Guy Berger

Music from Another Present Era is solid, but I like Distant Hills and Winter Light better. Towner’s 1st album on ECM also features his Oregon band mates and is very good.

These guys have a new "single" - a 53 minute track titled "Solar Drone Ceremony". Enjoyable.

I didn’t realize he was 84!!!! Really interesting musician who creatively developed an important & previously undervalued strand in Miles Davis’s electric music.

Yup I think there are politicians trying to lever this question toward their agenda, unfortunately, and to some degree it is also feeding into anti-Asian-American racism here ni the US

There is a big difference between “it is possible that” and “almost certain”. (Worth reading this NYT article) Not unique… pre-COVID vaccine skepticism in the US was lower than in many continental European countries. Maybe it’s different this time, maybe not.

I’d worry less about that small Petri dish and more about the massive Petri dish of billions of unvaccinated people in developed countries that couldn’t afford to line up vaccine supplies early. Getting them jabbed is essential to reducing future mutations

My understanding based on Israeli data is that vaccine-based immunity is lasting longer than anticipated - ie at least a year. But that doesn’t take into account the possibility of increasingly evasive variants.

I think that's probably part of it - looking at vaccination rates only without considering prevalence of prior infection leads to underestimates of immunity in the population. This is true even if vaccination provides better immunity than prior infection. (Which I believe there is evidence of.) *However* - I'd be careful about drawing really strong inferences from the current decline in cases until more time passes. We have positive weather effects (maybe finally winding down as folks crowd into air-conditioned indoor spaces in the South). There has been a lot of unexplained variation in the ebb and flow of COVID that has defied explanation. Two more comments: 1) If you look at the states with relatively high and rising caseloads, they are mostly states with low vaccination rates (MO, NV, UT, AR, AZ). And if you look at the states where very low and falling caseloads, they are mostly states with high vaccination rates (VT, MA, MD, CT, DC). 2) The combination of vaccine and infection immunity is a partial "equalizer" in the near term. But over time, some areas of the country look set for very low caseloads (due to repeated vaccination) and others look set for endemic infection (due to immunity fading over time).

The music on the box really clarified the link between Hemphill and some of Tim Berne’s music (especially Bloodcount) in a way that I didn’t appreciate before.

Have listened to two more from my acquisition spree: Chris Lightcap, Epicenter 5/5 (excellent songwriting and playing; stronger than the Fresh Sound albums) Ken Filiano, Dreams from a Clown Car 5/5 (I really enjoy this one - a nice contribution to the 2-sax + bass + drums genre)

I’m curious based on that interview (and knowing I am touching a live wire) - how have Anthony Braxton’s political views changed over time (if at all)?

One other observation is that Joni Mitchell’s best and most popular music is closer timewise to the classic standards era than to our present day. Not really “new”!

IMHO the relationship between jazz and popular music that created the body of work we called “standards” doesn’t really exist anymore, for better or worse. Pop music is more fragmented; jazz is more fragmented and less “culturally relevant”. I do think the fact that certain post-1970 popular music has gained some traction among jazz musicians is interesting and worth talking about, but not the same thing. IMHO contemporary pop music rhythms and recording techniques entering the jazz world are maybe more significant than the songwriting.

Sad. But musicians are like any other group of humans, who tend to be pretty susceptible to kooky ideas. Cassandra Wilson is a Q fan, right?

Isn’t this just a fundamental problem with any mature art form? For better or worse people prefer “the old stuff”.

I agree they’re an exception, but it’s also conceivable that their steady state fanbase, while large, will be much smaller than their current one.

Can’t answer that question properly without thinking of the “legit” boxes that WOULD have been issued in the absence of PD boxes. To some degree the latter drive out the former. That said, there does seem to be some money in “legit”/ethical, smaller-run premium reissues. Maybe what we’ve observed, as in other aspects of our society, is just the disappearance / hollowing-out of middle-of-the-road mass market and it’s displacement by budget options and premium options. Agreed. At the very least I wish we had compulsory licensing. What percentage of the Beatles’ fanbase is just aging baby boomers? The value of that intellectual property could drop dramatically in the next few decades.

Agreed, I wrote something silly and that’s why I deleted my post, fortunately you’ve preserved my doofus moment for eternity 🤣🤣🤣

+1

The UCLA concert is really good. “Meditations on Inner Peace” in particular. IMHO stronger than the 1965 recordings on the Mosaic box set (though Mingus completists should listen to both.)

This was a fun one to listen to

Smart.

More broadly - hopefully we (the people in the jazz field, both fans and “producers”) will have a broader conversation about “bad behavior” by influential jazz individuals toward both younger and women industry participants. I am sure there is much more egregious behavior than what Coleman did that’s basically swept under the rug.

Less nasty misogyny on here is a good thing.

That too was gross and bad. But Seinfeld was never, to my knowledge, her teacher or employer