Dr. Rat

Hey, we ain't got money, but we got plenty of jazz (53 hours!) --eric

First (full disclosure), I think I'm biased in favor of "social realist" style interpretations, even if they are (as is the case with the Hopper painting, apparently) a misinterpretation. This because I was raised a socialist and I'll probably always prefer social explanations for everything. (God help me! As you might imagine, I am a difficult man to live with: "you're only saying that because . . .") Second, these sorts of misinterpretations seem to have very little "feedback" effect on artists. Hopper's response seems to be pretty typical. He just doesn't care about this "academic BS" and I doubt it had any effect on his work. (Though I might be wrong, knowing little about Hopper.) If we lived in the old Soviet Union, I suppose this sort of misinterpretation would be much more dangerous. People with guns might have made Hopper paint "about" boring suburbia. On the other hand, I think the Coltrane phenomenon has had a lot of effect on how jazz gets created. I think a taste for "advanced" forms of jazz gets encouraged amongst musicians, that musicians who attempt to play "advanced" kinds of jazz get more respect than musicians who, say, try to improvise in the style of Lester Young; and that an important part of the validation for this way of thinking is the at least somewhat questionable reverence given to the late work of John Coltrane by musicians and fans. In our discussion earlier the point being urged on me was that the taste for late Coltrane was like any other taste, you either have it or you don't, it isn't provable that Coltrane is good or bad and we move on. But the jazz world is not a world where the taste for Coltrane is on an equal footing with other tastes. I think it is very much an inculcated taste, a priviliged taste, while other tastes are generally looked upon with contempt. My idea is that this is bad rather than good for the music over the long run. The preceding are impressions. I have placed no wagers on the truth of any of these statements, nor will I. They were written in a normal tone of voice, though I may have been talking too fast--I did drink another coffee since having been warned off caffeine. One thing I just can't take is good advice. --eric

Anxious to see the Herbie Nichols review. He's probably best known now for not being recognized enough rather than for his music. But anyhow, please do carry on. Things will sort out, I suppose. But as a former editor, let me suggest: dictionary definitions as a last resort only. --eric

Sorry, not a cover, just uses a basic Wild Magnolias riff as a loop to build on, BUT, if you don't have the two Wild Magnolias French Polydor releases, by all means run off and buy. The self-titled album is definitely worth full-price admission. "They Call Us Wild" is a bit derivative and over-produced, but still good stuff. --eric

Yeah. This is tasty. MMW-ish with a bit of New Orleans flavor. This got lots of action here when it was current. Think I'll pull that bad boy out on Friday. The Wild Magnolia's piece (Fallin' off the Floor) used to light up the phones pretty dependably. --eric

And I thought the "Let's put on a show" thing was Mickey Rooney! We Irish got to keep claim to our cultural contributions too, you know.

Hmm. Why am I sympathetic to the one kind of "misinterpretation" but not the other? I will mull this while I add cds to rotation. --eric

First let's talk about the way CPB subsidizes some stations but not others. Then we'll talk about how much budget I have to try such an experiment. Though if you wanted to try deeds not words, I'd be glad to try it with Blue Lake guaranteeing the artists' fee. But I don't suppose you are THAT interested.

So why should anyone else be interested in Hopper's attempt to paint a white house without using white paint? While Hopper's explanation might be totally lacking in academic BS, it's also totally lacking in any reason to be interested in his work. So you are implying that because of one single person's misinterpretation (apparently not very well informed) in the introduction to Hopper's speech at a civic center somewhere in a small American suburban community, you are saying that all his work is nothing more than doing excercises in color to paint pictures of white houses without using any white paint. Him clarifying that this was just an exercise is a reason not to be interested in his work? If his fame was based on misinterpretations, why did he even bother to clarify that the painting was nothing more than an exercise? Cynisism? Based on one misinterpretation you are excluding any of Hopper's accomplishments. Incredible. No, what I am saying is that unless Hopper's work has some significance outside of his very narrow view he expresses in your anecdote, there's no reason for his work to be successful. The "mistaken" view is a lot more plausible that Hopper's, because people at large actually care about things like "the lonely feeling of rural Americans, the battle between the oncoming industrialization of America and the relics of the past standing nobly but threatened, etc.,etc." Whereas people by and large do not care so much about the possibilities of painting a white house without using white paint. So, I am saying that unless Hopper's work has significance outside of mere painting technicalia it ends up in a hotel room somewhere. But Hopper's work does, in fact, have social significance. Therefore we find it in museums, on the covers of books and other places which express our reverance for it. --eric

If I may self-diagnose a bit: I think what your pointing out is my tendency to be a rhetorical & theoretical counter-puncher. I didn't come into this discussion with too much in the way of a congealed take on the issue--just some interrelated ideas that seemed to go together, but I didn't know how. My hope in the discussion was to bounce some of these ideas off a knowledgable group of folks and see what happens. I'm not really doing the rigorous debate thing--my thinking adapts as I go along, though in ways that are tangential to the thing we might be talking about at the time. So some of the stuff I learned from your posts comes back as a (however distorted and possibly patronizing) idea of what it might be like to work as a musician: "I agree that artists do not often theroize their work. Warhol did, but most artists just seem to feel around, employing things that appeal to them hoping to find a way that will allow them to please themselves please others and make a living, if possible." (from a few posts back) And, if you wanted to bother, I'm sure you can see the backing and filling and adding I've had to do since I opened the discussion. I think too, I've been fighting against a tendency amongst the board members here to "read between the lines" too much (and read the actual lines themselves too little). To assign motives that I don't have, to suppose me something that I'm not (a besotten 18-year-old, a Stanley Crouch manque, a defensive neophyte, etc., etc.) So I've tended to address these misapprehensions rather than whatever productive points someone might write. Perhaps I am kind of thin-skinned! --eric

Perhaps you're right. And when I say perhaps, I by no means mean to imply that there is a possibility that you are wrong. No, just a space filler . . Unless of course there is someone else out there who thinks otherwise, I wouldn't want to offend their sensibilities either, so . . well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. And when I use the words "right" and "wrong," please know that I don't use them in any sort of absolutist sense, I am a relativist just like everyone else, I assure you, no offense intended to anyone whose hackles are raised by anyone seeming (even momentarily) to be certain of something. Sorry! I haven't figured out a way to parse "you're" yet. So obviously I'm a dullard. A waste of valuable bits. God help me!

On the troll thing: I have an idea of what you're talking about, but humor me: What do you specifically mean by this and why apply it to me? As to certainty, etc. I am an ink & paper fellow at heart I suppose. I rarely use stuff like emoticons and I find constant apologizing for having opinions and questions to be kind of tiresome, so I don't usually bother. Perhaps I'm bucking the trend but I think we'd be better off giving everyone the benefit of the doubt while reading rather than writing so as to head off every possible misinterpretation. If you think I'm abosolutist about any of this, I'm sorry you think so badly of me, but I think you are assigning the wrong tone of voice to what I write. (it ought to be high-pitched and squeaky) --eric

If it looks COOL, I'm interested in it. No matter what the artist's intention is or how he produced the stuff. Back to my meal - sardines+chocolate cakes (I can't justify why I like this combination). "Begging the Question" Begging the question is what one does in an argument when one assumes what one claims to be proving. An argument is a form of reasoning whereby one gives a reason or reasons in support of some claim. The reasons are called premises and the claim one tries to support with them is called the conclusion. If one's premises entail one's conclusion, and one's premises are questionable, one is said to beg the question. The following argument begs the question. We know God exists because we can see the perfect order of His Creation, an order which demonstrates supernatural intelligence in its design. The conclusion of this argument is that God exists. The premise assumes a Creator and Designer of the universe exists, i.e., that God exists. In this argument, the arguer should not be granted the assumption that the universe exhibits intelligent design, but should be made to provide support for that claim. From the skeptic's dictionary. All we've done is gone from the question "What constitutes interesting art" to What consititutes art that "looks cool?" The sardines and chocolate cakes: sandwiches? --eric

So why should anyone else be interested in Hopper's attempt to paint a white house without using white paint? While Hopper's explanation might be totally lacking in academic BS, it's also totally lacking in any reason to be interested in his work. It doesn't really matter what Hopper thought he was doing. What matters is what the work is. If it wasn't "an expression of the lonely feeling of rural Americans, the battle between the oncoming industrialization of America and the relics of the past standing nobly but threatened, etc.,etc." or something of that sort, no one would give a damn about it, Hopper wouldn't be famous, and his painting would probably be competently executed eye candy in a hotel room somewhere. Art, of course, is probably the best place to find the sort of "inauthentic" aesthetic appreciation that I'm talking about. Much of Andy Warhol's career makes sense as a satire of the art world. What he produced, whatever it was, was counted as art because he was one of the elect--he was an Artist! (cue angelic choir) But the Hopper point does bring up an interesting issue. I agree that artists do not often theroize their work. Warhol did, but most artists just seem to feel around, employing things that appeal to them hoping to find a way that will allow them to please themselves please others and make a living, if possible. So, the shape art eventually takes is highly context-dependent. My thinking is that jazz may have some serious problems because of this. Duke Ellington called himself a "man of the theatre." He came up playing speakeasies, having to please and win over crowds that didn't necessarily come to see him or anything like him, playing background music for "exotic" dances, without the cover of being considered to be art. While, of course, he chafed at this and longed for the more comfortable position of "artistic legitimacy," I think the need to create his art in the context of entertainment gave him a context in which he could create great work. I don't think today's "jazz musician context" is nearly as fertile. I think today society has a rather sycophantic attitude toward artists (what Warhol was sending up). Any jazz musician who plays regularly for money is a junior grade (A)rtist. Anyone on a major label is a full-fledged Artist. If people are dissatisfied with what gets played, they're a lot more likely to disappear that to challenge (who wnats to get called a philistine?). Jazz is left with a smaller and smaller politely admiring audience. The greatest embarassment for a jazz musician is not an attempt at art that fails (perhaps this is what we've come to expect), but an attempt at enetertainment that fails. Instead of playing to diverse crowds of people with widely differing expectations, jazz artsists today get to play in fixed-seat art centers where listeners are strapped in and forced to listen like poor Alex in the Clockwork Orange. Or they play clubs where the music they play is the central theme of the evening (regardless of whether people actually pay attention). This isn't necessarily an indictment of the artists themselves, but rather of the use they are put to by society at large and the increasingly sterile artistic context we're left with. This is sort of riffing on a Crouch/Murray theme, but neither of them is a complete moron. They can be learned from. Just as Josef Goebbels can be learned from (Fox has!). --eric

I think we are pretty much in agreement on this, except that a) I don't have as much confidence in the fact/value distinction as you seem to; and B) I wouldn't radically privilige someone's knowledge of their aesthetic experience just because that person is the one experiencing it. I admit, this may sound weird, but the ability to criticize someone's "experience" is essential to entire fields of study--psychology, studies of ideology, aesthetics, etc. That people may be mistaken as to their own motives I think we ought to take as a given. The fact that people have different aesthetic opinions I'd also take as a given. I'm not neccessarily interested in resolving whatever contradictions or complications or goodness that might come out of that. There is a third possibility: these folks think they are telling the truth but they actually aren't (therefore they aren't lying, because lying implies intent not just saying that which is false, and they aren't telling the truth either.) My idea is that genuine aesthetic response is possible (as McDonough points out, the ancient Sumerians were messing around with some of the same musical realtionship that we are playing around with--I think there is an argument to be made that there are some natural aesthetic responses to musical experiences, though I wouldn't follow McDomough implication: that therefore we ought to stick to manipulating the "conventional" musical relationships). I would also acknowledge that positive aesthetic responses are possible to Coltrane Live in Tokyo, though I've never had any. (This by the way doesn't trouble me.) But I would say to the extent that Coltrane's work is deeply complex, and to the extent that a great deal of context that may be necessary to appreciate it, to this extent we ought to be skeptical of claims of positive reception. I think JSngy gave us an excellent sketch of (one portion of?) his aesthetic reaction to Coltrane, which I beleive implicitly. But, I suspect a lot of (not all, we have to provide for people with great natural facility for music) uneducated positive responses to Coltrane of being motivated socially as I've described earlier or by "shallow as a schoolyard puddle" motives: "God that's raucus!! And it's consdiered to be art! Thrash with official validation, that's for me now that I'm old enough to look undignified in the moshpit." If this was a particularly "difficult" piece of Coltrane's that the kids across the street thought was cool, I'd suspect "shallow as a schoolyard puddle motives." --eric

What is "proper" appreciation? I can kill a flower just by looking at it, but I love them anyway. Forget about me actually raising one, though. Ugly. Pure-D UGLY! My wife, otoh, has the proverbial green thumb, but I doubt that she knows a pistil from a stamen, which I do. So who's got the "proper" appreciation of THIS form of life? I think we both do, in our own way, but SHE'S the one who needs to have the garden. Even though we both can derive genuine satisfaction from it, it is no doubt a "different" satisfaction that we each receive. It's the same w/Trane. People DO appreciate it. Why they do is a question with many different answers, I'm sure, and some of them would include the "I say I like it becasue I'd like to like it type". But you're right -to assume that all, or even most, would fall into this category IS smug, and moreso than perhaps you realize. Nothing personal, honestly, but this kind of thing (why do other people REALLY like what they say they like and do they in fact REALLY like it) seems to concern you much more than it does me. I will, for now anyway, respectfully (which, yes, is a change from my previous position) withdraw from the discussion, because I don't think that I will ever have "answers" to the questions you raise. Do you talk to many experienced musicians and/or many highly-experienced, veteran listeners, or do you just talk just to relatively novice-level "fans"? Your sampling might be severely skewered. And honestly, there'a vaguely voyeuristic quality to the whole question that makes me feel slightly (and undefinably) uncomfortable. But that's just me. I will say this though - thinking about art and jazz and where they're going never actually GOT them anywhere. It's the DOing that gets the GOing accomplished, and that's a process that will never be perfect until the going gets to where it needed to get, at which point the whole thing's over, and it's time for the next trip to begin. "Perfection" is an end, literally, not a process. Have a nice day, and perhaps some other time we can continue. That's cool. Just to answer your parting questions: I've had the opportunity to talk to both musicians and fans on this general topic, but have found musicians generally aren't particularly comfortable talking about aesthetics (this voyeuristic feeling you get? I don't know). What I do get from musicians seems to lend credence to the esoterism argument: they like Coltrane becasue he works at a pretty exalted level of technical sophistication which they can understand and appreciate in much the same manner as you describe yourself appreciating him earlier. By an large, though, I don't find that musicians have a very good idea of why non-musicians ought to like Coltrane, are vaguely resentful when they do not, and are pretty unreflective in putting forward Coltrane-influenced ideas of "progress" and "pushing limits" as aesthetic standards for younger performers. Fans, on the other hand, seem to like him for a variety of reasons that I've heard, for many he seems to be conceived as vicarious primal scream therapy or as an example of the absolute outer limits, and admirable as such. On thinking/doing/going: How does one know if one is doing the wrong thing and going in the wrong direction if someone isn't thinking? PT Barnum once said nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. In a way, an increadibly arrogant smug statement. But one with an important grain of truth to it, I'd say. That grain of truth make me think that something seeming arrogant or smug is a bad reason for thinking it untrue.

Man, what's your sample size of people you've met that've read both or either of these books! You must travel in exalted circles! The people who say they bought the SUV because it was safer aren't really lying, either. It's not really a question of lying. The fact that someone might read what I wrote as arrogant I've already acknowledged. But I have no trouble acknowledging that my doctor knows more about my gallbladder than I do (to get back to the innards theme), I see no reason to object absolutely to the notion that someone might know more about why I like things than I do. And what I'm talking about here is a hypothesis, nothing more. --eric

My question is this: If Coltrane cannot be adequately criticized from a non-technical standpoint, can he be properly appreciated from a non-technical standpoint? My suspicion is that Coltrane's music is complex to the point that it is a muiscal form of esotericism, that its appeal is not immediate for the vast majority of listeners, and that the statement "I like this music" may be best interpreted as "I would like to be seen as someone who likes this sort of thing, but, truly, I neither understand nor enjoy this music." I am not cocksure about this, I put it out as a proposition to be considered. Is it arrogant to think I may know better about what people like and why they do thinigs than they do? Perhaps, but in my experience people don't really have a great grasp for why they do things and why they like things. A for instance: If you ask people whetehr they will participate in a sorted recycling program you get numbers that are all over the map vis-a-vis the participation you actually get. If you ask them whether thay think other people will comply, your yes number is generally very close to actual compliance. Or ask people why they buy an SUV and you'll get all kinds of absurd answers which are essentially rationalizations of the real reason they bought it. So, sometimes it may be right to be a little arrogant in these situations. Not necessarily this time, but . . . As far as the "bait-type terms" go. Those were McDonough's terms, not mine. McDonough was interesting to me because he brought up many of the very general terms that I thought ought to be at play in a discussion like this--music, emotionalism, religion, transcendance, delusion, social groups, inclusionary & exclusionary practices, blah blah blah. I'm not really too anxious to start throwing around invective or heaping scorn on anyone. And I'm not defensive about my tastes vs. those of others I'm just questioning how these things are thought to work in general. Not getting Coltrane is not my personal tragedy or anything. But I think how we answer these sorts of questions has important implications for how we think about art and jazz and where they're going. --eric

I'd certainly be intersted. The station runs a reasonably broad mix of jazz, blues, roots, world, alt. country which I come into regular contact with, so I could suggest new stuff. I've also got a pretty big collection of weird pop, folk & world to draw on. So I'd have plenty of suggestions and would be willing to give other people's suggetions a spin or two. --eric

Picking up from JSngry (and moving closer to Wittgenstein?): You may not know chess, but I think you picked up my drift: There are other very important elements to the appreciation of late Coltrane aside from admiration of his technical "accomplishment." I don't have enough knowledge of the music to really follow Coltrane through this process of discovering new possibilities and having a go at them and succeeding or failing--I don't "hear" this in any direct way, though since you do know about them, I acknowledge that they are there, and I'd be interested in knowing more about them, though this message board is probably not the place to undertake that project. But anyhow, I imagine that even if I did find out about what Coltrane was up to from a technical standpoint, I probably still wouldn't be able to hear the music and image Coltrane as a protagonist in the way that you do (Granted, this is not worship--I imagine other musicians (Coleman Hawkins, say) in much the same way--people taking risks and resolving them in various affecting ways and I don't think of it as worship). A few posts back JSngry questioned the ability of those who are technically unequipped to understand Coltrane to critique him. I wonder if there is reason to question the ability of the technically unequipped to appreciate Coltrane. Of course I don't know very much about Ellington's harmonies or voicings, but I can hear them just fine. But Coltrane, it would seem to me, raises the stakes a fair deal, to the point where I think it may be highly questionable whether the musically uneducated may be (generally -- there will be gifted exceptions) unable either to understand or even appreciate what's going on. --eric

Wanted to thank everybody who has made the effort to grapple with this "game" (I'll accept that) I got rolling here. I wanted to ask a few questions about JSngry's posts which, to some extent move the grounds for discussion to technique, where there is a fair deal of consensus. So at least for you Coltrane's accomplishments come down to more or less defining the limits of conventional music. I wonder how you would compare this sort of accomplishment to, say the accomplishment of Garry Kasparov (or, say, some future computer) in defining the limits of what may be done within the rules of chess. (Let's imagine that some sort of limit is being defined there, even if it isn't really) Would these sorts of accomplishments be on a level with each other? If not, what differences do you see? --eric

Just to address Chuck Nessa's last: I don't think I wrote anything even at all disrespectful of anyone prior to his post about drunken dorm-room conversations. I'm not particularly thin-skinned, but I'm not happy being characterized as a drunken college student, either. Pretty much all of my aggressive or "insulting" languauge has been other people's aggressive or satirical language turned back on them, which I think is fair game. Personally, I took it all to be in good fun. I certainly have no axe to grind with Chuck Nessa, but if you are going to be satirical or "insulting" (i wouldn't use that word) with me, you aren't going to get a free ride. On the other hand I don't take it personally. Just part of the fun of discourse with creative, intelligent and sometimes prickly people. Certainly no disrespect intended on my part. Anyhow, I did look over the prior posts, and that's how I feel about them. I am open to criticism from others, however. --eric

Well, the point isn't to change McDonough's mind. I really don't care about him. I haven't met him and he can live out his life entrapped in the most embarassing possible delusions for all I care. Though some of the people who have known him for 30 years might care, I'm satisfied leave the personal salvation of John McDonnough to someone else. And no, I'm not getting undergrad credit (or even graduate credit) for this discussion. Rather than changing McDonough's mind or college credit, what I'm getting at here is this: people like McDonough make an argument, essentially that people who are big fans of music like the late Coltrane stuff he critiques are not repsonding to the music so much as they are positioning themselves socially, and the "difficulty" of the music is obscurantist: it works to assure that not just anyone can gain entre to the in-group. Stuff like "A Love Supreme," he argues, is nothing but an instrument of modern cultural tribalism. Now what I wonder is whether there is a response that can be articulated to this point. I've never seen a very good one. Usually people just roll their eyes and make a few comments to the converted about how impossibly cool Interstellar Space is. In other words, the usual response to the critique is to act out its characterization (caricature?) of avant-garde jazz fans. While I have the utmost respect for concerns about swollen prostate glands and how these might take precedence over other things, I'd point out that the embrace of the unexamined is the prevailing attitude amongst this country 18-year-olds, not navel-gazing. I know because I spend a long time teaching them: they generally aren't interested in thinking very much about anything at all: "I love The Real World, I've examined my TV Guide, I know when it's on, and that's all the examination I need." We can just change some of the proper nouns and we have an American motto that's good for all ages and all in-groups! --eric

I'm not familiar with the particular collection you mention, but I would recommend looking for the French Columbia double disc with the same title--the remasters are better than usually found on Classics, in my experience. Also, you might be interested in their earlier work for Decca, which is collected on an early Classics disc 1938-39. This is before they got their schtick completely down, which is a good thing in my opinion. Three or four early tracks are on 52nd Street Swing, a collection that has a number of other items that might be of interest including some nice early Roy Eldridge performances. --eric

I don't think so. If I choose ignore the writings of John McDonough it may diminish your view of me (if you are aware of it), but does not concern the music at all. This reminds me of drunken, late night dormroom discussions. It's kind of funny that when people discuss totally inane things badly, no one seems to care, but trying to disuss anything serious (well or badly) always inspires someone to compare the discussion to a late-night dorm-room conversation. Anyhow, ignoring John McDonough is one thing. Saying that a disagreement you have with him is of no real significance is another. I can ignore McDonough because he's an idiot and can't see the truth I can see; the truth which I might then relate to thee. Saying we have opposite views and that both those views are all well and good says something about the object of the disagreement. It says it is insignificant. We can avoid the dorm-room problem by a) not being drunk yet; and B) having a bit of care in writing and interpreting. --eric