JSngry

Good to see you back! I was just thinking about starting a "Where's Catesta?" thread. Hope all is well.

Just dandy. Some real gems on there, and a few less-than-essential-but-nevertheless-interesting curios. Buy with confidence. Besides that which has already been (justly) recommended: I/m a big fan of New Orleans Suite, especially what comprised the first LP side. Damn good stuff, and all sorts of levels of personal poignancy in the mix. The Pablo "workshop" albums are a mixed bag (mixed relative to Ellington's overall output, that is) but I'd not be without them. Some fascinating things to be found therein. Of the three Sacred Concerts, the First is probably the most celebrated, but I prefer the Second, which is pretty mind-bending in spots. Find it on LP if you can, because the CD is slighty truncated. Live at the Whitney is one of the great piano recordings in the history of the world, even the world that existed before recording. Haven't heard the Fantasy trio side yet, but I've got no reason to believe that it's less than superb. Duke's piano playing is a world unto itself, and like his writing, it continued to evolve and deepen over the years (am I a heretic to say that the Capitol Piano Reflections side is less than fully satisfying for me?). Out of that "Private Sessions" series, the one that's indispensible in terms of the topic at hand is the one that has "The River". Just sketches, but my god... Re: Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, there's a Laserlight(?) "workshop" type thing that's far from essential save for an alternate take of "Chinoiserie" that has Harold Ashby playing a significantly different (and much more exploratory) solo than the one first released. Ask for it by name! Bottome line - just buy the shit. It's Duke & ain't none of it ignorable.

Go for it!

By this standard -- and I'm being serious here, though the words no doubt will fail us -- does dancing in your head count? ABSOFREAKINLUTELY!!!!!! but there's nothing wrong with the other kind either. It should be done no matter how funny you or anybody else thinks it looks if you feel the urge

All the best! Miss you.

I'm sure he could if he needed to. But he probably doesn't need to.

Sure - his Fantasy stuff.

Motion that just can't help itself, and which would be perverse to attempt to make do so. Best I can do.

T is Jazz Comfort Food. I'm waaay down with some JCF.

Well there you go - you sound like a g*ddam college catalog. Yours in Regency, Dean Chancellor of Hyatt

Art should not abide tyranny, period. When it does, it becomes mere propaganda, even if it might well have been something else entirely when it was created. But show me a music (or a culture, or an individual) w/o ritual of some sort, and I'll show you something that ain't hitting on all cylinders. Ritual is the gravity which holds us together (as groups and as individuals). And, yes, sometimes down. But as nice as flying is, at some point you need to land. Which is not to say that all rituals are healthy, only to say that the fear/disdain of them is irrational, and is little more than the delusional hoping against hope that we can be fully human w/o being fully human. Sometimes you gotta tear down. But after that gets done, you damn well better be ready to build something back up. Find a way to do that w/o involving ritual (and dance - HOE DOWN!) & you'll have found a world that has yet to exist, except to collapse before it began. The problem is not ritual in and of itself. And the problem is definitely not dance in and of itself. No no no no NO!!!! The problem is that the war to inseminate The Wonderful World Tommorow is being fought between Rape & Incest. And there's plenty of ignunt ho's giving it up to both of 'em.

Jim, Isn't this the schism that Ellison et al identify as emerging in the mid-1940s with bop? (Pace Mr. Jones/Baraka's assertion--not without validity--that bop could be danced to--but I'm interested to see you putting forth a modern variant of this line of thought.) Questions of intent & proportion. It's the music that needs to dance, no matter what the intent is. If the music dances, as it most definitely did with bop (& w/the early free players), then all is well. Bodies (and heads - not for nothing is Cecil heavily into dance) will move. Free your mind and your ass will follow, as the man said. It's a good thing indeed - if followed to completion, and in equal parts. But people whose minds aren't free ain't gonna get the ass (or head) moving. They're going to be stuck playing for an audience of their peers (or more specifically, the limited portion of their peers who are perversely proud of their condition). And here we are. Now, if you free your ass, will your mind follow? It should, in a righteous world. But this is not a righteous world, is it? That, however, is no excuse.

You RULE dude!

My bad. Sorry.

Self imposed I fear. Yep. On all sides.

Pockets are my worst fear. That means no direction ahead (as demonstrated for a while). I hear ya', but I also wonder how much of the pocket-ism is real & how much of it is caused by self-induced & self-sustaining illusions. Too many goddamn shackles...

If I read "Af-Am" one more time, I'm going to puke. Nothing personal, but..... no. Just one of those things. If we want to look backwards to look forwards in a non-necrophilliac kind of way, it seems to me that all great music comes out of a heritage of ritual, including dance. To that end, I'd suggest that the big disconnect of our times is between the "musically intellegent" community & the dance music world. The former is (mostly) too intellectually self-congratulatory to lower itself to the realm of something as common as dance, and the latter has (mostly) been barracaded from musical depth/breadth by a combination of their own myopic/claustrophobic life vision & the self-interests of an industry that needs to discourage true escape in order to keep selling the illusion of it. This needs to change if humanity is going to remain human. People who hate dancing, especially "creative musicians" are dangerous. And so are people who would rather dance than think. You gotta, absolutely must gotta, do both. In some way. However, there are pockets of really creative & vital dance music being made today, the very best of it more creative and vital that all but a thimble full of the "jazz" that's getting made. It still "suffers" from certain (and only certain) "musical limitations", but anybody who thinks that there's not room for such a thing in that music is mistaken. I can feel it, and I can almost hear it. I don't I have the generational/lifestyle "connection" to actually do it, what with me having lived, married, bred, and aged in the Jazz Cave all these years. But surely the blood that can do it is out there.

Bill Barron Savoy/Muse/and others. Could it be done?

Ditto!

Your generation and Jim's and mine (where do we draw the lines?) have already been screwed. That's the deal. Now you have to live with that information. Any idea who the cops are, so you can report the crime? True, we've all been screwed. But the nature of the perps is such that there are ample opportunities (never refused, it seems) for post-screwing screwing. My advice was offered in that light.

I mean, your jazz teachers reward optimism, right? And your jazz teachers are not your friends, right? Do the math.

There is absolutely no reason to be optimistic. None whatsoever. So put that out of your head right now. However, there is love, which is a tempestuous bitch, to put it mildly. But it's a helluva lot better for you than optimism. Enjoy!

Vitriol is a very useful thing in a person your age, especially when they're right. Besides my generation, don't be afraid to tell your generation to go fuck itself too. Tell everybody to go fuck themself. But do it with love.

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!