just can't fathom these kinds of bizarre quasi-rules that no-one ever follows anyway.

Incidentally the Grachan Moncur III interview in the new issue is pretty disturbing--I have to wonder about the wisdom of interviewing him at all given that the other one I've seen (the Fred Jung piece on the Jazz Weekly site) is pretty hard to take too. (The Jung piece has Moncur break down into tearful inarticulacy halfway through; in the new Cadence piece he starts yelling at the interviewer at one point.)

Well, issues like the famous CIMP sound & distribution deals & so forth are different matters from the specific topic of this thread.... I don't know anything about Jim Sangrey's experience in the 1980s, though knowing him I'm sure he did not mention the experience casually/without good reason. Looking at the current magazine it seems obvious there is little relation between reviews & advertising because there is, in fact, little advertising at all compared to virtually any other jazz journal, aside from the catalogue in the middle. I don't know if you enjoy reading it--though I find that even just picking out the reviews by its best writers like Jason Bivins & Michael Steinman make it more than worthwhile--but I enjoy writing for it, as the discs from often very obscure labels & artists that get sent me are a welcome change from the zone of the familiar.

Dan--OK, here it is.

Well, I certainly hope they don't "do it", if you mean "follow those rules"! Can anyone give a rational explanation for why one should avoid passive voice or a verb like "is"? It's like telling people to tie their hands behind their back then play tennis. Plenty of useful ammo against boneheaded stylistic prescription at the Language Log site, if you're curious: e.g. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog...ves/003380.html

Jeez, I'd been unaware until now that AAJ actually edited the reviews or had any formal policy--usually just seemed to post up whatever came in. Looking at the "Style" guidelines, I'd suggest ignoring the silly advice in #2 (omit the verbs "to be", "say", "do" and "have"--is this some sort of dumb Oulipian game?) and #3 (omit the passive voice--typical dumb style-guide advice). Though I'm not sure that anyone takes any of that advice seriously (after all that same page includes tons of instances of "to be" &c).

The October issue of Cadence has a Rusch editorial responding to Jim Sangrey's comments in this thread. I typed it all in & then a power outage intervened--don't think I have the patience to do it a 2nd time. -- Rusch makes a lot of fuss about the accusation being "anonymous", which of course is not the case (it's not like Jim's screen handle, JSngry, disguises who he is).

Since when was Ted Poor the headliner/leader of the Respect Sextet? But seriously: great drummer, & a GREAT band. I can't say enough good things about their disc Respect in You, & was lucky enough to catch them in Toronto a few months back--two blisteringly inventive sets with some hot originals, wonky improv, & neato arrangements of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" & "Hypochrismutreefuzz".

Tom--thanks for the BFT, & the answers. Glad I nailed the Russell at least! Of the two BFTs I think the most surprising track is the John Taylor, though I have heard him play "outside" on occasion (e.g. moments on Wheeler's Music for Large & Small Ensembles).

Try Roy Nathason's version on Sotto Voce. It's great!

Aha, that's why. I forget the exact poem but it was in Words or Pieces.

Hey, Luca--any word on when you were going to add comments to the track listings? I'm curious to hear what you have to say about them.

Yeah, just got this & it's really, really good. I was initially a bit skeptical because I knew they wouldn't be "playing changes" or following the structure of the tunes for the most part, but actually they do real justice to these tunes. & "Yokada Yokada/The Rumproller" is one of the most sheerly enjoyable tracks I've heard all year. Cripes, now I'll have to get that Ben Goldberg disc.... Is the title a Creeley quote?

Yes, one excellent example of Elvin Jones in fact as the main soloist on a ballad: "A Child Is Born" on Hank Jones' Upon Reflection.