robertoart

No it was Anson, he's the culprit.

Love Mick Taylor's playing. I hunted around a lot the last few years to find some post-Stones stuff on youtube. It's patchy - but there's some good stuff out there. Looks like he became a bit of a journyman, almost like a Jazz player. Walking the earth and playing with pick-up bands - or forming loose, short lived affiliations.

Try a sermon. Rev Jasper Williams' 'I fell in love with a prostitute' is very good, often very loud, and very long (56 mins). MG Oh dear. What's the story about MG?

It would be great to hear his reminiscences about playing Free Jazz in the early Seventies. Very interesting life.

I want out.

But the toy instruments subvert the elitism of Jazz. And help break down the barrier between the musicians and the audience

True, that: it's a description rather than a name, but we Canadians DO have a name, so we don't mind our southern neighbours usurping the general as a specific. You can call us "american" if you wish, it's like being British even if you're Welsh or English or a Scot. But I'm still not sure just what "Americana" is... I understood Americana to be a term for a kind of American Aesthetic that I thought started with films like Paris Texas. But I see in some film discussions people talk about movies like Five Easy Pieces. Later filmmakers like David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch are often mentioned. I recently saw the movie The Last Picture Show which was Americana to me. In music Tom Waits is seen as the king of the aesthetic. But I guess the Sixties country songwriters that had counter-culture cred like Kris Kristofferson and Gram Parsons, The Band etc. seem to belong to the same tradition. In the Visual Arts, I think of someone like Ed Ruscha. Captain Beefheart seems kinda Americana. But from afar, aside from dumbed down pop culture expressions, it is possibly the most significant American cultural/stylistic influence on Artists living outside the country. It's like the exotic of America. The town I grew up in, Melbourne, had a big artistic community that cultivated the Americana feel. Though that has probably lessened over time with the change brought about by the digital age. I was just wondering whether it was something as identifiable to Americans as much as it was to people overseas. Jazz seemed to never have a place in it. Though Blues sorta did.

Don't be afraid, my little friend, it will only hurt for a minute... I don't know what I want.

Depends. A lot of music isn't just music, it's words, too. So if you're listening to a musician and band reciting an incident from history, you can get as caught up in it as listening to a play on the radio, or in a church, listening to a sermon. The difference between African historical recitals and radio plays is that there's no music in the play. There's sometimes music in a sermon. But then, when you listen to a story being told, you're using a different part of your mind from the bit you use to listen to purely instrumental music. I think. MG Isn't that a special thing about the Traditional cultures, the word or the narrative has primacy. So the music the dance etc is one part of the whole cultural expression, because the story/words are still there. Is not part of the beauty of Jazz that it tells the story after the explicit connection to the words have been lost. Sorry to say this, but I think your use of the phrase 'Traditional cultures' is highly patronising. Listen to some albums of sermons by black preachers; self-evidently from the same 'Traditional culture' as the jazz musicians you're thinking about. Function makes form. Many of the African peoples whose music I know use that music as part of an environment in which kids growing up are encouraged (doubtless not invariably successfully) to live in an honest, ethical and upstanding way. So words are essential in that endeavour; just as they are in church. In the west we have no similar notion of music providing such an environment; our notions of music are almost purely aesthetic; even when the music is explicitly entertainment. It's Art for Art's sake or entertainment for entertainment's sake. One consequence of the economic and military domonance of the west is that we tend to think that we're best at everything and that therefore other approaches can't be as beautiful as ours. Wrong. MG Yes I can see it might be perceived that way. I use the term in this context - In Australia, Aboriginal people who have been bought up in a more Westernized environment often use the word Traditional to speak about other Aboriginal people that still live on their Tribal lands - and maintain the full unbroken links to 'traditional' ceremonies and culture. It's a form of respect to honour the way those tribes have kept the culture going amongst great isolation and hardships. Other Aboriginal people from tribes that are bringing back their languages and culture, often seek guidance from the Traditional tribes about these things. Your second paragraph though, pretty much sums up what I was getting at - re- the primacy of the word (or stories/narrative).

Depends. A lot of music isn't just music, it's words, too. So if you're listening to a musician and band reciting an incident from history, you can get as caught up in it as listening to a play on the radio, or in a church, listening to a sermon. The difference between African historical recitals and radio plays is that there's no music in the play. There's sometimes music in a sermon. But then, when you listen to a story being told, you're using a different part of your mind from the bit you use to listen to purely instrumental music. I think. MG Isn't that a special thing about the Traditional cultures, the word or the narrative has primacy. So the music the dance etc is one part of the whole cultural expression, because the story/words are still there. Is not part of the beauty of Jazz that it tells the story after the explicit connection to the words have been lost.

Just seeing the great Hank Mobley photo's on the other thread reminded me to post this great GG and Bobby Watley photo that was recently posted on another board. From 1976.

Some of the UK readers will know who he is/was. UK Jazz writer. The Cabell attack (for that's what it essentially is) was part of his short overview of BJP's Blue Note output in his encyclopedia. I remember reading it in a bookstore, before the internet days, so had never really come across any other perspectives on Cabell and the albums he was on. I remember feeling a bit gutted and hurt reading it. I guess I took what I was responding to in the music as being pissed on by Cook. I was young then, so doubted my own mind and heart. As you say in the earlier post -JSngry I know myself now so I can honestly know Cook was no more in a position to be authoritative of the music than I was - and he was responding to the music from a point of view that was wrongheaded.

So you never felt Marvin Cabell's playing was 'wretched' like it was described by Richard Cook in the Jazz Encyclopedia. Obviously you and Richard are from non affiliated tribes

I'm too scared to open the link.

And he always knew how to best utilise a good Fusion guitarist. Give em a long solo in a well composed vocal song with interesting chord changes.

And I forgot to say, Pharoah Sanders beautiful, beautiful big tone saturated both venues. The Pub and the Concert Hall.

Moments of weakness JSngry?

Yes, I think you may have nailed it there. (Isn't Literary Studies a form of art too, after all?) Oh yeah! It's all Art in the big sense of the word. Writing, Music, Visual, Dance, etc.

How do board members relate to the term Americana. For instance - is it something you think of as a variation on Country music - or a wider term dealing with a broader part of American Culture overall. Indeed, is it a term that is recognisable in America? - or is it something that outsiders use more to describe a certain aspect of American culture? wikipedia gives two definitions - one an Alt. Country music meaning My link and another a cultural one, My link Interestingly, the cultural one - uses this point re- Jazz. "The AMA considers Americana, as a genre, to be any music that "honors and is derived from the traditions of American roots music." According to them, the music is nostalgic and sympathetic to American culture traditions which incorporates classical man-made sounds. Like jazz, it is said to span from Miles Davis to Harry Connick to the Preservation Hall.[19][17]'

Not thinking so much literally, but it did make me think of my own art student undergrad days, and just how distant and off the radar Jazz was from the student Visual Art community. Apart from some of the older lecturer's - who were also players - I was out on my own. And it got me thinking that possibly, the post beatnik Ornette at the Five Spot era, might have been the last serious social and cultural connection for Jazz and Visual Art. I think by the early 60's Rock n Roll had became the music Art students most identified with. And from then on whatever outlying trend setting or precursive variations of it that emerged. For instance, Punk and Post-Punk, New Wave (of UK and US variety) etc., are all identified with the marketing and influence of the Visual Arts. Call it the Warhol effect. I suspect he didn't like Jazz much. Actually, over here, one of the really big cultural and stylistic influences on local Contemporary Artists was Americana. Huge Visual Arts sub culture around that. You couldn't swing a cat without knocking off someone's cowboy hat. I think the Literary community may have kept Aesthetic kindred spirits with Jazz a bit more. With the association between Jazz Imagery and Noir. So I tend to associate your stereotype with Literary Students or other Humanities based drop-outs

Scandinavian Winters.

Seen Pharoah twice as well. Once in a sweaty Pub atmosphere and once in a Concert Hall/Festival setting. Playing essentially the same set-concept-music and notes. The Pub experience was visceral, bluesy and joyous. They did a great Ole. The Concert Hall experience felt distant, pre-meditated and...repertory

Any art students I ever knew of were not listening to Jazz. Not since the early Sixties anyway. Very divergent universes. Their listening would more likely have been, Eno, PIL, Nick Cave or other White Neo-Tribalists...probably Neubauten or even early Talking Heads etc...etc... Jazz would have been far to distant and bourgeois, and Radical Jazz... a bit to difficult. Maybe Peter Brotzmann would have snuck in there a bit with the German art students....they always were a bit more Sturm und Drang Although by 92 the digital age was about to start kicking in. So maybe something like Sigur Rós...or for something more earthy but still essentially minimalist...The Dirty Three. Maybe even The Necks, but that would have been a bit to 'Jazz'.

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. And is there really an audience left for Jazz that isn't repertory in some way. In the sense that it's a sit down and listen experience. So even if the music is not repertory in itself, the listening environment is. Apart from that - in a small bar atmosphere - where the interaction is more 'active' - who is there to make up an audience beyond the vested interests of those involved in the 'academic music education culture, + the small number of contemporary boutique replicants of the club goers/audience who once were. Perhaps what sustains the music as a living entity - across the board - are the Jazz Festivals circuits? But these seem to be increasingly just excuses for any kind of 'roots' music experience - that often has little relevance to a Jazz improvising purpose. On the other hand, although Classical music is necessarily structured and interpretable within a narrower range of options, perhaps the long term future for the emergent 'Jazz Historical Canon' might be somewhat brighter - in the way that repertory in literature/theatre - like Shakespeare - is constantly re-invigorated and radicalised with each different generation. Jazz - with it's spaces for improvisational freedom - might be able to bridge the gap in similar ways. In the way that someone from Shakespeare's time may be able to recognise the words - but the contemporary context those words are put to use in are different dimensions. Which is I guess what Larry Kart and Allen Lowe are essentially saying re- Threadgill and Brecht. Although I'm also projecting this way way into the future. Admittedly, envisioning this kind of future for the 'canon', might be a kind of musical dystopia for many