Cornelius

"[...] a glorification of the obvious." And glorious it is!

Coleman Hawkins on "There's A Small Hotel" and Willie Smith on "Sophisticated Lady". I love this.

Where is the post that poster Che was warned that he's on a short leash? What were the circumstances? And for all the vigorous denunciations I'm surprised that no one seems motivated just to cite the supposedly offending posts. Come on folks, how do you expect me to make an article of this for The Journal Of Jazz Forums if you won't point me right to the material?

king ubu: Thank you for the link. I'm interested in the issue of Che's purported anti-Semitism and personally insulting posts, but wading through that thread does not appeal to me. Perhaps someone who is interested in more clearly documenting their argument would cite the actual post time stamps. Then one could read them and scope out whatever else is crucial for context. Otherwise, this dispute is incomprehensible unless one wants to read a whole thread about certain consequences of the Holocaust and Zionism.

Would someone please link to exactly which posts of the poster Che are claimed to be most egregiously anti-Semitic and the most egregious personal insults? Since there are no post numbers on this board, citing the time stamp would help so one wouldn't have to slog through whole pages.

"Let's kill this thread and get back to the jazz." [Eric] What is up with this crap? Because you don't like this thread, other people shouldn't be allowed to post in it? I really HATE people trying to make it so that I, or anyone, can't read whatever people want to post and post in response.

No thanks, Doc.

"It is my old problem with jazz critics that they view this music from a vantage point that is far removed from the audience's experience." [DizzySpells] A critic is not obligated to the vantage point of the audience (what is "the" audience anyway?) but only to his own conscience. "It is a rather elitist stance [...]" No, it's not. "[...] that does contribute to informed discussion, but not much else." An informed discussion is a hell of a lot. Just contributing to that is plenty enough to put the "much else" on another day's to do list.

Rooster Ties "And not deleting the thread gives everyone an opportunity to see what went down, after the fact -- so if you miss stuff in real-time, you don't miss stuff." But if you lock, it's not just a question of having missed reading in real time, but of having missed POSTING in that time. Just because YOU had a chance to get your licks in during a certain time period is no reason that others should be disallowed from getting theirs in sometime later.

Rooster Ties You're trying to impose additional controls where none are needed. There's no need to lock this thread or any thread. It's sufficient to delete individual posts (if they're as out of bounds as a threat of actual harm) or ban individual posters. There's no need to shut down people talking about whatever they want to talk about. And there's just no need for another moderator. And that other admins would lock threads more often is hardly an argument that this forum, or any forum, should go down that road. There is no harm in allowing people to continue talking in this thread. But there is harm to our freedom by locking the thread, especially since it is important that posts in response to other posts remain attached and in continuity.

People leave boards of their own volition. A board shouldn't disallow people from posting and responding to posts under the duress of a person leaving.

NO LOCKING! How can you think yourself entitled to post but deny others the same, including people who may want to respond to the latest rounds, and others who will come along later?

"When John Coltrane finally left Miles Davis to form his own group, Stitt filled in on tour in 1960. I have a recording of him on the 'Complete 1960 Stockholm Concert'." [Che] I haven't heard those tracks in a while, but my memory is that while Stitt had a few good moments, he didn't fit with the band and especially with Davis.

Why are so many writers so unwilling to deal with the music? They tell you it's because they don't want to lose the readers. Perhaps there's some truth in that; that general readers can't absorb too much technical discussion. But it seems to me that so many writers go so far in the opposite direction - utterly inane tripe, including cliche apocrypha, "lifestyle" portraits (some people are actually proud that that's all they write about - People Magazine style), etc. And when musical content is included, it turns out incorrect - pretentious doubletalk. Meanwhile, I suspect that these jazz writers don't want to tackle the details of the music itself because they don't know much about it. It's a lot of homework to learn about chord changes and things like that. Why bother when you can slide by without it? Okay, some of the esteemed scribes have managed without knowing the mechanics of the music. But I don't see that they wouldn't have been even better writers if they had. Hentoff wrote a column a month or two ago in which he defended himself from his own conscience about this. I found the article to be transparently self-vindicating rationalization.

In no particular order of importance: 1. He has passion for jazz and some knowledge of it, but I didn't see sign of a special knowledge or insight about it. 2. It is intriguing whether his is an act. My guess is that it's a little of both - schtick and real. 3. I advocate free-speech in forums like this. I think people should be allowed to go off topic, insult one another, flame, and all kinds of things. And in almost any case, I am very much opposed to banning a person. But there are a few categories that should be disallowed. Threatening death is one of them. Especially if he had done this before on this board, and especially as he did it twice recently, he should not be allowed to post. Period. And no forgiveness later on. In my book, threaten death (especially more than once) = lifetime ban. 4. The argument that the threats were just rhetorical doesn't hold. No one could be expected not to take that kind of angry threat as unintimidating. Even if one does not fear that the threat will actually be carried out, its mere presence is intimidationg nonetheless; it initmidates one from speaking freely, so that the threat is not just about physical harm but is a damper on free speech. 5. He voluntarily allowed his picture on the Internet. He can't expect to control its dissemination, except by claiming a copyright infringement. 6. That said, Soulstation1 was clearly rubbing salt in the wounds and gloating about it. That was not attractive. Whatever prerogative Soulstation1 had to leave the picture posted, leaving it posted was unwise and a bit selfish. When the death threats were posted, even I, not involved at all, felt a little threatened and creeped out, in the sense that I just didn't want to be even near that kind of thing (except of course, to be part of the record-breaking collective log-in in admiration of the train wreck), possibly wary even to inadvertently post something that would exacerbate the situation. So while Soulstation1 was not himself the perp, I felt that he was inconsiderate to other posters not to immediately do what he could to defuse a volatile situation. If there were some important matter of principle at stake in leaving the picture posted, then I'd not fault Soulstation1, but this did not strike me as that kind of exercise of principle. 7. As to leaving the quotes in the signature, I think that's fair. Unless the quotes are egregiously out of context, ariceffron did post those things and they are part of the body of these proceedings. 8. I wish the board monitor had not himself got into it with ariceffron in this case, but instead just banned him. And I don't think this thread should have been renamed with the subtile it now bears. It is yet another instance of rubbing salt in the wound. A more neutral subtitle (retitle only justified, by the way, due to the grave nature of an incident involving death threats) would be something like: Banning Incident. Though, I do understand that the situation had to be stressful for, or at least raise the ire of, a board monitor. 9. Some damn funny things said in this thread. The "don't let that fool you" line was good, and especially the "half calling the FBI and the other half waxing nostalgic" line was aces. 10. I don't know why ariceffron is so upset about the picture being posted anyway. He's a fine looking young man. No need to be ashamed at all.

Just to be fair, I guess that the poster Che was not so much blaming the author as noting that the technical passages are in fact difficult for some people. As to happy mediums, I unhappily view the balance already so far on the lite [sp intentional] side that the too infrequent stiff shots of technical and substantively musical material are just a start toward bringing us toward the medium.

It's okay that people want some easy reading. But it's intolerable that writers themselves don't demand a standard of themselves, and intolerable that good, detailed, and intelligent writing about the music is actually discouraged for being "arcane", "technical", "elitist" and all the rest. The dumbdownedness of jazz journalism and jazz writing makes me want to scream.

"I have read Nisenson's book on Sonny Rollins which I think is a little better than the Coltrane book." [Che] How could it be worse? Wait, it could be worse by being Blue: The Murder Of Jazz. That's got to be the most sophomorically bad writing about jazz ever. Then, there's Ben Ratliff...but that's another dark corner perhaps best left undisturbed.

Mike Fitzgerald, I thought about adding something like that. It really is sad that the state of jazz writing is so poor. I guess that decades ago jazz was not usually thought of as serious enough to write about with the intelligence as classical music and other art forms, even film. And, in general, jazz writing has still not caught up. One contributor to this problem is that so many entrenched jazz writers actually argue that jazz writing doesn't need to be better than it is. Yet, what's so often written in books and in the jazz magazines is just garbage.

"This book not only details Coltrane's strengths and weaknesses [...]" Musical weaknesses? By '57 (even by '56), what weaknesses? / The Lewis Porter book is top notch. Eric Nisenson, on the other hand, is the most godawful jazz writer I've ever read.

Yep, Morgan's structure and communicativeness were great. But I also enjoy Hubbard's less "linear" structural logic too, sometimes even when he wasn't so logical and seemed not to have the clarity that Morgan would have about the plan of the solo.

"Lee [...] for the most part sticks to the hard bop bag." [sal] That is true, for the most part. But don't forget that Morgan moved into other areas too. / "Empyrean Isles" [big Wheel] That's not just one of many counterexamples to Chrome's claim but it also has some of Hubbard's playing that's really funky, as at least evidence toward rebutting other posters' evaluation of Morgan as funkier (or blusier or more soulful). I don't think many of these comparative generalizations hold up.

I don't miss that there's great feeling in the playing. But I think the execution and ideas are so embarrassingly poor that it's lousy music, and especially a lousy example of Mobley (whose execution and ideas I so deeply enjoy in so many of his other recordings), the depth of feeling notwithstanding. I suspect that we humans are not likely to be anywhere close anytime soon to a satisfactory, objective aesthetic for deciding controversies such as the one we have here. But I do think that we can at least approach making our judgments meaningful beyond mere expression of taste. In that regard I am inclined to suspect that it is something of an error in critical judgment to give this album high marks, especially in terms of Hank Mobley. But, again, this does not mean that I don't appreciate the provocative reasons JSngry has so engagingly given for finding merit in the album.

Just for sake of irony, I'll play the Savoy album, since it has Morgan's name in big letters on the cover while Mobley, the actual session leader, has his name reduced to much smaller letters.

Concert In The Virgin Islands is a real good album, with several compositions you're not likely to have on other albums. P.S. Despite the title, it's a studio album.