Big Wheel

But these attitudes have been out there for at least 65 years at this point. The moldy figs said this stuff about the beboppers, the traditionalists said it about the fusionistas, a lot of people said it about Coltrane, just about everybody said it about Maynard Ferguson, and on and on we go. Not to say there isn't some truth to it - in fact, the reason it's a pointless critique is that it's ALWAYS been true for players who are not at the very tippy top echelon of greatness. (Is a typical Ernie Henry record really all that different from a typical 1950s Art Pepper record, or is there a "sameness" there?) So why are we hearing this again now? The most logical answer is that the author finds himself in the same place as all the others who made this attack in the past: he's uncomfortable with the direction the music is taking. But why? Doesn't his own music stand as a sufficient statement of what he thinks the music should be? That's why this is at its core a political piece and not a musical one. He doesn't only want to create, he wants to influence what others create. That's what this article is really about: shock that that influence is becoming impotent. (edit: badly beaten to the punch by Jim)

Though I don't have concrete evidence to back it up, I think the answer is: starting around 1990, the core of the Young Lions (the Marsalises and their inner circle) began to lose their grip on being the only game in town influencing younger players. Brecker's appeal waxed greatly, Turner and Potter and Dave Douglas started recording as leaders, Steve Coleman's M-BASE stuff started catching on a bit. That's what makes this piece so ridiculous; it's carefully constructed for maximum political divisiveness at the expense of making almost NO sense musically. The hilarious irony is that Marsalis Standard Time, Volume 1 is, in some ways, an apex of what Jason is claiming to hate in this essay.

Isn't there some rule in the Wacky Writers' Wrulebook that says if you're going to write "in closing," you should, you know, hurry up and close it? Rather than write, say, three more paragraphs.

Marsalis's argument might make a bit of sense if it weren't for his absurd definition: While there are a few players out there who do this, the vast majority don't and those who do barely get anywhere. Notice how Marsalis doesn't actually name anyone who fits his definition, only those who influenced the people who fit his definition like Mark Turner, Chris Potter, and Michael Brecker. He's using "good taste" to shield himself from having to illustrate his own argument. It's hard for me not to see this column as a politically motivated shot across the bow against those who don't conform to the Wynton Marsalis Orthodox Church of Jazz. In typical Marsalis fashion, the piece never forces the powerful to question their own responsibility in the situation. Instead we get the same old mixture of celebrating the bourgeois (those with middlebrow tastes are always right); kissing the ass of those who hold the purse strings (funny how more music education is always a solution); and sweeping history under the rug rather than confronting head-on why players might no longer be interested in playing music the way the Marsalis family likes. The problem for the Marsalis family was that they fought the easy battle first, against the avant-garde. But there was never any chance they would lose that one; your average American just isn't going to ever warm to Alan Silva's music. Having vanquished that adversary, they now are gearing up to fight a rather harder battle, against Young People Who Make Music That's Too White For Us. What next, the war on People Who Don't Play A Raised 11th On The II7 Chord On The Eleventh Bar Of "Cherokee"? Followed, I'm sure, by the Epic Struggle Against Those Damned Kids Who Won't Get Off My Lawn.

Shorter Jason Marsalis: Jazz players have gotten too intellectual. The only solution to this is more school.

OT, but welcome! Feel free to drop me a PM if you ever want to grab a pint at the local Belgian beer bar: http://www.thetrappist.com/

Eh?? Are they taking about the same Tokyo that I live in ? Just for the record,lunch ranges from $6.00 to $11.00, a cinema ticket is $16,$14 if bought beforehand from the local convenience store and a kilo of best quality rice costs $5.00 or so. A can of beer from the grocer 0.80 cents, a dozen eggs $2.20 and a basic washing machine about $450 although you can get them for half that if you look around. In a sense, they actually aren't talking about the same Tokyo you live in because they are likely calibrating everything for an expat on an expense account. I mean, there's no way your average Luandan is getting his eggs at $5 a dozen.

The methodology appears a little silly. All it's really measuring is changes in USD exchange rates - that is, when your currency appreciates against the dollar, things magically get much more expensive for people holding American currency. Not to say that some goods aren't "expensive" in places like Norway, but it helps to have average wages that are well above the US's. This is obviously of interest to tourists of course, but the intended audience was American businesses who subject themselves to currency risk by doing most of their business in dollars, but then have to pay employees in local currency abroad. Astonishing that Luanda, Angola is that expensive for expats though.

The part starting around 6:35 just kills me. Everything was cooking along nicely but without anything getting too serious, and then the groove just gets an extra shot of intensity right there.

I don't know what a "percussion fakebook" is, but this is a very good record as well as an important historical document of Arsenio Rodriguez. That said, it is not a Tito Puente or Mario Bauza album and it may not be your cup of tea. The melodies are carried largely by the vocals and Arsenio Rodriguez's tres, and some of the tracks are close to Afro-Cuban rumbas, with only chanting on top of a percussion section. If you have heard the Marc Ribot Los Cubanos Postizos albums you will likely enjoy this, but don't expect it to sound like jazz + congas.

But we have replay review in the four major sports in the U.S. now. (Limited in the NBA, but the referees will at certain times consult the video monitors to see if a shot beat the game clock, etc.) The whole point of video review is to raise the level of fairness in officiating. To get the call right, despite the human error factor that is inevitable in officiating. And I disagree on the NFL. Officials are obligated to review a range of calls at the request of either coach during games. It's limited, but it's there. Exactly. What American sport offers this level of transparency and accountability? Even if we only know about this rating because of an unauthorized leak from FIFA, that's still more than you get from the NFL/MLB/NBA. The only American official I can think of who faced public discipline was Tim Donaghy, and he was guilty of federal crimes. I disagree here as well. All four major U.S. sports review and grade their officiating. Only the top-graded officials make it to the playoffs. This is true in football, baseball, basketball and hockey. And I'm not sure what the union rules are for each sport, but I know baseball umpires whose umpiring is judged inadequate can be, and have been, let go. I assume there are similar provisions in the labor agreements for the other major sports. Game officials make mistakes. That's a given. But I think the effort to correct bad calls during games (through the use of replay review) coupled with the performance review process for game officials through the course of a season in the four major U.S. sports, is genuine. That the referee in the U.S. game was judged to be 'poor' is pretty much the minimum action they could have taken there, and hardly qualifies as "transparency." There's still no explanation of why the call was made, and likely never will be, as far as I can tell. Why? Because of the rules that say the referee doesn't have to explain himself. Not transparent at all, in my view. Not trying to be argumentative, but I think officiating in particular is worth a critical look -- in all sports. How could it be improved, made more fair? Clearly there's room for improvement in soccer. . -MLB instant replay is still extremely limited. The only calls that are reviewed are home run calls - which are the ones that are the least subjective anyway. Sure, a blown call on a ball that didn't clear the fence could have a big effect on a game's outcome, but in terms of overall ability to influence the way the game is played, I think an umpire calling an inconsistent strike zone is a much bigger worry. No instant replay there. -In fact, that's the general tendency in most sports. NFL challenges are almost entirely about objective factors like where the ball was spotted or whether a player had possession of the football on a play. Subjective things like penalty calls are usually not subject to instant replay. You'll never hear an NFL ref say "on further review, the head linesman totally missed the left guard tripping the defensive tackle on his way to the quarterback. 15 yards from the spot of the foul." So it's not like a blown foul call in a FIFA match is really any less accountable than a blown penalty call in an NFL game. -My point is that transparency in the evaluation process matters, and as little of that as FIFA gives us, it's still way more than any American sport provides. American leagues assure us that they police their officials and scrutinize their every call, but we have absolutely zero insight into how this is done or the actions taken as a result. Can you name a single MLB umpire who was fired or sent to single A ball because of shitty calls? I can't. Maybe there were some, but MLB's stance is that the public has no right to know the details of any individual case. Dick Bavetta has long been dogged by allegations of systematic bad calls. The FBI seemed more interested in his calls than whoever self-polices calls for the NBA. Even after information surfaced in federal court possibly implicating him in the Donaghy scandal, the NBA STILL assigned Bavetta to Finals games and weirdly, seems to be rather grudging about finally pushing him out of refereeing playoff games. You'd think if their independent audits of officiating didn't turn up anything bad on Bavetta, they'd be standing behind him all the way. And if they DID turn something up, you'd think they'd firmly turn against Bavetta. Instead we're getting this bizarre, wishy-washy response. FIFA's officiating may not be quite as precise on individual calls, but the process for grading officials appears to be far speedier and more transparent than what we have. This makes for a better system on the whole and ensures fairness way better than the slow-response black box that we've got. The point is that benign imprecision (genuine officiating errors like failing to see a handball or spotting the football wrong) is unfortunate, but it's also random - in a system with only benign imprecision you're going to see the bad calls divided about 50/50 no matter how many of them there are in a game, so while you want to take steps to minimize them, in the long run they cancel each other out. What you really need to focus on to ensure fairness is stamping out malign imprecision - bad calls that are the result of conscious or unconscious bias on the part of officials. Our system's incentives do not appear to be aligned to eliminate this as well as FIFA's does.

Exactly. What American sport offers this level of transparency and accountability? Even if we only know about this rating because of an unauthorized leak from FIFA, that's still more than you get from the NFL/MLB/NBA. The only American official I can think of who faced public discipline was Tim Donaghy, and he was guilty of federal crimes.

I call BS on this example; it's completely unrepresentative of actual officiating in the US. The entire reason the perfect game apology was notable was because US refs and umps NEVER admit fault; this one only happened because the decision denied everyone the opportunity to see a once-a-decade achievement. (Though perfect games are getting more frequent these days...wonder why that is?) Occasionally you'll see the NFL do a review well after the game and say "oh, such-and-such call was incorrect," but that's about all the "resolution" provided. My personal take is that the unpopularity of soccer in the US is largely about spectacle. Soccer requires watching closely to appreciate the nuances, and we don't give a crap about nuances, we want to see crazy plays made frequently. Soccer just doesn't deliver crazy plays more than 3 or 4 times in a typical game. Only baseball offers this low level of highlights, but baseball benefits from having discrete achievements/stats to follow and there is a lot less actual play without highlights (because the ball is in play for such a short time, whereas in soccer the ball is ALWAYS in play.)

Hey, come on, that's not fair; they're only doing their job, they didn't make the rules. Funny, that was also the excuse given by most of the....never mind. My point is that accusing customs of acting like Nazis is way out of proportion and over the line. It's a nuisance when someone's foreign packages are mis-handled by customs, but crimes against humanity, war crimes and mass murder as committed by the Nazis are in a totally different class. Let's keep things in perspective. O HAI I WUZ JOKIN HERE IZ A LOLRUS LOLZ!1

Hey, come on, that's not fair; they're only doing their job, they didn't make the rules. Funny, that was also the excuse given by most of the....never mind.

Amazon has this as a lightning deal until 6 PT. $79.99. Weird that the Amazon page no longer says "discontinued by the manufacturer"...

This was actually deleted in a previous round (December 2008).

I don't think the single CDs have significant reverb. They are 24-bit McMaster jobs though so they are likely not the same as what's on the Mosaic. Edit: this old thread appears to confirm that the reverb is gone from the most recent issues. They are a nominal investment if you are curious, though it looks like Central Park North is starting to get harder to find on Amazon. Pretty sure Monday Night hasn't come out in the US at least. Not certain of the debut but don't think it has.

Well, the initial sale of UA/Liberty to EMI in 1979 was about $9 million in today's dollars. Of course, they were buying a company that had debts of about $93 million in today's dollars...

No. The email is sent by Facebook's system, not the random person who initiated it. They don't have any way of telling that you opened this email any more than you can tell that your aunt opened the email when you use a newspaper's "share this article with a friend" button to email her an article. They also have no control over how that link is built, just as you have no control over how the link is built in the newspaper article you emailed to your aunt.

It doesn't even have to be confrontational. What's wrong with asking in good faith, "Hey, can you elaborate on the value you offer to buyers beyond your prices? I saw X at J&R for $8.99, so I'm trying to make an informed decision about whether I should buy it from you at $18.99 instead." That's the kind of request for information that is not only well-intentioned, but is genuinely useful to all potential buyers (which is why it's better than doing everything via PM). It isn't all about price to me; in some cases I'm fine with paying higher prices if a seller can demonstrate to me other reasons I should buy from them instead of a major retailer.

Yeah, that's obnoxious. I remember wincing at a few threads like that from time to time. But you know what? I think tolerating a little of that is an acceptable price to pay for having more open discussions on the subject of sales. How about the converse case - someone who shows up asking ripoff prices for easily found items in the hope of snaring a few newbies who are enthusiastic about the music but aren't aware of the basic resources we use to gauge the market for it? I mean, we tolerate people who are in effect saying "I don't have any interest in your silly music discussions; my only interest in your community is that I can get free advertising here so you buy my shit." I don't have any beef with that attitude, personally. But are we really that concerned about bending over backward so as not to offend those people? Something tells me that if they have zero interest in getting to know us before selling us stuff, their sensibilities aren't all that delicate. Or how about what BM did? He didn't call the poster greedy. He just expressed a desire to see lower reserve prices. Now, maybe BM's gauge of the market is wrong and there really are plenty of buyers at that price level, but if he's right then now the seller knows what level he should think about lowering his reserve to if he wants BM's business. I hardly see how communicating your qualified intent to buy someone's stuff counts as gauche. More information in the marketplace = more efficient selling = better for everybody. Just be polite about it.

And that's fine. I have no problem with people coming here to do that. The problem is with the expectation that the board then becomes protected space for them to post their auctions without any meaningful discussion, criticism, etc. by potential buyers. That's crap. If you want that, set up some affiliate links, post them to threads that are automatically locked to other posts, and use the links to give Jim a healthy kickback on the sales you make in exchange for allowing you completely unfettered advertising.

Given those circumstances (auction, relatively new poster doing the auctioning*, and the fact that you were communicating your intent to possibly buy if the reserves were lower) deleting your post seems like really the wrong call. *In fact, a search for that member's posts suggests that their only participation on the boards is to hawk their ebay auctions. So it's OK for sellers to use this discussion board as their personal advertising for their ebay account, but it's not OK to discuss the aspects of their auctions?

Wait, this was just a link to an auction? If that's the case, deleting your post is bullshit. You aren't just helping other buyers, you're giving useful information to the seller that could help him sell his stuff faster.