JSngry

Classical repertory performances have almost always been about "supposed" to be. Audiences expect it. conductors strive for it, players don't have a gig if they don't do it. And it's not their "supposed to be", it's "the culture's", whatever the hell that is "supposed" to mean, although it's obvious what it does mean. . Jazz is rapidly in the process of becoming that. American jazz, anyway, which is what we both know as the "base" of all the others It only seems different because we've come to one music that was already what the other is now in the process of becoming. Those aren't signs of life you're hearing out of jazz, they're dieing gasps as "culture" keeps the chloroform-scented handkerchief loosely but securely in place. I mean, I guess it beats not having anything better to do, hoping for it to not be so, but...not really. Dead, except as ritual. Both of them. Which is ok, all but unavoidable, and potentially quite wonderful, but again, whose ritual(s) and to whose ends? Culture!

Hell is still hell when you get there! Ain't but the one! What needs to be asked is this - what need is there for live performances of repertory music (any music, really, but let's focus here on repertory music) these days other than ritual of some form or fashion? And then - in whose rituals are we being asked to participate? I say that the further the music itself gets from the people who created it, the more institutionalized the ownership of it becomes (if it is going to "survive"...tricky word, that one...), and the more institutionalized the ownership, the more of the ownership the ritual becomes. Even the best meal turns into shit eventually. But shit turns into fertilizer, and before you know it (or don't), here comes another fine meal. Beware the people who don't want you to shit. Beware the people who don't want you to have that NEXT meal. Before long you'll just be eating your own shit (and/or theirs), and then shit just turns to shit. That ain't the right math, that ain't.

Sorry, but putting pop culture buzzwords aside, true "reverse racism" is non-racism. Racism either is or it isn't. The math of grammar tells me so, and even although grammar is a toy, math is gravity.

Factoring in the very real impact of technology on information dissemination, my point is that a natural evolution such as this is part and parcel of "the human spirit" - but so is an enforced conformity/anti-evolution (aka "consistency") in the service of interests other than those of the immediate participants, one that is put into place to ensure control of both input and output. At some point, resistance becomes futile and volunteered slavery sets in, which is all well and good as long as we know it for what it is. It's when it reaches the point where we think it's something other than that that fucks people up. That's what I'm seeing in LCJO, and that's what I've experienced in waaaay to much "classical" music. Too bad, because there's some "fine music" there. But it's over as far as being relevant as anything other than an "institution", and jazz is irrevocably headed the same way. Watch it happen and ask yourself does history repeat itself, and if so, what can we learn from watching it do so. But don't worry - there will come a time when Wise People speak of Ellington as Wise People Today speak of Mozart. The Tale shall be told, and believed, for All The Same Reasons too! I hope I'm dead by then. I know the music will be.

So, you're saying that the relative consistency of "classical" performance practice over how-many-ever centuries has been a more-or-less naturally occurring phenomenon not particularly influenced by "outside considerations"? Hmmm...not sure but that I'd not be suspicious about that...music created for (figuratively and literally) the court and/or church and/or patron and used to sustain same...and there's never been any times where people wanted to do it differently in either the composing or interpretation only to be smacked down by those powers, net/cumulative result being that don't even bother any more, this is "the way it is" now and forevermore? For every heroic defiant "rebel" we've heard about, how many not-quite-as-willful-beatdowns have there been that we haven't heard about? Or was that some sort of Golden Age where no outside influence was never imposed? The way they do it now is the way they did it then, and the way they did it then was because they wanted to do it that way, exactly? From what I know of the courts and churches (and many patorns) of those times, I find that juuuuuussssst a little hard to accept, never mind believe. And from my experience in contemporary equivalents of same, I find it impossible to accept. And to believe. Them that pays the piper tend to buy the tobacco as well. Smoke it as offered or go get your own. Truthfully, I think that LCJO is more or less a con. But I don't think it's any kind of a new con. Hardly! But I do think they're succeeding in turning jazz into "America's Classical Music", and more's the pity - and the con.

Tanner Scheppers Schepps Dairy Archie Shepp

Oh, but let's consider this, just for grins... We can rightly give the LC crew shit for perverting Ellington, and for being on a path to institutionalizing their perversions, aided and abetted by "the powers that be", powers that have many interests, preserving the "essence" of Ellington as Ellington realized instead of how they want to think that he realized it most obviously not among them. We can tell this because we have proof of Ellington's actual life and music - many of us were alive when the great thing that was "Ellington" walked our earth, played our dances, appeared on our tvs, and made records that could be bought relatives as soon as recorded. And those of us who weren't have a treasure trove of archival AV materials that pretty much lay it out for us how this thing sounded and felt in and relative to its time and place. Not a lot of speculation is involved. So... Why do we just "accept" the principles and practices of so much "classical" music without some similar suspicion? Surely human nature hasn't changed, and we have next to none of the type of documentation we do to make a valid Ellington/LCJO comparison. How are we knowing that so-and-so's interpretation of this-and-that that's making us so gooey isn't just as corrupted/perverted as LCJO's interpretation of Ellington? Where's the proof that it's not, and where's the proof that there's been no similar types of influence by the various "powers that be" who have influenced to ongoing perpetration of that music? And consider this - if the possibility exists that our positive reaction to 200-300 year old music is based on at least some interpretive practices imposed by factors other than Original Meaning (whatever that is...), and we accept that as ok, because bottom line, we are moved, then if people are being moved in 200-300 years by performances of Ellington that are even more fucked up than LCJO's, will they be wrong?

It did a lot of people, but just because of the Dolly Parton association. It's actually a good melody with nice changes, especially the bridge. There's some live recordings where Sonny really eats that bridge up! The older "oddities", Sonny attributed to his love of movies as a kid. I guess if you went to the movies a lot back then, you saw Jolson a lot. At least Rollins did. Besides, who doesn't love Jolson?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAQq6IKM50 [

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8asQlY-SEk&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGfVeCspmDs

I dunno, man, sounds like IHOP meets The Men's Club...you sure you wanna try that?

My best to both those guys, please! And good to hear that the AJO is surviving (and hopefully thriving). Bill was a consistently fun hang, very smart about a lot of things, but he hadn't heard much post-bop jazz and loved to listen to sides and commentate. There was very little of it that he was not enthusiastic about, especially form a theoretical standpoint, which in that town at that time placed him in a distinct minority. He might not always have gotten the "what" or the "why", but he always go the "how", and I was needing all of that that I could get. Also a huge baseball fan, and as you'd expect, a smart one as well. I don't know how old he is now, but I went out with him and his sons for some sandlot baseball one Sunday afternoon and almost didn't make it back. The Good Doctor was a significantly better pitcher than he let on...

Cooperage used to be a blues bar. I worked there regularly with a band called The Vipers. Glad to hear they're still open, and at least they're providing music for an audiences. A lot of places aren't either one,... Sorry to hear about Bob Farley...I taught there when I was in town, and always got obscenely good deals from the place. The manager was a trumpeter named Pancho Romero, and he, with the store's full backing, put together the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra, which was a fun gig. No idea if either Pancho or the AJO are still around. Farley himslef was sort of a patron type guy, opened a gallery and made it a point to always have jazz gigs at every opening, plus opened it up as a rehearsal space for people he (or Pancho) trusted. Good guy for a musician to know, for sure. Also sorry to hear about the whole Garduño's thing. When they first opened they were a BIG deal, the first real "upscale" SW cuisine place in the area in terms of "trappings". The food was really good too, although I understand it didn't take them too much loner after we left (1984) to devolve into a profitable mediocre consistency. And what's really funny is that when I was living there, a fair number of people were also trying to live in the last century!

I use a picture I have of me & LTB from before we were married, one night in Vegas on the way to a gig, from when I was working in a "hotel show band" & she was taking a month off work to hang out with me to see if we were really going to be in it for the long haul. Or at least ready to get serious about being in it for the long haul. You never really know how much long and how much haul until after the fact. But neither of us knew that then. I used to use one of her taken in Albuquerque, in front of the Sandias, during the day, from, like, the first week after I met her, but it is just too distracting, if you know what I mean. Same for the one taken on a boat from when we were on our honeymoon.

Nah, I got that from my kids. Them and the Mighty Morphing Ninja Power Turtles, or whoever they were. And Pogs. And...all that. All I need is a good offseason!

You spend your time listening to players for whom a certain amount of basic instrumental proficiency is a given. There are other players out there - many of whom gig regularly - for whom that basic level has not yet been met. I'm appreciative of the work it takes to get there, that's all I'm saying. I mean it, that's all I'm saying. Everything else speaks for itself.

Speaking in terms of instrumental proficiency, yes, great players. I will respect that if I don't anything else (which I pretty much don't...). Instrumental proficiency? At what? At playing their instruments. Instrumental proficiency is not musical proficiency, just as you can be a good carpenter and not be shit as an architect/designer/whatever. With Ellington, you obviously had both, but with LCO, you just get guys who can play clean and in-tune and not not swing (sic). Beyond that is a black hole of the deepest degradation of music, but you do have that much. I've played an instrument and attempted to be somewhat serious at doing so, so for me not to acknowledge what accomplishment is there while pointing out what is so abominably not there just doesn't seem personally honest to me. You don't have that baggage, so by all means, feel; free to call a turd a turd! I mean, it took a lot of dedicated effort and genuinely hard work to play that badly so well.

Speaking in terms of instrumental proficiency, yes, great players. I will respect that if I don't anything else (which I pretty much don't...).

Contemporary, original, and relevant: None of the above: "Great players" and all that, but...totally none of the above. Totally. None. And yeah, I know that comparisons are not "fair". Too fucking bad about that.

This.

Here's hoping my guys can avoid the sweep. Grrrrr Watching this series has to this point been kind of a weird schizo deja-vu for me, like watching the Good Rangers play the Bad Rangers.

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