robertoart

George Benson......biding his time. George Benson by Fred Seibert, on Flickr

For someone who has based so much of his output around characterisations of neurosis and psychoanalysis, I don't think it's unfair to use psychoanalytical language in an article attempting to unpack Allen's oeuvre. After all, to many people, Allen's work will always be elitist psychobabble anyway. Although perhaps the author has been reading too much Zizek. Glad I wasn't the only one. Lot of people like this film though.

Having grown up in Australia on a diet of sober Black and White English late 50's/60's films, usually programmed on winter weekends or school holiday Midday Movie timeslots - I can understand that.

Match Point is a superb movie. Worth seeing. I think the other much lauded recent films tend to be more variations on Woody's 'old man's fantasies'. I found some of them like Vicky Cristina Barcelona funny for all the wrong reasons. I can only account for the late career popularity of Midnight In Paris because it might appeal to any romantic and escapist yearnings of a younger generation - completely detached from any critical distance from early 20thC heroic Modernist bullshit.

Kerry Dancers is Irish. English Country Gardens is Australian. Percy Grainger? There's a museum of Grainger in my home town, but I have never visited. I think his eccentric behaviours have been of interest to biographers and filmmakers. Seems the melody is an old English folk song. Funny I always associate it with Noel Coward. Did he popularise it as well?

The first I heard about the Allen/movie in Israel campaign was from this thread, so it looks like it was up and running early this month. I suppose the Haaretz has had a whole series of articles since then. Here is another opinion piece from somewhere else. Gives some context to the campaign. My link I thought this (from the article) an interesting observation about Manhattan What's true about Manhattan, apart from its inherent Freudian prophecy (in 1991, the 56-year-old Allen would begin a relationship with his 21-year-old stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn), is the way it perfectly captures the nuances and behaviour patterns of its chosen New York set. What's not true about it is how it fails to capture any other New York set. And this about what Allen might offer the 'New York' Israelis, Which may be why Israeli officials are attempting to persuade the legendary director to shoot one of his next films in the land of milk and honey. If there's any great Jewish filmmaker in the world right now who can be counted on to hone in on the subtleties and minor peccadilloes of the Israeli urban class, it's Allen. Anyone else - David Cronenberg, Roman Polanksi, Darren Aronofsky - might venture too far into the Israeli underclass, or (God forbid) the territories.

The year and personnel are wrong. According to Chris Sheridan's Brilliant Corners bio-discography, these are from Newport, July 2, 1966. Monk, Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. Recorded two days before the Grant Green and Kenny Burrell performances at Newport July 4 1966. These also first saw the light of day on I Grandi Del Jazz. They were also documented on I Grandi Del Jazz as from 1961. I see a patten emerging here It seems like the tapes were part of Library Of Congress but disappeared, to appear as part of the I Grandi Del Jazz series. Well the Newport guitar workshop ones were anyway. Here is a recent thread about the Green/Burrell recordings and provenance. My link

Just guessing here, but when I tried to search for the article I typed in Woody Allen in the Search engine instead of the whole article title. From the hits I got - re-Haaretz/Woody Allen - it seems there has been a recent attempt in Israel to raise money to entice Allen to visit and make a movie there. This seems to have generated some debate/articles, so perhaps the paper decided to run this older article to keep it going, or provide more context for the readers. I could be wrong though.

Why? Because maybe you love the music and you haven't got the privilege to go to music school and hang out with Joe Morris. And maybe it would be good to have someones insights into the personal idioms of Taylor and Ornette and Ayler etc. I think it would be good. There wasn't a lot of it about when I was interested in playing that stuff. Like Cecil Taylor says in the Bill Dixon thread about moving beyond just copping the feel, it sounds like Morris is looking to contribute something concrete to that. And cause he's a bloody great guitar player

After reading the link I have to say I enjoyed reading Joe Morris's writing about his experience and teaching of free music as much as I do his playing. It would be interesting to hear in the near future from musicians who work through some of the methodologies and personal idioms his book looks to grasp. It was also interesting to read him speak of the mystic/spiritual aspect of improvisation as sometimes being an impediment to inclusiveness and access to free music expression. An attempt to bridge the gap between the philosophy and something categorisable as procedural methodology seems like a worthy thing to do.

Yes Bergman, my bad. Then again... My link

Astor 3in1 TV, Stereo and Radio. In service to the family until 1980. 5 years after the advent of colour TV here. For my own private obsessive record listening, I made do with various little suitcase record players, and 'toy stereo's, until I got a 'real' hand me down Hi-Fi record player when I was about 15. Which I then proceeded to lumber around with me through every student crash-pad, glorified squat and makeshift abode I could find when I moved to the 'big city'.

Actually self-deprecating humour is an Australian characteristic too. Case in point - l remember hearing an interview with an Australian author living in the US - who was trying to make the point that Americans tend to take self-deprecation literally. She related how she told someone she was an author - and the person responded 'have you written anything I'd know", to which the author replied 'Oh I have a book out but nobody read it' - to which the other person replied 'Oh my, I'm really sorry no-one read your book". The book was, in actuality. well received, just not a mega-blockbuster seller. As far as the Allen-Fellini thing, I don't think that is actually self-deprecation - as much as Allen making humorous light of the distance between the great European Existential film tradition (and his youthful desire to emulate it), and the reality of his own humbler mundane origins. Kinda like, if Jackson Pollock had ambitions to emulate Velasquez's Las Meninas. In the end they both (Pollock and Allen) settled for the most honest, relevant 'form and content' they could. Although by the time Allen got to making his non-ironic takes on the European tradition, he had come a long way to narrowing the gap.

An interesting article. It reminds me of Blood Ulmer's comment about rap 'the whole worlds got the Blues, the rapper's got the Blues so bad he can't even sing anymore'.

How did ya do that? My usual trick of getting to the restricted article and copying and pasted directly into google didn't work? Actually this was the one I found. My link

I'd like to read the article but can't get past the moneywall. Here's an interesting article about Allen though. Unfortunately nothing about self-deprecating humour. But brings up an issue discussed here before. The ethics of separating the art from the artist. No moneywall - here is a link. My link

I'd like to find a copy of it. The sound on my Ted Dunbar Xanadu vinyl possibly put me off looking for more Xanadu vinyl, it was a harsh listen. Normally I care naught about things like that when it comes to my favourite music. I've got a warmer system now. And more time to listen. BTW was Eddie Diehl really an underdog as such. I mean he and Pat Martino were the only White guitarists that seemed to be a part of that scene in the sixties. Was that not seen as a privilege back in those days. Pat Martino seems to regard it that way.

For Miles Davis of East St. Louis ...Opportunity Knocks

At the next G7 meeting you can start negotiations with Italy & Japan! I'm sure anybody who took the trouble to start and maintain those labels won't be invited to the G7. Bloody radicals.

Well case in point the tapes of Wes Montgomery's Incredible Jazz Guitar apparently are no more. So either they got mixed up with the the trash and ended as land-fill, or some 'collector' has them in his closet. Either way an unacceptable fate for the masterpiece of the 20th century's greatest guitarist. Sure, it is true that a Pollock inhabited a different cultural space before the painting was begun, very true. Aesthetic battles in 'art' and classical music always had a tradition of importance that Blues and improvised music had to be elevated too. I suppose in my eyes, the actual primary documents of recorded music performance occupy the same importance as the Pollock original. And the Pollock original is seen as one part of the greater story of his art - and then the wider story of American Modernism. And I suspect no stone is left unturned in documenting and ensuring every aspect of his output is known catalogued and preserved. Whether in public or private hands. So I also wonder what kinds of archiving and access surrounds the history and future of 'the classical music' primary sources?

He's a bit of a formalist.

Fasstrack, I clearly remember you saying something like this in another thread, suffice to say I disagreed with it (at least from the angle you were coming from), and gave you a response arguing why I thought you were a bit myopic in the larger scheme of things. Your following posts gave me the impression you either didn't take any time to consider what l was suggesting (as a riposte), or your own self expression was the real motivator for what you were saying. It was a bit disappointing actually, because I know I made some good points worthy of your consideration. I wont bother rehashing what I said there, because I believe I said it well enough, whether you disagree with it or not.

And he has certainly provided a good source for anyone wanting to strengthen their own arguments about Chick Corea's last thirty years

I've got this.'Live In Tokyo'. Just checked. It's Don Schlitten (he wrote the liner notes) who says "the man I personally consider to be the world's greatest Jazz Guitarist". And later in the liner notes Bob Rusch (Cadence) is quoted as saying "listening to Raney is much like going back and listening to Bird; one is struck by the freshness and the lack of embroidered bullshit". Although you could be remembering a direct quote from a different Raney/Xanadu perhaps.