JSngry

I disagree with you for the most part. There are still plenty of interesting creative jazz musicians, albeit there are lots more boring clones as you state. You just have to work harder to find them, unlike the past when it now seems like there was a giant on every street corner. "Plenty" & "working harder to find them" is sort of a disconnect for me. I know what you mean, but geez, I've spent many a year doing that work and... the point of diminishing returns seems at hand. Maybe it's just me. But I do wanna hear this ep1str0phy cat once he gets good and pissed off!

You wanna make sure that your generation is not screwed? Stop worrying about being screwed, tell my generation to go fuck itself (we'll be dead soon enough), and make the music in your gut. Not in your brain, but in your gut. Tell your story in your language, and if "we" can't handle it, fuck us. I. for one, will love y'all for it, even if I do or do not "like" the music that ensues.

And are we in some sort of agreement, Chuck, that "new music" doesn't necessarily mean not playing in a pre-existing idiom nearly as much as it means speaking in a personal voice no matter what the idiom? I'm not nearly as bugged by young cats playing hard bop as I am by hearing them play it w/o any intent to do anything other than make the changes and play the licks. And I hear that in a lot of contemporary "free" playing too. For every Shelley Carroll (who's really not "young" any more...), there's literally 100 cloneophone players. It's always been like that, but the ratio continues to expand, with no end in sight, as the cloneophonists have been fortunate enough to have been born into a time when the possibility of a smackdown by a jury of their elders, no longer exists. Too many of the few remainders are happy just to have the company. Death's a bitch that way. I'm to the point now where all I can say is "screw jazz". It was fun while it lasted, it's still fun where it still lives, and the memories are the stuff of dreams, but as an ongoing proposition....nah. It's over, at least as far as what I'm looking for (and used to find pretty regularly). Time to move on. And that.....does not make me sad.

Exactly.

If it's true, it means that young musicians are rejecting old music in favor of even older music. That's kinda sad. But I don't think it's totally true. The younger musicians I come into contact with look at the "avant garde" as one of many "styles" to incorporate into their repertoire. That's kinda sadder. It seems that it's all about learning styles now, not telling personal stories in a personal language. And that's really sad, although that's obviously not a widely shared opinion, which is really sadder. And a lot of people seem to not know the difference,which would be so sad as to make me cry if I still gave a damn, which is rapidly becoming more trouble than it's worth. I'm guess I'm just a sad guy, but I'm happy in spite of it. Go figure.

The Brat Hillrich & Bradsby Bruce Wayne

There's one or two of those musical interludes that are pretty mind-boggling. And there's one or two that aren't. I wonder if there's more of the former in the can. As for the humor, yeah, it wears thin quickly, but there's a good line or two. But the Harris humor is better displayed on A Tale Of Two Cities. Definitely one of those albums to have for the sake of having rather than to listen to, but hey - one of the undisputably great covers of all time:

He did an electronic album for Blue Note in the early 90s, but I've never heard it. Same w/an early 70s thing called Waterbirds. Tome VI is an interesting record.

Well, see, this is where it all gets totally subjective. I don't feel (never have, really) that dance rhythms intrinsically lead to a "hemming in". Quite the opposite, in fact. I find them quite liberating. Not the obvious, heavy-handed dance rhythms that are lowest common denominator tools of hammering into submission domination, but the slinky propulsions that get your mind and soul into a different place by going through your body instead of bypassing it entirely. I've never haqd a problem with that type of dance rhythm, and yes, it existed in the disco era. It wasn't the norm, not by a long shot, but it existed. One of the reasons I started a thread not too long ago about do you dance or not was because I more and more see a resitance to dancing in jazz circles, and it both puzzles me and bugs me for a number of reasons. But that's another matter for another time, maybe... Anyway, I guess if dance rhtyhms per se are not to your liking, or if you find them intrinsically limiting, then yeah, Prime Time is going to leave you wanting something different. Like I said, totally subjective.

Looks like some kind of turkey/vulture (but not turkey vulture) mutation.

Jim Chapin Roy Burns Charles Perry

Yeah - trombonists are getting out of the music business & into the frog hunting business.

I too had a gig last night. There was no trombonist there, but this morning on Top Chef they were cooking frog legs. Lots of frog legs. Coincidence? I think not!

The 70's label was owned by Gerry MacDonald. So what was up with the logo similarity? Coincidence?

Frog, not skunk. On Saturday night no less.

a session at Monroe's.....look out Red...

HEY! indeed!

Farmer John Big Bad John Gospel John

The Choice logo on that label looks almost identical to that of the Choice label from the 70s, a label which had a decidedly different orientation than this one (that catalog listening on the back of the Earland looks interesting, to put it mildly). Anybody know if it was the same label?

Chip Monk Chip Douglas Chip Stern

Don't know if that list of past stadiums is supposed to be complete back to AFL days, but they left out Rice Stadium, which is where the Oilers played prior to the opening of the Astrodome. My dad took me to a game there once.

I mighg be wrong, but wasn't Pepper Adams L.A. based for a little while, when he was w/Kenton? He did a side for PJ, I know, & wasn't he on some Mode sides from the time as well? Still, he's about as "West Coast" as coal oil furnaces.

What's the most recent "new feeling"? Anything new feelings come along since the stories in the Bible? And all that shit was already commonplace. Confusing the manefestation itself with that which is being manifested is a sucker's game. Don't believe the hype.

Not you. To me, "restricted" means that there's a struggle involved, if only at the level of not being able to do exactly what you want to do. I don't hear Ornette struggling at all in PrimeTime. All I mean is that instead of the melodic flow & rhythmic alterations being "restricted", which to my mind would mean that he was unable/less able to make them, that he found another way to do them, other places to put them. I still hear the melodic flow & the harmonic/rhythmic twists & turns, just maybe a little more "stretched out", less sudden and more "inside" the overall group texture. Truthfully, though, I don't hear that as anything new. To me, the truly "freest" Ornette in those regards was the L.A./early NY Ornette. Once Haden left the band, things started changing (hardly an original idea, but...). His playing became more "formal" to my ears, more consiously "developmental" in focus instead of "freely melodic". The change became really pronounced after the hiatus. Solos were based on motifs instead of longer melodies, and the scales in thirds thing really became the most frequent ground from which he built. Still marvellous, but definitely different. And it's a difference that did not at all conflict with the sounds & rhythms in PrimeTime, at least not to my ears. There's also the matter of playing/leading in a group like that as opposed to a smaller (and acoustic) one. There was a lot more going on in Prime Time at every level, and everything I've read Ornette say about it indicates that he wanted it like that. Ornette's music has always been built around group interaction, but he seemed to be really obsessive about it with this band. The whole Harmolodics theory came out publicly then, and as evolving/vague concept as that seemed to be, the one thing that was always stressed was that every voice was equal at all times. Well hey - six voices, three of them amplified and able to play multiple notes simulataneously, is going to create a different group dymnamic that an acoustic horn(s) + bass/drums one. The way that Ornette responded to that different dynamic seemed to me to be by submersing himself into group's collective mentality even more than he had in his previous bands. He had to, You may hear that as "restricting", but I hear it as leading the band by example. The music of Prime Time could have easily veered off into total chaos, but Ornette's playing always held it together, gave it its gravity and focus. Ornette, willingly it seemed to me, changed just enough to make the group work the way he wanted it to work. I think that was a pretty astute move on his part, because it allowed the band to stay together & evolve in a most organic/wholistic manner. As much as I love DIYH for its raw energy and gonzo physicality, I think that the Antilles album (name escapes me at the moment, is it Of Human Feelings?) shows the group functioning much more as a group, if you know what I mean. The comments that Lazaro referenced regarding the "orchestral" thing are reflected in the ongoing evolution of the group sound. This wasn't an "Ornette soloing" band (not that any of his bands have been just that), this was an "Ornette orchestra", and the leader was just one member, albeit the central one. I think that Ornette relished both the concept of the band and his role in it. I've spoke in the past about my awe at Tone Dialing what a visionary & viable conceptual and practical model it is for music of the future that aspires/needs to at once be free & creative while at the same time in touch with the densities & textures of the contemporary world. There's a lot of information in that music, and it all works for me. But the density of the information necessitates adjusting one's concept of being a "soloist". "Soloing" per se is rapidly becoming less an imperative than is creating a healthy, organic group environment that's in tune with the struggles of the times (fighting today's battles with yesterday's weapons is always an option, but so is suicide...). 'Twas always so, but the landscape is radically different now than it was in 1959, 1969, 1979, or even 1989. Tone Dialing points the way as well as anything I've heard. Ornette's always been very vocal about his music being about, at root,/basic helping people be more fully human. It makes perfect sense to me that as the challenges & obstacles to reaching that goal change, so does his music. And I don't think that his ego is such that he's going to place his "style" as a soloist above doing what it is that he thinks needs to be done to make his groups do what it is that he thinks they need to do to serve his greater goals at any given time. Is it really "restrictive" to do that? Or even if it is in a literal sense, is it a bad thing when/if it's done knowingly & willingly in the service of a perceived greater cause? Some might call that discipline in the service of vision. Great people do that, and Ornette, crazy as he might be in "practical" matters is nothing if not a great man with a great vision of what it means to be human. Now, have the concepts of Prime Time ran their course as far as Ornette's visions for humanity goes? The "retro" sound of the Sound Grammar group might suggest so. But I'd rule nothing out from/about Ornette, especially since the world at large is just now beginning to sortakinda get its ears & souls around the sounds of his 1959 music. Maybe that's where he's coming from, sensing that there's perhaps more real hunger (as opposed to a niche market) for that earlier sound now, so bring it back home for the people to taste in the flesh. I'm just thankful that he continues to put it out there, because no matter what format he puts it in, electric, accoustic, large group or small, that "it" is the stuff of life - unrestricted life. Just my opinion, and I'm not looking to change anybody's mind. As if I could.

John Blair John Blake John Bubbles