JSngry

Starting in on this one today, really enjoying it so far.

"overloaded by the great history"...hell, back in the day, that would motivate people to out from under and move up and out. You think Braxton was struggling with being "overloaded" by history? Do you think Roscoe is being "overloaded" by history? Hell no, he's still making his own history, quite un-overloaded. Seriously, if all this history is truly overloading, then maybe just say fuck it, I love it, but it's not the boss of me. Now as for audiences...you either find 'em or you don't. If your survival depends on them, take that into consideration and proceed accordingly. If you can do without them or too much of them, consider that a plus rather than a minus. Document and if you die before you find your audience, leave your legacy with somebody who can and/or will.

yeah, I got a delayed release notification a week or so ago. look out man, you might have gotten the new version of Ascension Take 1!!!!

No, it's saying "live your life like every day will be your last, if only because one of them will be!" As for Sonny, I made a mixtape of 70s-and-beyond Sonny for a good buddy and titled it "Survival - Not Always The Best Career Strategy!" Hey, that was me that said that. And it's nothing I "approve" of, my god, what a silly notion. Just saying, it worked out in a way that happens for very few people.

I think it's proof that they don't have any faith that they can sell anything past the immediate orders. Can't speak for anybody else, but for me, that's nonsense. I very, very seldom buy stuff like this right away.

Yeah, I got hold of the Miles Plugged Nickel LPs right around the time I was getting heavily into Warne. There was an immediately noticeable similarity. I'm loathe to attribute actual "influences" without explicit proof, but I have no problem saying that those were two guys whose Venn Diagrams were definitely overlapping , for whatever reaon(s). As for the Desk taking out the reference to Warne, this is one of the reasons I get riled up about articles such as this, inevitable they push a "standard" narrative. Not your fault in this case, Ethan. But still, geez, for decades now, people have noticed a kinship between Warne and at least one pretty significant part of Wayne. And you never see that in "general audience" print, never. and only occasionally in more hardcore jazz print. Too many people are still sleeping on Warne. I do not exaggerate when I say that, in my opinion, he's one of the real geniuses of this music.

Put me down in the camp that is not fully convinced that Wayne owed a substantial "stylistic" debt to Coltrane. I get where that comes from, and yeah, I suppose it's there as a "macro influence". But Baraka's "weird as Wayne" thing is front and center from about as close to jump as I know about (and again, listen to some/the Vee-Jay sides before forming too many opinions about the BNs. This is, for me, about as "wholly Wayne" a theme and variation/expansion/whatever as you'll find on a pre-Super Nova (and side-by-sides of those compositions with the versions that Niles did, is significantly revealing) Shorter BN record. Too bad it was relegated to the vault for 10-15 years.

From whom did you order?

Wow, 14.16 at amazon when I bought. Dammit Larry, you're breaking the jazz record market!

Exactly. I think he died right on schedule. Sorry if that sounds harsh, I don't mean it to. Culturally, it was a real gut punch from everything I hear, Everything. And like the man said, do you hear the voices you left behind? But that's a bit selfish, really, unless you're family and like, you need a father or a husband or some such. Then, yeah, that's devastating. Fortunately, Alice seems to have picked up and got those jobs done in an exemplary manner. That's another reason he's a hero to me - he died on time. Most people don't, they either go what seems to be "too soon" or "too late" (arbitrary projection both, in my mind). But the people who sense what they gotta do, do it, and then check out once it's done, not by self-infliction, but just by being in sync with their natural patterns...this is going to sound horrible, but it's a thing of beauty, reall, to watch an arc complete itself so fully, so totally.

and not an innocent ignoring either, it's more like a willful ignore-ance. The man has a body of work that is still not confronted in "jazz education", because it is compositional, not Real Book fare that can be easily (or so they say...) broken down into pedagogical paradigms. I hate that that has happened to the extent that it has, but I hate even more why it has. It's just more dumbing down of the whole life/learning process, more "this is what we understand, this is all we can understand about it, therefore this will be what we will teach, this will be the "is" about that". I know there are enough exceptions to this, but an article like this reinforces the non-exceptions. But then again, who am I kidding, nobody's going to give a fuck about Wayne Shorter who doesn't already, and the > 1% who might get on board for whatever this 85th Birthday ride turns out to be will get off at the end like they always do. Maybe I should start drinking again? Hey man, sorry if I come across as harsh. But you know as do I that this whole "general audience" thing is the last step before total state-sanctioned patronage. I hope to be wrong! So let's step away from all that for a second and let me ask you this - If Trane had lived, who do you think would have been the more effective collaborator for string accompaniment, Alice, or Elliot Carter? Not who would be the most available, but who would be the best? Or put another way - whose improvisation concepts would work best with an Elliot Carter composition concept? Worlds are colliding daily!

Yes, he was human, but a special human with special capacities and abilities. He's not my "favorite tenor player" (hell on any given day, he could be, but so could Fred Jackson). I totally feel the whole "heroic" thing with him, totally. Some people just get that about life, he was one of them. He's not the only one, but people talk about "what if Trane had lived" and I'm like, no, that a diversion, let's look at what he did while he did live, that's the lesson.

I'll leave that to the specialists. Me, I'm more of a generalist. Limited attention span and all that.

Right? I mean, to see all this music with all this...depth and nuance reduced to a...whatever it is. Hey, I'm listening to Juju again! Because Ethan Iverson wrote about it in The New Yorker! He's, like, the Whitney Balliet of out time! Who's Whitney Balliet? Let me play Night Dreamer again and imagine it as Wayne's "Blakey album", let that be the primary lens through which I listen to that record, and see how long it takes me before I tell this motherfucker to go fuck himself and go listen to a Vee-Jay side and then realize what a fucking stupid thing that is to say, much less think. When I die, bury me away from shit like this, if you can find a place.

Hold on now, if I read you right, you're claiming he was more or less overwhelmed by fear (and let's play you for a second and ask what factual evidence you have to support that, all I've heard simply suggest that he had a "worried soul", which is a burden all its own, but is not really fear/panic/whatever). If so, "doing the one thing he truly loved to do" is a choice, no? And it's not a cowardly choice, nor is it a neutral choice, especially not the way he kept going ahead. LSD or no, fully realized or not, that's some all-in music exhibiting a determination to neither retreat from nor nor merely maintain the status quo. Choosing to retain a sense of normalcy (and where the LSD figures into normalcy, you tell me) is a pretty brave choice if you ask me. You can have your own heroes, but to me, anybody that proceeds like that is a hero, and anybody who refuses to buckle under the pressure of a fear like that, especially so.

call Eddie Glaude "Eddie Gladden". Whoa!

It did in Trane. Heroically. Now in some schmuck like me....probably not. But I'm no hero. Which, as it turned out, was death. Surprised?

Fear and courage, no sense in having the one if you can't have the other.

Don't know how fair a trade that really is, but hell, life is not fair, right?

How Keith Jarrett-y of him!

oh god, here I/we go again...broken recod, same song, different verse... Super glad that Wayne is getting bigger and better props as time goes on, and I'll reluctantly cede that the cheesy title of this article is "right for the times", but I really do not understand why an article about "The World's Greatest Living Jazz Composer"( and do you love that arc? World's to greatest ULTIMATE! and then work downwards, living, to jazz, to, finally composer, from the peak to the valley, such a tribute!) anyway, I do not get why this is the premise of such an article, nor why it is pursued with such vigor. His first three records as a leader for Blue Note display especially thrilling powers of transmutation. Shorter’s done a lot since, but, on the occasion of his birthday, many fans—and especially many musicians—will be reaching for “Night Dreamer,” “Juju,” and “Speak No Evil” to celebrate and give thanks...Pressure creates diamonds. In the liner notes to “Night Dreamer,” Shorter says to Nat Hentoff, “I knew that for my first album for Blue Note, I had to create something substantial!” “Night Dreamer” was tracked on April 29th, “Juju” on August 3rd, and “Speak No Evil” on December 24th. It’s intensely personal art, music that could only have been created by Shorter. But one could also say that “Night Dreamer” is in the style of a Blakey album, “Juju” is a Coltrane album, and “Speak No Evil” is a Davis album. These explicit references help explain why this trilogy is so beloved among musicians, who revel in how Shorter puts his own imprint on these major influences.... Yes, they're great albums, and yes those compositions are "beloved" (I found a Hallmark card that said "Dear Wayne, Speak no more juju, just keep dreaming those night dreams, love, a jazz musician", but what's this with seeing them as Blakey/Coltrane/Miles albums. I really had never thought of them like that before, nor does it really occur to me to do so now. It's kinda creepy? There are so many great Wayne compositions, so much evolution, so much ever-broadening vision, and all this guy can do is pimp three Blue Note records? Shit, I wore those records out back in the day, but I can't remember the last time I've "reached for" them. If anything, I'll go for Super Nova or "Elegant People" or "Beauty and the Beast" or those post-WR Columbia albums that everybody hates except a few musicians, or hell, Adam's Apple, the list goes on, from Vee-Jay to To-Day! You're paying tribute in a general audience forum to 50+ years of supremely unique artistry and narrowing it down to 3 Blue Note records. I think this cat can do better than that, and I know Wayne deserves better. The guy evolved from a "tune" writer into a real composer but who's ready to go there in the name of "jazz" in They New Yorker? Or too much of anywhere, really. You know, just fuck people, fuck people in general.

Twice.

Oakland by Sabermetrics: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-as-changed-baseball-once-they-may-be-changing-it-again/

Working from memory, but wasn’t the cancer not formally diagnosed until after they got back from Japan? There’s definitely urgency, but when was there not? I think it’s the Simpkins book(?) where it’s talked about that Trane was having all sorts of premonitions and omens and stuff like that a few years before he died. You don’t know if that was him hearing his body, him projecting on to his body, some, all, or none. Ravi Shankar got worried at some point that Coltrane sounded like he was not doing well, in distress, or something like that No matter what was driving it ( and to think that it was just any one thing is just too easy, IMO) the ultimate lesson for me is that you keep going until it’s gone, keep working, keep giving. That’s about as noble a lesson as one human can teach another, I think.