Max Roach Health

[TedR]

I now have a whole new perspective on Stan's music!

[Bill Nelson]

SNWOLF should start a new thread titled 'Jazz Domestic Partner/Spousal Abuse'.

This would provide him the platform to write directly about domestic violence via his in-depth analysis of abnormal psychology as it pertains to jazz musicians.

WOLF could also initiate a Jazz Spousal Abuse Hotline and provide counseling.

[Brad]

Reading this mano a mano going on here, as I read some of SNWolf's threads, he's beginning to make some of Clem's posts very lucid.

[JSngry]

Hagiographical inferences did not refer to Roach specifically - he became a springboard for a general "discussion" with regard to "liberal in theory" but not in practice tendencies, particularly pertaining to the jazz world's defensive attitude to criticism, as evidenced by your post.

If you examine my texts, when they are presented generally it is for purely rhetorical effect  in order to emphasis the subject(s) and provoke debate (seige mentality kills that at birth, however). Otherwise I qualify my statements.

If I was on a conservative board and presented criticism of right-wing shibboleths I imagine I wouild receive the same response. It's dichotomous reasoning that get's people so tribalistic, territorial, and worked up in the first place. Forget allegiences and just think.

Yo dog, some of us have already processed the information like, YEARS ago, and don't really see any need to work through it again just to reach the same conclusions. Again.

I'm glad you're working through it yourself now. Your assumption that it is an important and necessary process on the road to intellectual honesty with both others and one's self is indeed a correct one afaic. But c'mon man, you act like you're the only one doing so, or to have done so. Guess again.

I have no unqualified heroes. None. And I don't have time to "argue" with anybody who seems to assume that I do. And I really don't have time for parlor games of the psychoanalytical variety. Been there, done that.

Ya' know, I used to lecture my old man about all kinds of shit that I thought he wasn't "getting". Then one day, it dawned on me that I wasn't telling him a damn thing that he didn't already know.

Edited February 19, 2005 by JSngry

[SNWOLF]

Thanks for the avuncular digression, then.

[JSngry]

No problem. There's pop in the fridge!

[Brad]

First time I heard Jim referred to as an uncle. I think of him more as a wise older brother.

[neveronfriday]

Couldn't resist ....

[sheldonm]

It's one thing to say Max Roach beat Abbey Lincoln, which people here have said

and to say that it is inexcusable, which people here have said

and to articulate the difference between respect for his artistry versus "hagiography" of his entire life and every act in it, which people here have done.

It's another to extrapolate a one-size-fits-all, admitting-of-no-exceptions, presented-as-airtight-case, single-psychological-path explanation of a "pathologic cascade" that culminates in domestic violence, insist that it applies peculiarly and distinctively to the world of jazz -- and then to equate lack of interest in discussing that grand theory with "sweeping domestic violence under the rug."

Maren, the extrapolations are yours. Hagiographical inferences did not refer to Roach specifically - he became a springboard for a general "discussion" with regard to "liberal in theory" but not in practice tendencies, particularly pertaining to the jazz world's defensive attitude to criticism, as evidenced by your post.

If you examine my texts, when they are presented generally it is for purely rhetorical effect in order to emphasis the subject(s) and provoke debate (seige mentality kills that at birth, however). Otherwise I qualify my statements.

If I was on a conservative board and presented criticism of right-wing shibboleths I imagine I wouild receive the same response. It's dichotomous reasoning that get's people so tribalistic, territorial, and worked up in the first place. Forget allegiences and just think.

ouch....so many big words......where is that dictionary!!!

[Brad]

www.dictionary.com

[Jazzmoose]

No problem. There's pop in the fridge!

Does he already know that?

[JSngry]

Well, he's been dead for a few years now, and funerals are just SO expensive...

[7/4]

Well, he's been dead for a few years now, and funerals are just SO expensive...

Reminds me of how my sister kept her dead parrot in the freezer for years.

I sure hope she doesn't care for me in my old age.

[AllenLowe]

actually the parrott was just sleeping and a little depressed - he was pining for the fjords -

[JSngry]

Sure wish I had a counter top right now...

[ghost of miles]

actually the parrott was just sleeping and a little depressed - he was pining for the fjords -

'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

[sheldonm]

www.dictionary.com

[SNWOLF]

Some of these responses just serve to reaffirm my contention that a commissar-like inability to deal with critque ultimately results in evasion, and a highly reactive defensiveness aimed at the person, not the argument. Forget it. I'll see if I can confine myself to ingroup sniggering and discographical territorial pissings, if that and predigested sectarian cant is the extent of argument some are prepared to engage in.

[JSngry]

Ok, here it is:

Max Roach has spent a great portion of his adult life being a loathsome human being. Beating Abbey Lincoln is only a part of it, if you want to know the truth.

However, the rest of his adult life has been spent making powerful music, and creating a public persona that is an inspiration for many of us who seek to maintain a shred of dignity while making music that goes against the commercial pressures, not just of the industry, but of society as a whole.

Now, do you think that I'm so stupid as to think that the second excuses the first? Or that the the first invalidates the second? Or that to acknowledge the reality of the private life lessens the inspiration created by the public one? Trust me, I'm not.

I'm also not so perpetually shook up over the conflict between the two realities that I have to qualify every discussion of Max Roach with one sort of disclaimer or another. You meet a lot of imperfect people in life, people whose nastiness and beauty co-exists in frighteningly large amounts, and in frighteningly equal measures. You kearn to deal with it. To negate either the good or the bad is dishonest. But you choose which to react to under any given circumstance. And as long as the discussion is on the "public" Max Roach, I show the love, because that is what motivates the love. If we were to discuss his loathsome personal habits (and, really, why would we on an ongoing basis, unless we were involved in them ourselves?), then that's another matter entirely.

Life is love, and love ain't no fairy tale.

[marcello]

Very well said.

Thank You!

[Jazzmoose]

Some of these responses just serve to reaffirm my contention that a commissar-like inability to deal with critque ultimately results in evasion, and a highly reactive defensiveness aimed at the person, not the argument. Forget it. I'll see if I can confine myself to ingroup sniggering and discographical territorial pissings, if that and predigested sectarian cant is the extent of argument some are prepared to engage in.

I probably would have agreed with you if it wasn't for your silly undergraduate psych paper...

[AllenLowe]

well, no - if we are talking about the public Roach, than we should talk about it, warts and all. If we are talking about the MUSICAL Roach, than we talk about the music, straight and simple - I just am slightly offended at seeing a public/human tribute to the now disabled wife-beater. Sorry, it just irks me.

Edited February 19, 2005 by AllenLowe

[Guest youmustbe]

A lot of the guys were fucked up, not just by dope, liquor, and whatever personal insecurities they brought...but think about it...wanting to be, if not respected as an artist, at least listened to by a public, that was inattentive, if not outright rude to them, not to mention racist, either overtly or obliviously...and working all night, with bad sound, bad pianos, wondering whether you were going to be paid...all that.

That's what makes it so remarkable that these folks produced a popular music that became an art form! Amazing, really!

In Max's case, whatever it was that would make him go off every so often, most of the time, he was cool, (How do you think he felt about Clifford dying just as they were at the pinnacle of popularity, or Booker dying just as he was about to take off?) it sure seemed to give him a drive, that like Buddy and Tony, who both had their 'problems' was incredible...they still kick ass!

And say one thing about Max, at least he didn't bring a shotgun to the job and gun everyone down.

I think warts and all is proper, but in Max's case, let's at least let him pass away, before we 'deconstruct' him. I've only gone to funeral services for Hawk, Duke, Gil, and my buddy Bob Berg, but when Max goes, I'll be there to pay respects to a truly unique and 'revolutionary' 'artist'.

[Bill Nelson]

TO: Dept. of Warts and All --

When I'm clicking on 'Max' Health' for an update, I'm REALLY NOT interested in scrolling thru a rehash of all his past sins and trangressions.

As noted just above, can't we let the man die in grace peacefully prior to listing all his offenses? Insisting on a full confession from Max at this time is sensational and exploitative -- whatever the socio-psychological justification -- and in bad form.

[Shawn]

Max evidently hadn't stopped the woman beating even years later. I was told a story first hand, buy a woman that used to work at Jazz Alley in Seattle. She used to pick the musicians up at the airport and drive them to their hotels. Max arrived with a lady companion (don't know if it was his wife or not), who had a major shiner...in the car on the way to the hotel, she said something that Max didn't like and he threatened to "do worse".

In another instance, this woman I knew picked up Jimmy Smith at the airport. He was rude and extremely vulgar...and made a comment to her something along the lines of "You know baby, I bet you got a sweet p**sy." She said she almost threw him out of the car.

I had told her I was shocked by these stories, and she said that sometimes she's found it's better to just listen to the music....and not to focus on the actual human beings that are performing it. She still listened to both artists after these events....