JSngry

Yeah, at first glance I thought I recognized 'her' as a character in an old comic book of mine, riding in a stagecoach. Never have been able to pinpoint when that company switched from publishing to computer manufacturing...

Not that I'm aware of. He'll stretch out on some tunes, but he's all about melody. Typically Brazilian, huh? I'm pretty sure that Wanderly recorded albums expressly for the Brazillian market that are more "jazz-oriented", where he does in fact stretch out. Not sure where I heard this, but between DG & this local guy who devotes an hour or so of his two night a week jazz radio show to Brazillian music, I'm pretty sure that Walter Wanderly is the guy I'm thinking about.

Isn't this the cat that made more "serious" records for the Brazillian market than for the American?

Read a Cadence interview w/him a few years ago. Had no idea until then that he had remained as active as he had for as long as he did. Quite a career! RIP.

Hmmmm...that's a loaded one there, becuase what do they mean by "not knowing what is going on in the music"? If they mean understanding all the technical specifics, then hell, they might as well be saying that noine but a minescule % of their audience gets it either, which then raises the issue of why anybody should care about their music, since most people don't/won't/can't "understand" it. But I bet they don't want to go there, even if tha might be their truest feelings (and that raises another ongoing question, namely, can musicians be too "hip" for their own damn good, and ain't nobody's fault but their own if they are?) But otoh, there's other ways to "get" music, and those are the ways that for most people, count. Things like "relevancy", "feeling", "urgency", "intensity", "passion". "beauty", "peacefullness", all those "subjective" matters beyond the technicalities. As much as many musicians don't wnat to confron it, these are the things, the intangibles of personal expression, that reach most people. These are the ends. The other stuff is just the means. Now, sure, the better you understand the means, the greater the possibility that you can grasp the specifics of how (and maybe why) those means are being put to use. But I know some folks who understand the means perfectly and don't have half a clue as to the ends, and damn do they get on my nerves in a quick minute. Then there's the people who only get the ends, are totally oblivious about the means, and although they don't get on my nerves per se, it is kinda difficult to get beyond, "hey, that's some hip shit, eh?" with them. Which is ok, but we're talking in-print expressions here, not casual HeyMan-isms. You probably want the bar set a little higher, tight? I'd encourage anybody who wants to write about music to learn some fundamanetals, just because if you're going to write about something, you need to know what it "is", and music is not just "emotion" and stuff like that. There are specific skills and practices involved. But again, these are (or should be) means to an end, and what most people, including myself, want to read about is to what end the means are put to, how it was received by ( "hit") the writer, and how the writer feels that any given item/performance fits into the overall musical spectrum, is it "good for what it is", "a great example of XYZ", "something you shouldn't ignore", "something for the ages", etc etc etc. People who know how the ends work can figure that stuff out themselves, and people who don't won't have any use for too detailed a description (although I am strongly in favor of accurate musical examples being placed in biographies and stuff as an adjunct). But what everybody (I think) wants to get from a review is "Is this something I'm probably going to want/need to hear, and if so, how soon?" And something like "so and so utilizes complex, odd-metered polyrhythms to create an oddly hypnotic groove that stands in place by lurching forward as it moves back on itself, like a man wanting to leave an orgy but changing his mind when he has the chance" is something that will get my attention, it's the subjective (ends) expansion of the initial technical desrciption (means) that does it for me. Without that little bit of personal perceptual business, I'm probably gonna be like "Oh good, still more wankers at work. Big fucking deal." Does that make any sense?

Later Memphisian jazzites include Charles Lloyd & Frank Lowe. Check this out: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegall...hp?EntryID=J012

Dude - I like/appreciate it when I get the feel that a "review" is actually somebody talking to me at home, or at a bar, or what ever, the conversation's free, easy, and open, and it's "oh yeah, have you heard ABC yet? Hey, check this out..." and off it goes. So maybe (and I'm totally unqualified to be giving "writer's tips", so take this accordingly) make your first draft a totally stream-of-consciouness spiel akin to what you'd be handing out in similar-to-the-above context. That's the content. Then work on making it readable & concise, and all that stuff. That's the craft. Getting in touch with your feelings in order to be able to spill like that is just a matter of doing it often enough until it comes naturally, and the craft, hey, does anybody ever totally master craft? But you man, you're a hip cat, erudite, and well in touch with the music at a deeper-than-superficial level. And you hipped me to Jill Scott, so I know that you got a "context" to speak in/to that's not all jazz-centric and shit (the time for that to be really "effective" might well have passed for those who weren't already there...). So just go there, ok, it's a good place to be, and the more you do it (both "doing it" & "working on it") the better it'll get cumulatively. BTW - for what print publication have you been writing?

If you really want/need to be conversent with the musical fundamentals, I'm sure there's some sort of "adult education" classes somewhere that could cover that over the course of a few months. Or, if you know some local musicians on a friendly basis, invite them over for a hang and talk about it, maybe tell them what you're hearing but can't quite get a handle on, and ask them if they know what you're talking about. Besides that, though, the main thing I look for in any music writer is a combination of personal relations to the music ("objectivity" is good the first time through, but after that, hell, read the label, like on a soup can...) and an awareness of what the music "is" as well as how it fits in to all the other musics (although it's often enough fascinating to get an "uninformed" perspective, just to see how things strike toally "foreign" ears", that's not a recipe for acquiring "ongoing insight", if you know what I mean...). The first is something you gotta confront yourself, I'd think, focus on "deeper" reactions than "this is GREAT stuff!", without getting so navel-gazing about it that it turns into a one-way conversation with an analyst or something (although that worked really well for David Himmelstein one time...). The other, hey, that's a function of "aware experience", of being there and paying attention. Not as wasy as it sounds, but from what I've come to know of you over the years, I think it's your natural disposition. Awareness, sincerity, individuality of perspective, a balance of confidence and humility (which is not the same as meekness or blandness), effectiveness of expression, that's what all the writers I dig have in common over the long haul. Look at it this way (borrowed, paraphrased, whatever, from Miles) - it takes years to be able to play this stuff the way some people play it. It' gonna take some time and seasoning to be able to write about it in the manner it deserves. Craft is craft, no matter what the discipline, and craft ain't never easy (unless you're a freak like that), and along with craft comes the call for the individual shaping of it. No way that's a simple 1-2-3 process dig?

Musical & spiritual wake-up calls from the international "dance underground". Electric Miles. Yet again. Max Roach. The body may be gone, but the strength of spirit lives, as does some still relatively untapped (in jazz, but ironically(?) not in the more "advanced" corners of the dance underground) drum-centric ensemble compositional concepts. Post-Mercy Cannonball, official & unofficial recordings. Mmmmm....subliminal! At times. Big shift for 2007 - less and less (and less) new-ish "free" music (by any but the masters). It doesn't sound so free anymore. The notion of the music is still true, just not the execution, and, it feels to me, the awareness (dare I say "spirit"?). It's an established vocabulary now, and listening to a lot of this stuff feels/to me like maybe hard bop sounded/felt to some people in 19...62? Major listening "theme" of 2007 (do you folks listen with a "purpose", or recreationally? No "right" answer, just wondering) - Looking for ways to move the eternal verities forward into the "new reality" coming (hell, here now!) thanks to digital presence in/reshaping of damn near every aspect of our lives. Plenty people moving into that reality seem more than happy to discard/disregard/disrespect them, but that seems pretty....suicidal to me. Goals for 2008 - hopefully getting all this input coalesced into something tangible. Easier said than done, at least for me, and that's not a "good sign". You know, if you have to think about it to do it, then.... But we'll see!

Max Roach.

We got a Gramin for Christmas, love it to pieces so far, saved our ass once or twice so far when detours were needed, but damn, if it tells me to turn onto some train tracks, it's just gonna have to get busy, uh, what does it say... "recalculating". You do something stupid like that, don't blame the machine... Anybody got their favorite voice for their GPS? I kinda like the Garmin Aussie chick. She's... got some spring in that voice, and I like springy!

Passin' Thru 1978

mmmm....yak meat.....

And I dunno, maybe this is one of those "I'm going against the board elite and being made or am trying to be made to feel like an idiot" moments in action. I hope not, but I can see how it could be taken that way. It's really not about being an "idiot" or being one of the "elite" in my mind, it's more about the ongoing roll-out of the future becoming the present becoming the past as we all watch it go down and how we all react to it, that's all. I mean, we all like what we like for the reasons we like it, and that's all cool, everybody's beautiful if they're not ugly, dig? All I'm saying is that the people who don't really "want" to hear "modern" music are simply the doppelganger of those who only want to hear it, and those poles are so far apart, yet so similar, that the middle get muddied up a lot more than it probably should, which is too bad. So about "effect of taste", yeah, ok, we probably got some disagreement here, although hopefully respectfully, and definitely not idiotfinger-pointing. But about the taste itself, hey, respect (and know) yourself and it's all good afaic.

Well yeah. Imagine how weird it's gonna be in the 23rd century to hear people still wigging out about 20th century music. And you know it's still gonna be happening. The gap began a while back. It'll only continue to widen.

If we can talk about Jimmy Heath in general this early on, and his composing/arranging skills in particular, I'd like to sing the praises of his writing for the first Coulmbia Heath Brothers album. Yeah, the "commercial" one. Whatever. Slick, "groove"-based, yeah yeah yeah. Listen to the tunes - they got meat abundant, and the arrangements enhance their flavor, not detract from it. Is there a little "contemporary" influence in there? Hell yeah, but oh well about that. If all such music was made with such subtlety and nuance, it wouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, it's so like a buffet.

Meanwhile, as the 20th Century still upsets many to the point of outright hostile rejection of it and it's realities, the 21st century continues to unfold. Funny how that works...

Well, I don't want to come off like one of the "modern overall"-ists, because you got to go back and learn the foundations and the detours (at least I do...). because that's where you learn about the humanity in the music, and if you don't get to that, then you're just buying weaponry in a war on life. And that's a war that's unwinnable short of extinction. The lessons of the past are still ones to learn, definitely. But if it happened then, odds are it's happening now, and will happen in the future. Humanity doen't really change what they do, they just change how they do it. And if we can't find that in today, isn't it quite possible that the problem is with us for not understanding how all this life shit really works? And the modernists overallists want us to believe that they're doing something that's never been done before. Well, ok, in "style", maybe. But substance? You gonna be a genius to get there, and ther really haven't been that many over the centuries. There really haven't. So either way, it looks like people want to play off yours mine and ours personal conceits, prejudices, and misunderstandings of what games are being played today. And do I want to pay money to have my misunderstandings reinforced? That's gonna be good for somebody, but it sure ain't me!

Well, ok, how "modern" are we talking here? How "far out" or whatever is this stuff relative to the real world? Does nobody like it? I mean, there's Modern, as in no, it's not the 19th century any more, tings have changed in some pretty fundamental waysbut life is still beautiful (or at least interesting) and here's how we see it, and then there's MODERN as in DEATH TO CONFORMITY AND ALL WHO ENJOY IT WE ARE ANGRY WE ARE HERE TO MAKE YOU ANGRY AND FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T GET ANGRY. I mean, there's a place for the latter and all, but after a while, you get the point and,,,you get the point. But the former, hey, I know people who still get pissedly stressed out over Bartok, and whazzup w/THAT? You know, if you can accept space trave and radio waves and things that work without you knowing how, Bartok is pretty comforting, actually. I mean, I'm hip to the "moral mandate" vibe, and don't necessarily dig having stuff "forced" on me just because it's supposed to be "good for me" or something like that, but otoh, I kinda like it when somebody believes in something enough to present it with an attitude of "hey, I/we think this is some pretty cool stuff, check it out & see what you think". And I don't mind paying to get exposed to it eitehr - it makes me feel like the people in charge are actually seeking to honestly communicate instead of cynically "playing nice" in order to extract buckus maximus from my bank account. I guess all I'm saying is that some people don't like to hear things that they don't like, and I can respect that, but when it gets to the point of just not wanting to hear anything that you don't already know, I don't know that that's a necessarily "healthy" place to be in. But then again, that's jsut me, and for me, "discomfort" & "growth" have gone hand-in-hand often enough over the years to where I'm ok with it, at least up to a point. Not everybody's had that relationship, though, so I guess I can see how it's not like that for everybody. Still, what's the alternative? Always presenting the same old tried and true favorites - or replicants thereof - over and over and over and over and never bringing something fresh to the table? I guess there's a market, but after a while, it's gonna most likely get more and more... "inbred". And then whatcha' got?

Bests belatedly!

Belated Bests!

All the best, belatedly. Keep hangin' in there.

Let me belatedly add best wishes!