JSngry

And how much differently did Max play in a group than he did in those duet situations? Not particularly much, not that I can hear.

SWell, at least you've gone from Max to Al Haig & Barry Harris. That I can handle. But I gotta say, sometimes I think it's not a good thing for a musician to think too much like a critic. The musician's role is to do, the critic's to interpret/understand/whatever, and if you think about it, if all the Art Pepper on record there was was from the 1970s on, what would you think about it? I think you'd have to say that this was a highly distinctive & personalized voice with a unique combination of elements. Which is exactly what it was. How you you not? All this other stuff is not really "critical" thinking as much as it is comparison thorugh the lens of personal preference (including but not liited to nostalgia and a sense of emotional "ownership" towards a particular period of an artist's career). Which hey, that's fine, we all do it, but let's call it waht it is and let it go at that, ok? And no, I don't necessarily think you're over-intellectualizing the vertical/horizontal thing w/Max, not as a general thing. But lordy mercy, I listen to Max - group, duet, solo, up until almost the very end, and there's just so much power and conviction there, so much. for lack of a bettter term, life force there that it just trumps all that other stuff. for me anyways. Lifeforce is always gonna grab me. It's the power, the pure freakin' power, musical, sonic, personal, wahtever, in the cats playing that hits me where I live and makes me sit up striaght. Very, very few musicians have had that effect on me.

From http://www.fortunecity.de/lindenpark/hunde...r/517/Lamb.html

Uh.....yeah. Sure. Next time you talk to Braxton, ask him if regretted Max's loss of horizonticality on Birth & Rebirth. I mean, c'mon...

Chuck Green, In The Pocket: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=sKt-qwmhA0Y

NOT a cd, dude, A DVD/VHS dokkamentary moovie. (with Lionel Hampton, btw, in both performance & interview, and NOT in Showbiz Mode). One of those things that is about so much more than its ostensible subject, and one of those things that keeps getting righter and righter the deeper you look at it. Trust me.

Well, ok, but when I hear comments like so-and-so A lost their individuality, or so-and-so B misunderstood this or that, and from where I sit & listen, I can still hear so-and-so A as sounding like nobody else, and so-and-so B not "misunderstanding" anything but just taking it and doing what they wanted to do with it, then I gotta wonder how much "critical" acumen is being utilized in the first place. I mean, how do you "misunderstand" modality? Is there only one thing that it's "supposed" to be? Why is it "misunderstanding" to explore it to whatever extent somebody feels personally necessary and do with it what they will? That's like saying that somebody "misunderstands" water because they rinse their dishes with it instead of going swimming in it. Which is not to say that there's not room for distinction. I've heard Pepper, Tony, Sonny, Land, et. al. ad infinitum give performances that range from splendid to...uh...not splendid utilizing the various "tools" of apparent controversy. It's not like the mere existence of these tools in these people's playing automatically diminishes the results before they even get played, which is what some of these generalized comments certainly imply. Far from it. In fact, they raise the bar for everybody. Can so-and-so do what they want to do? We won't know until we hear it, which is a far cry from the answer being, "I don't see why not, they've been doing it for the last 8 million years", if you get my drift. And along those lines, there's the challenge to us, the listener - can we hear what so-and-so is up to, or can we only hear what we think they are up to? Big difference there, big, huge difference, and I've seen too many for too long fall into the trap of finding it the musician's fault when their expectations are not met, of looking at it like "well, he used to do this so well, and now he's not doing that so much any more, and, you know, he sounds like he's trying to cop XYZ's shit and XYZ does it so much better, so why the fuck is he even bothering with that when he used to do this other thing so well" which more often than not is so not, so very FUCKING not, what the cat had/has in mind. The cat's just exploring around and trying things out and hearing things that appeal to him and why not check it out to see what's there for me? Why not, indeed! But then some dudes with pretensions of "critical evaluation" looks at it like he's having a freaking identity crisis or some shit and makes it into some unnecessary, self-imposed psychodrama (hell, when was Art Pepper ever not a freakin' psychodrama?) and shit, I strat wondering whatever happened to the "positives" of things like curiosity and shit. Is that one of those thigns that you lose afer you use it to reach a certain point? Is getting trapped by your "identity" something to actually embrace, even if you're not ready for it at any given point? Too much math for R&B, dig? At some point you just gotta let mutherfukkers be. It's not their job to be who you think they should be, much less remain who they have been up until now. And as for Max, hell, Max's bands & their records post-, say, 1970 are not w/o...inconsistencies. But jeebusfukkinkriest, Max himself just got stonger and stronger and stronger. And stronger. The duets w/Cecil? Good god, fuck all this navel-gazing about the abandonment of the horizontal vs the vertical and get up on THAT for krissakes. That shit is life in some of it's baddest ass form ever. Or The Loadstar - I skip the sides w/Cecil Bridgewater just because, but good lord man, how does that not make you feel like you're in the presence of a messenger sent straight from GOD? And on and on and on it went for longer than it could have. The duet album w/Clark Terry that came out a bit back literally brought tears to my eyes, because here was, finally, conclusive proof that it - the "it-ness" of MAX ROACH - had finally ran out of gas. And damn was it heartbreaking to hear. I've only played that CD once all the way through, and I can't see ever doing it again, not any time soon. But anything else, even those later Soul Note sides where it sounds like they're making a record just because they can, hey - I will listen, because Max moves me that much, no matter what. You wanna quibble over horizontal and vertical, go design a crosswrod puzzle. You wanna feel the power of life, go listen to Max Roach. ANY Max Roach. Sorry, but I have no sympathy, zero, zilch, nada, for any notions that Max was somehow less a potent voice, less an individual voice, less a significant voice after 196X. Nothing personal (in any of this) but in my world, any notion to the contrary goes on page one of The Book Of Wrong.

And let me say that although I am 100% impressed by Maria's originality & vision, hers is a music that I "appreciate" more than "like". But that's my deal, not hers. She can just keep on goin' with her badself.

Any truth to the rumor that Bob Kuban and the In-Men have been booked for the celebration ball?

And yet, every record that he's on, even the later ones, he sounds like nobody but Tony Williams, and only a jazz illiterate would identify him as anybody else in a blindfold test. Funny how you can lose your individuality and still have that quality in place... Same w/Max - you say something along the same lines about him, and yet,,,DAMN, how can you listen to any Max Roach record of the last 35-40 years and not know immediately (if not sooner) that it's Max f-ing Roach? You can't! Such terminology is careless, I think. I you don't like the direction somebody takes, that's one thing. But that's a matter of "artistic choice", We have these type points brought out periodically about Max, Sonny, Art Pepper, Harold Land, and a few otehrs, I'm sure. Like "so-and-do" changed their style to try and be more modern and they lost their individuality", I don't buy that for one second. If a cat wants to take on new challenges, hey, go for it. Don't look back. Now, if you do that from the starting point of an already distinctively personal voice, well, of course things are going to change. But unless the "new challenges" consist of nothing more than grafting on a few entirely superficial cliches, the voice isn't going to be lost. It is going to change, and why is that a bad thing. Yeah, Mr. X "lost" some of his earlier qualities, but apparently those were qualities that Mr. X feel the need to hold onto anymore. And whose call is it as to waht Mr. X's voice should be - Mr. X's or some third-party arbiter? The answer to that one is obvious, I hope... Tell you what - up until about the early/mid-1980s Max continued to be one of the most intense, energetic, vital, and distinctive musicians of the 20th century, period. After that, I got the feeling that all the discoveries had finally, finally been made for him and that it was then about just presentation. And I was ok with that because DAMN what a run! But this whole thing about unfortunate attempts at "moderninity" or whatever you want to call it, I just ain't buying that in Max's case (or Land's, or Pepper's, or Sonny's). Whatever was lost (if anything was truly lost, and I'm in no ways convinced that it was...) what wasn't lost was the intergrity of an artist remaining true to themself in terms of responding to their environment. If that means "following" instead of "leading" to one extent or the other, oh well. So long as the end result is still distinctively whoever (and I defy anybody to find a Max Roach performance of the last 40 years that is not 100% immediately identifiable as Max Roach) then it's all good for me. I understand that many perople find a certain period of an artist's developement, take it really close to heart, and hear anything beyond that as "not the same". Fair enough. But geez, just for once I'd like to hear somebody simply say, "I don't like Mr. X's later work simply because it doesn't give to me what I want to hear from Mr. X" instead of "I don't like Mr. X's later work because he lost blah blah blah and he most have done that because he wnated to stay modern and blah blah blah and great as he was up to the end, he never really got it back afet her blah blah blah". Ya know what I'm saying? Sometimes it's easy to spend so much time focusing on what's not there any more that you miss what is there now. Y'all can give me some Max Roach any damn time you want to, from any damn time you want to. My reference would be pre-Soul Note period, but if that's all you got, hey. no problem.

Well, GPS is (are?) making the whole issue irrelevant anyway... Sign of the times.

Totally, but respectfully, disagree. If anything, the horizonticality is what becomes exaggerated to my ears.

Absolutely.

Hmmm... I've ignored these sides (individually & collectively) for years, expecting relatively rote commercialism. Now I got Mssrs. Kart & Goldberg both effusing effusively. Must be time to reconsider!

There are 30 songs on this CD, and those two are not among them. Now, can somebody tell me about one Dolores Brown> She appears on one cut, as well as in a photo on the back. She would appear to be quite...desireable.

Well, Elvis should clean Benny's tombstone on his lunch break then. (seriously, my apologies for the misunderstanding!)

I mentioned this a few years ago, but oh well - I thnk the key to Max, from the beginning all the way through (and I have no problem with him, his duet efforts or his tenor players into the 90s, although the bassist/Cecil Bridgewater thing is a variable quantity) is that Max was always a marcher by nature, not a dancer. Actually, I've since come to see marching as a form of organized dance, and as with all things organized, the use to which it's put can and does run the gamut form celebratory & uplifting to downright inhumane and oppressive. But Max always had that marching thing at his personal and musical core, I think, and that's why those with a more/entirely dance-centric perspective like to say that he "doesn't swing", whether they dig him or not.

I dig the guy muchly, but didn't he die a few years ago?

Responses in blue

http://funksoul.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=14871

Nonsense on all counts.

And by all means - nest time you stop in @ DG, ask'em about Ursula Rucker and see if they can hook you up with Silver Or Lead for starters.

Well of course. But those are qualities that do not necesarily "come naturally" to men in the "jazz culture" of the last... your call. And that's my point - what comes naturally (relatively, god knows that they gotta shed and do the work same as anybody else) to these women is a quality that men can, if not necessarily (or even desirably) "learn" then learn from. We still gonna be men. We need to still be men. But we ain't gotta be dinosaurific about it, if you know what I mean. That's all I'm really saing, although if you get me at the right time in the right mood, I can and will say a lot more, some of it as serious as you want it to be and some of it as a cosmic joke that I just heard in my sleep. But that right there is all I care about anybody really taking to heart.

Somebody needs to pay attention to the opposite - the Katrina Diaspora and how it's gotten a lot of quality N.O. musicians out of the city and into other ones, and how that once "local" flavor is now being spread around in a direct way like it hasn't been before.

Well, I'm not going to say that the music of any of these women is "the new perfection" or anything like that. For one thing, that would be hyperbole, and for another, that's probably not the point at all of what they do/why they do it. I just think that there's some new perspectives on the nature of creativity, and some different routes being taken to explore same that are worthy of paying attention to and taking to heart, at least as much as one feels the need to keep moving ahead. That's nto to say that it'll all "stick", much less that it should, just that...things have got to move, to change. And I do feel that the "old ways" glorious as they were (and to experience by those who did it in real time, still are), ain't gonna be particularly relevant to life any more, if they even still are right now. so yeah, I'm open for suggestions right now and I ain't ruling nothing out. The final choice(s) will be 100% mine, but I wanna hear what everybody's got to say. And I'm hearing some good things - good in that they stir the imagination as far as furhter possibilities - from some new places and some new voices. It's a good time to be alive in that sense, although if you like the certainty/comfort/stability of a "tradition" (and let's face it, no matter what the neocon devils say, "free music" is deep in the tradtion by now) it's gotta suck, since you're probably gonna feel like you're under attack every time you open your eyes. But otherwise, hey. The future of the music - not of the "style", but of the actual music is uncertain in a fundamental way that it's not been for quite a while. Best of times, worst of times.