Joe

Another artist whose work, IMO, partakes of (the best of what) post-modernism (has to offer): Ran Blake. Or: he extends certain artistic traditions associated with jazz (e.g., not drawing fine distinctions between "high" and "low" culture) in new and startling ways without sacrificing emotional content on the altar of cleverness. Also, a link to the Microscopic Septet performance referenced above: https://myspace.com/themicroscopicseptet/music/song/johnny-come-lately-13607106-13408290

I may be projecting too much here, but it would not surprise me if the MOPDTK wouldn't agree with this judgment and say "Well, ain't that the point!" IIRC, the liner notes for BLUE propose the project to have been conceived as a necessary failure. It's not so much music, which explains its failings -- failings I hear as well -- as it is an argument. And that argument is, in part, an argument against certain aesthetic "master narratives" (a po-mo chestnut): against universal / absolute humanistic values, and against objective standards of beauty / truth. The positions the members of the band are working so hard to occupy in recreating BLUE are inaccessible, even or especially in "art". BLUE scans to me as very much a political document, and in any number of ways. But certainly in what it proposes vis-a-vis subjectivity and the authenticity of selves as a product of artistic expression.

I agree with this definition, and find it quite more generous than many another definition of the post-modern condition I have encountered (n.b., I am coming to this topic largely from a literary studies perspective). One difficulty we face now is that post-modernity itself is now a historical condition, and not meta-historical, as so many post-modernists seemed to hope. So, what comes after post-modernism(ity)? Post-post-modernity? And what what "post-modernism": really, post-modernism in scare quotes, post-modernism as a set of stylistic conventions. (Thanks a lot, Paul Thomas Anderson.) The music of The Microscopic Septet I find interesting in this context. There's a certain self-conscious po-mo pastiche-ing / "posturing" (no, I don't mean this as a dis) to even the most swinging of their arrangements. To take but one example, how they push the riffing in their take on "Johnny Come Lately" into Glass / Reich / Adams territory. This stance is very much the one I find in MOPDTK's Miles-by-way-of-Duchamp BLUE. But that project is also about constraint, isn't it? Anyway, whatever its merits, BLUE reads to me as another expression working out an article of faith that is streaked through a good deal of today's aesthetics: that conventional notions of creativity are themselves passe, that action is nothing but rhetoric, and concept trumps execution, and that artistry is awareness. You better know what you are doing, and you better be able to make an account of it. What the implications are here for improvisation is a topic worthy of further discussion, IMO. Maybe, in this millennium, we arrived at a period in which improvisation itself has become a style, with all that entails, rather than a practice / method.

Very much looking forward to this!

His Choice date with Tom Harrell is quite nice as well. Very Konitz-like on that recording... and didn't he make a two-alto record with Konitz as well?

To give myself a break, I'll often fire up Stella (an Atari 2600 emulator), MAME (multiple arcade machines) or Nestopia (NES) and vintage it. I still take some mindless pleasure in blasting "space dice" in MEGAMANIA, or drawing QIX boxes.

Mine, too. Of course you guys got the bonus track version... I just tracked down a copy that does as well from an online seller Looks like this was corrected at some point, but it is odd that digital versions of this release appear not to include this track.

Just to complicate things... IIRC, the Fantasy catalog used to list a bonus track appended to Fuller's NEW TROMBONE. But said track -- "Alicia" -- never actually appeared on any OJC CD pressing of that date that I could find. Compare: http://www.amazon.com/New-Trombone-CURTIS-FULLER/dp/B000000Y4Q & http://www.amazon.com/New-Trombone-Curtis-Fuller/dp/B000UBTLR2/ ???

Fun, fun, fun on the autobahn indeed.

Complicated man and legacy indeed. But no denying his visionary streak, or his ears (which were big, as far as I can tell).

On Music & Arts...

The Roswell Rudd - Steve Lacy collaborations, from their early playing-for-change days to their Italian-documented purple 70s to the later valedictory recording for Verve, satisfy these criteria, at least IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AowYh_D60dA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlSSd47dgj4

Yes, on both accounts. And Gary had an Atlantic release prior to THE BLUES CHRONICLES... THE RED AND ORANGE POEMS. Also a sort of comeback for Eddie Henderson via that date as well. Fine record, "straight ahead," but TBC is more personal, more Bartz-ian in its explicit concept-album-ness.

Dave Kikoski's E (Epic / Sony) Gary Bartz, THE BLUES CHRONICLE: TALES OF LIFE (Atlantic) James Clay, COOKIN' AT THE CONTINENTAL (Antilles / Island / Polygram)

Dude!

Intriguing, this Kenton - Terry Riley - Second City connection! Looks like Kaz very likely replaced Mathieu, who moved to San Francisco in the 60's, at least as best I can determine. And thus the seeding of Second Citys commenced...

Thanks for sharing that Larry. My wife is currently taking improv (comedy) classes here in Dallas, and talking with her about that experience has renewed my appreciation for improvisation as an "general aesthetic." (This study, while a bit less in-depth than I would have liked, still makes for fine reading on this topic: Daniel Belgrad's The Culture of Spontaneity.) Kaz, like Del Close and the Beck / Molina axis of The Living Theatre, is a fascinating figure in that he seems to bridge a couple of different improvisational media.

Crepuscule W/ Nellie now has a dedicated website: http://crepusculewnellie.com/. You can interact with annotated excerpts from the novel, and even submit your own notes and paratextual content.

The pianist, not Fred Katz, the cellist. A rather limited discography, with but one leader date that I've heard: EASTERN EXPOSURE on Atlantic Records. On the evidence of this date, a rather unusual player, whose "moves" sometimes recall a much more fluent Brubeck, or an even more oddball Eddie Costa; certainly, he wasn't without harmonic imagination and a pretty individual sense of phrasing. Still, its hard sometimes to separate out "gimmick" from invention on this particular record... a shame, perhaps, that he did not record as frequently as he might have. In my search for more information, though, I discovered that Mr. Kaz was the long-time musical director for Chicago's Second City. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-12/entertainment/chi-fred-kaz-legendary-musical-director-at-second-city-dies-20140312_1_fred-kaz-second-city-actor-richard-kind http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-18/entertainment/8802250816_1_musical-director-piano-player-second-city And, although Mr. Kaz is no longer with us, his website still is, and it looks as though there are more records to hear after all: http://www.fredkaz.com/music.html given the strong Chicago presence on this board, I wonder if there might be more insights, opinions, and memories to share.

Too young. Mr. Soloff can heard to fine advantage here:

[sMH] Dude, dude, dude... rhetoric ain't reparations. It's attitudes like that holding us ALL back. [/sMH]

Chicagoan Jason Stein is a younger player producing some worthy and intriguing music on this instrument.

Jim nails it. We play way too fast and loose with the appellation "racist" / the word "racism" in this culture. Which is a terrible insult to those people in our culture who have had to live under truly racist conditions, i.e., where systematic violence is perpetrated against certain people because of the color of their skin or their perceived racial identity. (Bigotry is one thing; racism is something else, at least as far as I'm concerned.) "Racist" gets used now precisely for its triggering effect. Its usage says much more about the person actually employing the word than the one being targeted by it. And, also, you can't really "figure out" Buddy Rich and his contributions to the music by measuring him according to the established canons of "jazz drumming." You gotta remember that element of show business in the music's history too, for example... but it goes further than that...

Thanks! Looking forward to this.