Lazaro Vega

Is Jost available in English?

They wrote me back, too, saying go Safari or Mozilla, but Internet Explorer is out. I can use it from work, where we have dial up, but not on the I Mac, which in is only 6 months old, on the high speed home computer. I'm shocked to read you all having the same problems, though. They've made their site much less user friendly by limiting the compatability of browsers, bowser.

Thanks Larry -- I see what you were saying then. Hey, is the book out now? Roscoe added those elements of rhthmic variety to the energy school. What is amazing is that he did it in the moment. There are still musicians who don't "get" what was going down in that period of music, but Roscoe was there (actually past it into his own band concept) by '66 or '67. Over the 4th of July I was reading Frederick Douglass' speech about the 4th (http://afgen.com/douglas.html) -- in a sense the ideals of recognition he was enunciating came closer to becoming reality in the 1960's than at any other time in American history. That's like a giant social geyser erupting -- how many years of pressure finally finding release? While the romantic side of the jazz fan plays into hearing the music from that era in the social context, it is also the dramatic moment that calls for something other than a madrigal to get across the joy/pain/shock/hope and dignity the moment called for. And Ornette made that possible, too, the freedom to express it all. Nothing before contained the fullness of those emotions in music, but by re-interpreting the tradition, the music gave voice to the time. Duke "sang" about it, but musicians of the 60's became it, it being the drama and excitement at the birth of a new emancipation -- the civil rights movement -- and the confusion of war, riots, assasinations and poverty. So in some ways Coltrane was multi-faceted dramatically in his later period -- or at least able to capture the energy, ecstacy and simultaneous confusion of the time, a time that was not so much about reflection as it was going headlong into the future. By the mid-60's Sonny was sounding like that , too, don't you think? What a world it was when Malcom X and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were talking about real change. There's no contemporary equivilant. Today Martin would be arrested as a terrorist under the Patriot Act. No wonder music of that era sounds foriegn to so many folks -- it parallels ideas of social change that have just about disappeared or are under constant assault toward elimination. Sorry to take this so generalist -- I mean, thanks for the specific musical examples.

Larry Kart: "...Rollins may have given to jazz just the tool it needs to survive the apparent exhaustion of the emotional resources open to the improviser whose relationship to his material is one to one, which is what I think can be heard in the later work of John Coltrane." Larry would you mind elaborating on that? Trane's later works (Ascension?) are examples of a musician who had wrung out all of the emotions possible in a one on one relationship to the material? I'm just not reading that clearly.

Sorry I wasn't more clear: the material I was copying was from a 1974 lp re-issue of Gemini II called Gemini, spelled on the cover "Gem-in-eye" but on the spine Gemini. It is the same music.

Any further confirmation of this?

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=14191

Oh, he didn't mention my favorite "cut," "Third Rail." If you want to get on the mainstage at the Chicago Jazz Festival, you need to get on the club stages around town first. Doesn't that make sense? I don't know how politically difficult that may be, but it would seem there's a natural progression to playing from level to level. And the Chi jazz fest is a top level.

Amen to that. On further consideration (and listening), Wilbur's dynamic range and attack behind Freeman is more provacative than the smooth and swinging Jimmy C.

For what it is worth, Sam Rivers toured with Dizzy Gillespie in the 1980's and they came through Grand Rapids -- a club date, two hours of music, at least. Impressions? Rivers looked like a needle wrapped in brown leather -- he's rail thin. Musically, he played himself, but didn't play at the extremes of register he's capable of, just really fit with the band. It was cool. (Ed Cherry was on that group, maybe Will Lee on electric bass, but can't remember for sure).

I just read the last line of Sachs review and concluded he got it right: Charles Lloyd really comes on like Ornette at times, minus the plaintive blues cry. This is a fascinating recording and throws open a whole 'nother window on Higgins as musician. Then I wrote this -- The Islamic overtones of the entire disc, too, would seem to be a political statement at a time when jazz is really lacking in that sort of activity, Ted Sirota notwithstanding. So, "world music" plus the Islamic overtones -- some of the singing sounds more like prayer -- and this is a spiritualist recording, which might be said about a lot of Lloyd's music, but this one isn't trite or lifestyle or merely 'California' -- this is looking over the edge of life. -- before reading the rest of Lloyd's review. He, of course, wrote with more clarity and specificity, but the point is, whether you live in Mayberry or Chicago those spirit vibes come through strong in this recording.

Henry Johnson has a new record out called "Organic" with Nancy Wilson. It is at work, and since All Music switched their site, the iMAC with Netscape doesn't work there anymore so I can't go hunt it down for you, so I can't confirm who's playing the '3. Good record, though. I believe it is on A-440.

Need to get Anthony Braxton back to Chicago. Times a-wastin'.

Re-read that at work tonight...

I have, and the original is much longer - a wail fest. There's really no comparison. The new one is, what, 9 minutes shorter? yet perhaps further outside the changes -- Von's playing has permutated, but this new album attests to the principles he was working on when Nessa first woke a sleeping world up to the radical individualism that is Von Freeman (that unique synthesis of Bird, Pres and Hawk). CHICAGO, baby! And as far as rhythm sections go, Jimmy Cobb/Wilbur Campbell -- I'll call it a draw, if not leaning to Wilbur's side (he was much younger after all). John Young, especially on the blues/ballad Freeman album on Nessa, has more quirky blue collar funk goin' on than the wonderful Richard Wyands. None-the-less, we should all be so uppity at 80-something! Von Freeman!!!!

Hey, you guys are correct, it was Charles Lloyd. Sorry about that. My bad.

By the way, at the end of the day, Davis was right to hold out for Shorter. Maybe it was Shorter's approximation of Coltrane's sound during that time, or his incredible writing. Haven't you ever had a woman in your life that you just "had to have," that is, be close to? And whenever the chance came around, no matter who you were with, it was an "if only" idea in the back of your head whenever you saw her? Seems like Wayne was that kind of musician to Miles. Just had to have him in his band.

In the new Andrew Hill Jazzpar Octet Cd, Hill mentions Rivers was to have been the saxophonist on "Point of Departure."

While waiting it might be a good time to try and define in words what is meant by "inside" and "outside" playing in the context of the band. Inside the chord changes, or staying near the melody? Swing time, rubato or pulse rhythms? Where does blues expressiveness end and freer expressiveness begin? Since Miles band in this period was also going towards modes as a primary means of organizing the improvisations, may it have been that was too "lean" on musical material for Rivers to fully realize the sounds he was hearing and trying to get out the horn? Miles mid-60's bands were not THAT commercial. 15 minute versions of "My Funny Valentine"? The "time, no changes" feel of that classic rhythm section? Questions for discussion.

"Happy Reunion" from Newport in '58 with Mex and the rhythm section, maybe a chorus and a half...Lovely...I don't think it is the same take as on the double CD of that concert -- the version which came out on the LP "Jazz Critics Choice" is a tighter performance, very succinct interpretation of the melody, just beautiful. David Murray talks about Gonzalves in the new Down Beat and says the D&CinB solo was a starting point for his appreciation of Gonzalves as a rhythmic artist, and someone who could place a ton of information in a phrase and have it come out sounding musical. That's a paraphrase. That long Newport solo is so singable, though, and swinging. Over rated? Well, one could say the whole trip in the 50's was over rated because of Columbia's great promo machine and that it is Duke in the 30's when he was at his height as a composer, and in the 1939-41 period as a bandleader. But really, you have to dig it all -- taking apart Ellington by decades misses the large picture, the way that certain pieces changed over time or were re-interpreted. Such as "our 1938 vintage,..." you know the rest.

Great "Body and Soul." Great crowd, too.

Spoof. Ya think?

I tried, as a non-musician, to articulate the pitch idea on the previous post ("Easy Living").

Yeah Guy, that was the cut I hit hard for the radio.

You mean Robin Eubanks or trombone? Or was his brother, Duane?, playing trumpet?