JSngry

Bring what, exactly?

Blood Ulmer, not as new/next/next Hendrix, but again, the notion(s) of what a guitar is ultiamtely for. It'll mean different things to different people. Or, to bring it back inside, Melvin Sparks. There's no secrets to any of this, it's not a secret knowledge or anything. But people can afford to chose to be ignorant of these days, it's sooooo easy to just swallow the bullet points and smile. Swallow and Smile, the great tragi-comedy team of the 21st Century, Porn As Perpetual Mindset, All You Can Eat, All You Can Swallow, Is EVERYBODY Happy? Friends don't let friends live stupid. Sometimes you gotta be blunt, but friends don't let friends live stupid. Before I got a good deal on my phone bill, I was going broke calling bullshit. otoh, for non-friends, hey go ahead with that foolishness, it's not like they're alone, hardly. Misery loves company, and ignunce is the ultimate misery, the misery that numbs itself on your time, not its own. Also note that this holds true for facts only. Not taste or interpretations of facts, but geez, if somebody's gonna stand around and talk ignunt wholly unfounded bullshit, I'm either gonna call 'em - collect, if need be, make THEM pay for it! - on their bullshit or else walk away and leave them on the side of the road. Not every life can be saved, ya' know?

I do know that Miles said something about Jimi getting two white English guys to swing, something like that. And yeah, he wanted to get into that Hendrix/Rock circle, Betty Mabry was who he looked to to play that. It's always easy to dismiss Miles' interest as superficial, ego-drive, vanity, etc./whatever. And you'd be crazy not to allow for some of that. But I think it's insulting to Miles' innate artistry to play it all off as just that, that's kinda nuts, imo. Hendrix was pulling from some pretty deep roots and taking it off into pretty deep space. People who knew those roots and weren't averse to the deep space part of it (and I think Miles qualifies on both counts, surely) knew what was was going on. And hell, Pete Cosey. Miles hired Pete Cosey and turned him loose. Herbie Mann hired Sonny Sharrock and turned HIM loose. Pop/Rock/Crossover Appeal/Blahblahblahblahblah. Those cats were continuing with some very black-rooted notions of what a guitar was for. Not just what you could do with it, but what the damn thing was FOR. You get some parallel-universe type things when hillbillies first got electricity and plugged-in pedal steels and shit like that. Some of those motherfuckers went NUTS. But - parallel universe, to be appreciated for what it was, but not to be conflated with what it was not. Avoiding Cultural Politics about stuff like this is difficult, but not impossible. Just know the musics and connect the dots. Hendrix playing "white music for white people", no, the tracing backwards maths do not support that notion even slightly. That's a post-historical notion based on, like, t-shirts and Classic Rock radio and Time-Life infomercials and shit like that. I see a tree here now, therefore there used to be a vast forest here, uh....no. Just saying - history is its own reward, pursue accordingly and yo, 360 at all times, right?

Last year I got a call like this, knew it was a scam, but pranked the caller anyway, led him down a rabbit hole where he finally hung up. BUT - also called the IRS, filed a complaint, and was also referred to the FTC, who advised me to file a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office. Do you have any idea how unmotivated the front-line staff of the TX AG's office is about things like this, scam phone calls where money is not lost? I know you may THINK you know how unmotivated they are, I thought I did, but pshaw, no, I was not ready for the level of Wedontgiveevenhalfashitness I ran into. Needless to say, no further action was taken. I was promised a form to fill out and return, which showed up, like three months later. THIS year, though, this particular scam is on the news all over the place, so maybe the AG's office will respond accordingly. Or maybe not.

Oh, I'm reminded of the Hendrix fanatic I knew in high school, an African-American kid of 15 or so who told me in no uncertain terms that jazz was for white folks now and that Hendrix was the real black music of today. I mean, he was passionate about this, his pov was that all the old jazz was cool in its time, but that for today, for what he felt as black music for his times, Hendrix was it. That was, like 1972 or so, and his was not a majority viewpoint amongst his peers of any race. And of course, we're talking about kids here (but kids who were not informed by jsut bullet points, either, limited exposures, perhaps, but definitely processing information as it came, not just receiving it as it was preached). But let today's record reflect that this friend of mine was by no means alone either, if not about jazz, then definitely about Hendrix being black music, no matter who was playing it or digging it. Also let it be known that that opinion is by no means dead today, either. I graduated and left town before Pete Cosey really blew up on the scene, but I would have loved to have hung with him to hear what he thought about that! I need to get my daughter's friends to check out Maggot Brain, if they haven't already done so. This friend of mine, he knew Maggot Brain, now, you better believe that!

Pretty sure that one person was not Miles Davis, Eddie Hazel, Ronald Isley, or any other number of people. No idea what the age of that person was, but as a Rapidly Emerging Old Fart, the amount of totally unquestioned "received wisdom" by a too-big LOT of younger people increasingly really gets on all of my last nerves. That's why when my daughter calls (usually with a bunch of her friends in the room, on speakerphone), and asks for me to "speak freely" (code word for "ramble", I'm sure) about whatever kind of music it is that they're confronting, I go ahead and just let 'er rip, not just because that's pretty much all I got in the tank these days, but also because I pretty much know that these folks, no matter how well-intentioned, just don't know from a broad perspective. I know most of them, and they just don't. So when I talk about that video of Prince/MJ, and JB and talk about how Prince does a really focused deconstruction of all the elements onstage, goes all Picasso on that shit, that's something they never bothered to think about, because all they know is the bullet points of history, especially of pop-culture history. I fucking hate bullet points as endpoints. Fortunately, most of them seem to be happy enough to hear it. But other people, just everyday people you know, they don't want to hear about any of that, because for them, pop culture is all about convenience and factoids, like I am cool because I can recite. But, you know, most of them feel that way about everything in life, or seem to, so, you know. fuck them. If they wanna output and not ever input, hey, good luck with that. They both made records with Miles?

Well, if that's all you get out of it (or all you look/expect to get out of it), then yes, that should be your reaction.

No, we don't see Stevie that way at all now. But that 70s run, people were talking like that, especially after Songs In The Key Of Life. Great songs, fantastic colorations, expansive arrangements, really doing something that was musically interesting and popular in equal measure, "the new/next Duke Ellington", that was being proffered pretty often, until it wasn't...and it hasn't been for a long time. The Secret Life Of Plants thing...that was a big turning point, critically savaged, popularly rejected (mostly), and musically, a mostly failed experiment. But failed in the pursuit of new ideas, new concepts of sound...the popular demands crushed the artistic impulses, and although Stevie would rebound a couple of times with exceptionally strong work, he never really pushed the envelope again, not like that. and so we no longer think of Stevie as another Duke Ellington. But we can do that with Prince, because Prince didn't give a damn (he just want to jam). That whole "slave" thing, people were like, shit, this cat's making a gazillion bucks, fuck that, but it was not about that, it was about being able to own, really own, your music and the direction(s) you could take with it, about not being forced to recoil or retreat, about not being "handled" as a matter of surrendering. And that, very very much, is a strongly Ellingtonian trait. Forget about the music and look at the conscious character of self-determination. There lies a strongly sustained parallel to Ellington, and it's one I think should be celebrated and shout-outed, because people all Purple Rain and shit, hell, that's ultimately just a song and a pop-culture phenomena, let's look at these people as men, humans, and let's look at how they stood up, stood tall, and kept standing tall, always. And then let's ponder why that kind of action gets lip service but is almost never the primary subject of emopurple "tributes". Because people always standing up and standing tall "complicate" things for forces that do not like to have things complicated, that's why.

There've been a lot of "next" Ellingtons...Stevie Wonder being a notable name once upon a time, and it's not that anybody is or isn't worthy of consideration or like that, just that people develop their own things...I like to think of a continum, yes, but a continuum of individuals, not of, like "first Ellington, next Ellington, third Ellington", etc. Just because there was A Duke Ellington creates neither the need for or the inevitability of a "next" Ellington. If anything, that's a setup for disappointment, because Ellington was such a strong voice (and don't forget, he had an alter-ego in Strayhorn who made him that much again stronger and wider). And Ellington straddled the worlds of popular and art musics the way he did because of the "accident" of his chronology. These other names that keep coming up, they work, ultimately, in the realm of popular music, and their art is to to be found their. You wouldn't see Prince working on a Such Sweet Thunder type work, nor would you he really need to. He had his own world, and a massive and often brilliant world it was. Stevie...that Secret Life Of Plants thing...lots of ways that could have grown into lots of other things, but market factors took hold, and he let them. No shame, just sighs... If you compare Prince to Ellington, the pitfall is that you can always say, well, Duke did blahblahblah and Prince couldn't come close to that, but hey - that is at once completely true and completely irrelevant. Duke was Duke, Prince was Prince and they both had massive vocabularies at their disposal, and they both used them to create their own worlds that spoke both to and about their subjects about as fully and masterfully as they could. Perhaps one mastery can be better appreciated by some more than by others, but I revel in them both. To that end, sort of, mixing popular and art musics and commenting on times, places, and peoples in a way that hits both,,,I've said it before and I'll say it again - Weather Report in the middle 1970s and the Ellington 1940-41 RCA band.

Prince had a strong geek side to of him, but also about as organically funky as this particular fabric of time can withstand. Was he Duke Ellington? Hell no, he was Prince goddammiy, PRINCE. Recognize the name. Don't nobody need to be Duke.but Duke, and for sure was, And nobody's called Marvin yet. https://youtu.be/HVKyPlELox0

Did he take his own photograph? I love how he kept in contact and could get a favor out of a hit man, hopefully clean, who was an old acquaintance. I call that character. Hell, for that matter, same for the hit man. Let's hear it for loyalty!

Nicely played, Stan Levey, then!

The bringing a known hit man to the gig was a nice touch. Intimidation by implication. Well played, Stan Getz!

It ain't fun, just so you know.

I like the broadcasts from this time because there gets to be a rolling momentum that the 78s just could not accmodate. To hear Me chi or and Lehman just...riding that wave over three acts is pretty damn overwhelming, and good luck getting anything like it today. Look for it on the Myto label, but it's a boot, could be anywhere these days. Boston, 1940.

Yeah, this ain't your little sister's ballet...This grown folks stuff all the way. Also, there's interview spots from the telecasts, and the guy says some really cogent things, like how he like continuing to work with Stravinsky because his music is so "lean". Pretty keen insights, almost everything he says.

That one was performed during the war, conducted by Karl Elmendorff. If time/place sound kinda dark, well...yeah. It's on Music & Arts, apparently they released some "inside Germany during WWII things ...not the Furtwangler things that have been booted. I got It at Berkshie, It might well be gone by now.

Go to Berkshire and look for pre-end-of-WWII broadcasts. There's a Gotterdammerung on Music & Arts from Beyreuth in 1942 (sic) that reeks of an entire psyche collapsing under the weight of its own decay in real time. And a Leinsdorf/Met Orchestra broadcast from Boston 1940 on Myto w/Melchior & Lotte Lehmann that is some of the most hair-curling music I've ever heard. No guilt, no worries, just full embracing before anybody (apparently) has reason for pause. That shit is intense. There's also a German broadcast of Parsifal from 1942, but I don't recall that one being particularly noteworthy in any regard...maybe just that the band was a little sad, because, oh, where'd all the good players go, right? The Gotterdammerung, though, that one is truly creepy...twilight of the gods indeed... Of course, that may all be projection. But how do you not project on Wagner once you get to the, as you say, "bleeding chunks" area?

Lacking any real knowing frame of reference, I can't really comment on the "historical importance" of these performances (Amazon reviewers seem to think it is high, for whatever that's worth. What I can comment on is my reaction, which ranges from WHOA....to HOLY SHIT!!! to WTF?, often in the course of the same piece. Simply put, I'm left dumbfounded and jawdropped at the originality and virtuosity of every aspect of these works. I'm am not a physically gifted person (barely competent is closer to it), so what is done with bodies here defies pretty much my known and presumed laws of physics. But not jsut that...who imagines these movements in the first place? And then who executes them? And not just executes them, but executes them as musically as this? And such music! Bach, Stravinsky (lots), Ives, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Hindemith,Delibes, Menotti, and of course, Tchaikovsky (not too much, though). Music only some of which I would listen to on its own and say, hey, let's put a dance to this! Diana Adams alone...stirring something deep inside me I didn't know was there...not sex(ual) per se, just...an awareness and communion with the body in expression of the musical, spiritual and physical, both, deeply, deeply. PHRASING!!!!! 5 DVDs seems like a lot, maybe, and I know of no "budget" outlet for them...nor of a boxed accumulation. But don't ask me to prioritize among them, because I can't. Transfers vary from kinescope-looking to pretty damn good. Mostly B&W, but a little color. Amazing...whatever it "is".

They were all under contract to Vanguard at the time. Most of those records are inconsistent in some form or fashion, but none should be passed over if found at a decent price. The exception is Green's Places We've Never Been, which is pretty damn good, period.

No idea he was that old. He made good albums, not just a singles artist. RIP.

Same thing with the culturally thuggish use of "post-war".

Benny Golson? I am totally stumped.

Yeah, I was just thinking about those actually...liked the First one a lot more, but liked It a WHOLE lot. More than meets the ear, perhaps.