ghost of miles

I just had trouble logging on for about an hour or so... am I here yet?

Listening to HATFUL OF HOLLOW today, I find myself thinking the "depression rock" label a bit of a misnomer--there's such a sense of joy at the heart of the band's music, in the sense of aesthetic excitement. While they certainly had a "sound," I was always a bit uncertain of where that "sound" was going to go, as the albums came out--unlike, say, the Jesus & Mary Chain or Husker Du, who found a formula early on and did interesting things within it, but who didn't deviate all that much once they did. And I still long for the days of singles coming out every several months, though I know that's a difficult pace for most bands to sustain. The current "one CD every 3-4 years, with NO singles in between" system of distribution is a real bore, IMO.

He did indeed profess to be celibate, and often used "I/you" in his songs, eschewing direct gender identification, but songs like "Handsome Devil," "William, It Was Really Nothing" and "Hand In Glove" didn't leave much doubt... (And according to Mojo, an early, discarded song was titled, "I Want a Boy for My Birthday"). Most of my friends, like me, were straight, but we were all pretty early gay-rights advocates--and again, it's easy to forget that that was not a popular stance, particularly as the AIDS epidemic became more widespread. Perhaps listening to the Smiths was also an easy way to glom onto a sense of political militancy (their music in & of itself certainly wasn't overtly militant) because of Morrissey's identity (willed or not) as a gay lead singer... very 1980s indeed! For me, though, it was mostly that songs like "How Soon Is Now?" and "Well I Wonder" really caught the mood of being young in that particular time.

Last night I picked up a Mojo/Q issue devoted to the Smiths, and spent most of the evening reading it while I listened to a couple of their CDs. I had such a great love for this band when I was an undergrad in the mid-1980s, and their music, for the most part, has held up well. They provided such a great soundtrack for the coked-out alienation of that decade, the discovery with AIDS that love indeed kills, the rise of Reaganism/Thatcherism... As someone who was already badly hooked on R.E.M.'s early Rickenbacker sound, I was a sucker for Johnny Marr's bevy of sharply beautiful hooks (didn't he even buy Roger McGuinn's old 12-string guitar?). It's easy to forget, too, how unusual it was in 1984 for a band to be fronted by an openly gay singer (though Morrissey managed to be subtle & overt at the same time) who didn't dress in drag, a la Boy George, or camp it up in over-the-top ways. My parents were shocked when I told them Morrissey was gay and that I was listening to the band (1984 in Indiana, remember). His lyrics were such a revelation, too; my girlfriend and I laughed so hard when we first heard "Girl Afraid," which perfectly captures would-be romantic anxiety, but also includes lines such as "And she doesn't even like me/and I know because she said so..." They incorporated so many musical influences in their work, from the MC5 to girl groups (listen to MEAT IS MURDER for what I think is the best example of their range). And they were a great singles band--God, there was such a thrill in going down to one of the local record shops every three months to get the new 12-inch (and their b-sides were often pretty killer as well). In the fall of 1986, while I was still taking in THE QUEEN IS DEAD, I went to visit a friend at a nearby dorm. He was a solemnly benign, hipper-than-thou poet who dressed in de rigeur black, and as I was talking to him he lowered a needle onto his turntable. "What is it?" I asked. "It's the new Smiths single," he said with a look of wry merriment, and as the opening chords of "Panic" careened off the record-player, he broke into a bohemian jig. God, that song! "Burn down the disco/hang the blessed DJ/because the music that he constantly plays/It says nothing to me about my life," followed by children singing the joyously defiant refrain, "Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ..." It caught so well what many of us felt about radio in the 1980s. The Smiths, we felt, were our band--the sensitive, lonely aesthetes finally had a club. Which is why the day that I heard they were breaking up felt like the end of an era in indie music. I imagined it was what many more felt 17 years before when they heard that the Beatles were no more. Autumn 1987 was a bleak time in many respects, and news of the Smiths' conclusion made it only more so. In a 1986 interview, Morrissey said, when asked what fate he wished for their songs: "I don't necessarily hope that people will say we changed their lives--I just hope they say our songs remind them of a certain period in their lives." In that case, they succeeded wildly, and then some.

Just picked up THE BIG CLOCK last night--haven't watched it yet, or any more from the Warner noir box beyond OUT OF THE PAST. ADR, haven't heard about new DVD plans for DOUBLE INDEMNITY. I keep hoping, however, that they'll find the "lost" ending that Wilder cut, in which you actually see MacMurray make the trip to the gas chamber. There are still photos of it in James Naremore's book on film noir, MORE THAN NIGHT.

I picked up a 2-CD Don Cherry Sonet in Ann Arbor about five years ago.

That's what I thought too, Jim! The comment I couldn't "source" many posts back was indeed from the INVOLUTION liners, which are partially replicated in the Mosaic booklet... either Sam was misquoted the first time around, or he came to view the experience with Miles differently. Fascinating stuff... in any event, I went back and listened to FUSCHIA SWING SONG last night. God, what an album!

Saw mention of this in Cuscuna's liner notes when I re-read the Rivers Mosaic booklet last night. It was a Left Bank gig; has it ever surfaced on tape?

Just started David Leavering Lewis' WHEN HARLEM WAS IN VOGUE, a book about the Harlem Renaissance. For anybody who's interested in early-20th-century Harlem, you might want to check out Jervis Anderson's THIS WAS HARLEM (which covers 1900-1950) and A RENAISSANCE IN HARLEM, a collection of WPA/Federal Writers' Project pieces which focuses on everyday life in Harlem during the 1930s (some of the writers include the then-unknown Dorothy West and Ralph Ellison).

Thanks for posting that, Brad. This is getting a lot of attention--there's an AP story that's in Yahoo's newsbox today as well. I think ES's last year was a bit better than the way it's described in the NY Times article (much of what they're referring to went down in 2001 & '02). And man, Joanna Bolme. Elliott once said that he'd only been in love once, and he was referring to her (she's supposedly who "Say Yes" is about; in fact, many of his songs, IMO, are about her).

One of the things I love about Bloomington, Chris, is that I'm likely to run into several people I know when I take a walk downtown. It's just big enough that not everybody knows your business, but that running into a friend isn't at all uncommon. I'm sure others have that experience in urban neighborhoods that have their own sense of identity (Chicago, for instance, which seems full of "villes" unto themselves), but it's a routine part of life here for which I'm grateful.

I hope this comes to pass. My wife & I skip cable, but if we could get just the few channels that we'd like to have, we might opt for it:

Whew! Okay... for a while there I was worried for ya.

I definitely agree, Lazaro. As intriguing as it is to think of what direction the band might have taken with Rivers, it was obviously in both artists' interests to pursue the paths that they did. I just find the whole Davis/Rivers chapter fascinating; I'm calling the program "A Brief Convergence." Rivers on POINT OF DEPARTURE? Wow... I can imagine that more than I can his joining the Messengers.

Another question, in addition to Lazaro's very telling ones: why is Sony not including the 7/12 and 7/15 concerts in the forthcoming 1963-64 box? And are there any other musical/audio documents of Miles & Rivers together from earlier that year? P.S. Just read your post--great story, MartyJazz! Yeah, I like that "Oleo" track quite a lot and intend to play it on the program.

Weizen, what the hell you going to NYC for? Don't you know that city's fulla Democrats and dangerous liberal-types?

Up for broadcast later tonight. 9:10 out West, 12:10 on the East Coast. Here's a link to time zones. Hoping, within a week or two, to have a webpage and a link to archived programs. And several Organissimo posters will get an appreciative mention on next week's Miles/Sam Rivers program.

This comes from the website that Guy mentioned: Okay, but here's another pickle: if Rivers was too "outside" for what Miles was up to, why was he working as a musical director for T-Bone Walker, according to Peter Kaz? I love T-Bone and I know that a paying gig is a paying gig--maybe I'm showing my non-musicianship here, and Sam would've approached a frontline soloing gig w/Miles in a much different vein than a musical director chair for Walker. FWIW, Rivers doesn't sound as outside to me on the 7/12/64 concert as the above implies. But perhaps my ears are wearing the "40 years later" filters.

If I come across the source, I'll post it. To paraphrase another board member, Inferno affirmative!

Guy Guy, I'm planning on re-reading the Rivers Mosaic booklet tomorrow as I work on the show. Thanks much for the link & the other comments. Late, despite my reverence for Rivers, I realize that he is indeed human and that his 2000 comments might be tinged with revisionism... yet maybe this issue is much simpler than I'm trying to make it, and Miles just wanted somebody to keep the chair warm for Shorter. But I seem to recall Rivers himself once saying that his own musical inclinations at the time were more "out" than what Miles wanted... I'll have to see if I can track down the source for that comment.

For cultural-commodities freaks (i.e., most of this board), I wonder how much of a difference the Internet has made. You can now live in the middle of nowhere and order books, CDs, DVDs, etc., without any problem--no need to drive to a Borders or what have you. You can also "socialize" to some extent in places like these. Doesn't really replace the real thing, of course (though for some I suppose it does), but the whole phenomenon might make country living more palatable for a few folks--a way to stay connected while being away from it all. I've often fantasized about living on some rugged, isolated part of the Olympic Penisula, but I know I'd still be hitting Organissimo and ordering music, films, and literature like a madman from time to time.

Late, No doubt my statement was terribly reductive in and of itself. I'm so distrustful of much jazz history "conventional wisdom" that sometimes I'm inclined to dismiss theories and/or ideas that are solidly grounded in reality. The Rivers 2000 webchat may put the question paid in some respects, but I still wonder--I mean, if Miles had loved Sam's playing & how he fit in with the group, would he still have wanted Shorter back? Would it, or did it, cause a dilemma for Miles at all? (Seemingly it didn't.) Is that all that Rivers' stay with Davis was--a stopgap measure until Shorter was done with the Messengers? I'm the last person on earth to doubt Sam Rivers' word; he strikes me as close to a holy man of jazz. And I'm still trying to imagine what the Messengers would have sounded like with Rivers on tenor. Who did replace Shorter, after John Gilmore's abbreviated spell w/Blakey?

On the one hand... --Frank O'Hara, "Meditations in an Emergency" On the other hand, I love living in Bloomington--a small, friendly, pretty town that also offers a world of culture--much of it free or very cheap--because of Indiana University. (The School of Music alone gives us so much in the way of classical and jazz performances.) In some ways it's the best of both worlds; the owner of a local bookstore frequently tells me how he would have to pay several thousand dollars a year and take a cab or the subway to attend performances which he sees for free here (and to which he usually walks). Still, I see the jazz listings in NYC papers and groan... Side note: I just learned today that Adam Herbert, IU's new president, is Jason Moran's uncle. How cool is that? Hope it increases our chances for bringing Moran here as a leader--he came through with Greg Osby a couple of years ago and pretty much stole the show.

I just did some Googling and came up with this Jazz at Lincoln Center webchat that Rivers did about four years ago: Full webchat here. Rivers was supposed to join the Messengers?!