Buying Nels Cline CD -

[AllenLowe]

will do, guys. time to spend some cash...

[Guest akanalog]

allen, don't let people bully you into buying into pretentious crap you don't buy into.

[Steve Reynolds]

amazing - someone trying to sway someone into *not* investiagting something that might be worthwhile - because they think it's pretensious crap

If Allen doesn't want to buy it, he won't buy it

if he doesn't like it, he will say he doesn't like it

fwiw - if he doesn't - this stuff is easily resold at costs very close to whatever he might pay for it - there is a demand for this stuff - as very few of the people who do buy it - sell it - because they like it

not easy to find any of this stuff in any used CD bins

if you are interested, there is much discussion about this kind of music at other sites - but as it isn't jazz, maybe here isn't a good place for it.

lordy lordy - let's not take risks in listening - nice attitude

[Steve Reynolds]

And another thing…or two….

Did anyone say that Allen or anyone else would like this stuff? AMM or the more recent strains of the music sometimes known as “eai”?

Not at all

I don’t expect anyone to like it – I didn’t expect to like it – initially I didn’t like it – it is very abstract and maybe that is why many people have very different opinions about it – I have friends who come from similar places in music listening experience as I do – who love it – and some who hate it – and some are ambivalent to it – and some will not listen to it…

To each his own – from my personal experience, it has been very rewarding to discover some other type of music that is as or more rewarding than the jazz that I have been passionately listening to for quite a while.

Some people I know who like it have no interest in jazz, or did, but now don’t and some who never even liked jazz in the first place – so knows what anyone will think about it.

The bottom line for me is that the rewards have been well worth it – and I am not the only

[.:.impossible]

I find it interesting that a Frisell thread turned into a Cline thread that turned into a Rowe thread! Gotta love the internet.

Knowing now that Allan is not familiar with this sort of music, it does make sense that four hours of solo Cline would fall flat. Then again, I am assuming I know what the performance sounded like. With Cline, I don't even have a guess. I really want to stress to Allan that I meant nothing against him when I told him that four hours of solo Cline just isn't enough to get a good representation of what he can do. My impression of Cline is that it is different from evening to evening.

This is esoteric music we are talking about. Esoteric doesn't equal pretentious. Constructive comment though... nice. I wonder how you feel about Roscoe Mitchell SOUND or the NESSA AEC.

[AllenLowe]

I know what you mean Steve - but to me there is music I don't like but still respect and understand, and music which I really do not like because I feel it is misconceived and poorly executed - and I do intend to check this stuff out, as you've got me intrigued -

impossible - i do think it may be that I dismissed Cline in an unfair way- and there is antother category to add to the two above - music from mumcians whom I respect, but which I think is misconceived - and he might more specifically fall into that category, as I know he is an accomplished player -

Edited December 16, 2005 by AllenLowe

[Steve Reynolds]

if you do, these are what I recommend

on erstwhile records - Duos for Doris Keith Rowe and John Tilbury - 2 CD set - quite stunning, plus one get's the piano to anchor them to reality

also on erstwhile - Schnee Christoff Kurzmann & Burkhard Stangl - a personal favorite - and there is quite a bit of acoustic guitar that works well with the electronics employed

and then maybe the most radical and intense disc - Keith Rowe w/Burkhard Beins - erstlive005 - only about 27 minutes long - but beyond words - I'll dig up my initial thoughts that I posted on this recrding when it was released about one year ago

there are many more - and there are many who have investigated these areas of music more than I have

[Steve Reynolds]

maybe there might be some references to other things - but this is what I wrote last November 24th:

shock and awe

for Ulrich

what follows will be seen in some quarters as hyperbole or shilling for the guy who sent me the damn thing - please - spare me

listen to the recording - and it's easy - it's only 26 minutes of music and about a minute of crowd noise in front and behind the music

I know - most of you naysayers or ones who think you would have NO chance of likeing this - because you know there is no melody, there is no time, there are sounds that are foreign to your ears

they are foreign to my ears as well

they are also the most captivating and seductive sounds one could ever wish to hear - albeit noisy, churning, unmoving, moving, blessed sounds - sounds that are maybe not sounds - but are voices of the souls that maybe the both of them don't think they have

recorded live in Berlin on May 13th by the *great* Christoph Amann (the Peter Pfister of this sort of thing)

ErstLive 001 - produced by Jon Abbey

I think this is the shortest running CD in my pile - slighly shorted than Albert Ayler's "Spiritual Unity"

someday, they will possibly be written or spoken about in similar fashions - we already know the story about the classic Ayler recording - the engineers think they are warming up - so the session is recorded in mono - someone also said like screaming FUCK in St. Patrick's Cathedral - well all I know is that I have been listening to Keith Rowe for a few years now - one artsist I never really stopped listening to when I wasn't doin' too good - and he was maybe one of the only people I was still hearing - but I'm concerned that like Ayler (although with 40 years gone - we now all agree it is/was jazz) that so many who could hear Keith Rowe won't specifically because he is not playing jazz - and as far as we know (unless Brian has found out differently) he never has - but if his music can reach me - one from really only a jazz (and little rock) background - with strong interests in the improvisational end of things - this music deserves to reach more than the ones who already know

I love the questions asking what "eai" is - well here is something that isn't anything like most anything I ever heard him create - or is is the mysterious (to me) Mr. Beins?

no - Burkhard is wonderful (hear his incredible duo recording with Andrea Neumann(spelling) Lidingo - but I don't even pretend to knwo who is what or who is where or how it is - who cares - not the point - listen

but here is a horse of a different proverbial garage - this is miracle stuff- is anyone sure he didn't record the shortwave and then time what he was creating to coincide with it (joking, of course) - but it also makes me think there is a god - when I'm not so sure - certainly more sure than Jon & Brian....an news report on Canadian radio about potential withdrawel of troops!?!?

and how about the portion from about 20 minutes on before the incredible fade - in and out - out and in - lordy lordy - grit - I hear it - quiet intensity - and after what happened to the tune - those who know this recording or saw the show live knew when they heard it - I've listened about 6 times through (and a few minutes ago on the headphones - as I had to after playing the Ivo loud all the way through - she begged me to relent) - and I knew it the first time I heard it - when the walls come tumbling down - the deconstruction of the world

who says this music doesn't have horn charts?

I mentioned that Joost Buis' "Astronotes" might be my record of the year (albeit in a year when I havn't heard more than a handfull of new recordings) but I don't know what I was thinking....this is the record of the decade until something else comes along that is inspired by a miracle - or simply the work of a genius at the height of his awesome powers

Son of a Preacher Man, baby

[AllenLowe]

I like Koglmann but haven't listened to Graham in many a-year -

[jon abbey]

instead of any Erstwhile: Morton Feldman on Hat and Mode, the Lilburn set i mentioned, much David Tudor...

apples and oranges (and even clementines maybe), you should know better than to generalize like this...

[Д.Д.]

Interesitng thread.

I am pretty much with Allen Lowe on Nels CLine, and I think the term "formalism" (as well as term "bullshit") is very applicable. Cline is a very competent musician who can play anything (and he often does), but IMO his comprehensive knowledge of techinques and licks overwhelms the original ideas, and he just goes into guitar hero master class type of perforamance, without much creativity. I saw him live a couple of times, and it really looked like was thinking "now I'll play some skronk" or "now I will do some surf guitar" - and to me it felt like superficial pastiche wihtout much substance. He does have some good records - of what I heard, I liked The Inkling (Cryptogramophone) and Live at Easthampton Town Hall (on JMZ, with Zeena Parkinns and Thurston Moore) the most. His Singers disc I found just too pretty and polished, an even more so the recent one by Scott Amendola with Cline as a sideman. Talking of Cryptogrammophone, I find most of the music from their catalague to bee too polished, formulaic and safe (Mark Dresser releases being notable exceptions).

Regarding EAI, I am not too knowledgeable about this music, but the more I listen (both on record and live) the more I seem to hear that a lot of it has a set of its own (pretty confining) rules, and in this regard a big chunk of it is not more creative or "advanced" than Wynton's ouevre (or tired free jazz / fire music stuff by William Parker and David S. Ware, if you wish).

I am also not really getting it how Feldman and Tudor substitute for EAI.

[jon abbey]

I've got pretty complete Tudor and Dead C collections, thank you very much. Corpus Hermeticum was one of the more influential labels on what I do, not that an outsider could really tell that.

anyway, you're typically more coherent than this, I'll chalk that up to the earliness of the hour. I'm not telling Allen what to listen to, and Feldman and Tudor are certainly great, but that doesn't make your last two posts here any less silly. and I don't know what you mean by "process music", although I'm sure once I do, I'll get a good chuckle out of your wrongheadedness. and namechecking ten different kinds of music in three sentences doesn't make your underlying point correct.

[jon abbey]

Regarding EAI, I am not too knowledgeable about this music, but the more I listen (both on record and live) the more I seem to hear that a lot of it has a set of its own (pretty confining) rules, and in this regard a big chunk of it is not more creative or "advanced" than Wynton's ouevre (or tired free jazz / fire music stuff by William Parker and David S. Ware, if you wish).

a big chunk of any genre is crap. you guys need to talk more specifics here, "eai" is a much wider-ranging area of music than these generalities are giving it credit for.

[7/4]

I've got pretty complete Tudor and Dead C collections, thank you very much. Corpus Hermeticum was one of the more influential labels on what I do, not that an outsider could really tell that.

anyway, you're typically more coherent than this, I'll chalk that up to the earliness of the hour. I'm not telling Allen what to listen to, and Feldman and Tudor are certainly great, but that doesn't make your last two posts here any less silly. and I don't know what you mean by "process music", although I'm sure once I do, I'll get a good chuckle out of your wrongheadedness. and namechecking ten different kinds of music in three sentences doesn't make your underlying point correct.

burn!

[AllenLowe]

funny to see that this is still going on, though I've gotten a little lost in the various suggestions, comments, etc. I won't go into detail now, but I liked Cline's Interstellar Space, probably because it's so much more focused than when I heard him in person. I'm looking back at this whole thread and Clem, though calling me a "douche," actually has a lot to say of importance as does Steve and quite a few others here, though I gotta admit I feel helpless at times as I'm not as familiar with a lot of this music as I think I should be. My problem has been over-saturation, performing and writing for years and than getting so heavily into the old stuff (and trying NOT to end up intellectually, like Greil Marcus, but that's another topic for another day)- that I've become a little worn out with new music, and sometimes that old hillbilly and country (black and white) is the perfect antidote to modernist overload. Add a day job and it gets even harder to keep up. On the other hand this thread was something of a wakeup call to me to get back on the stick and listen to more contemporary musc. Try as I might, it's a problem up here in Maine where there's a good alternative station but not a like of real new music/jazz on it. Oh well, I will probably print this whole thing out and make it my 2006 project.

I think the formalism issue is real, and not just among music people; I was watching the Ovation channel on TV the other day and they have a regular contemporary arts show, and it struck me how mastubatory so much of it is - bad art with smart rationalization, great theory, mediocre practice, but than I don't suppose this is really new in the scheme of things; I do believe, thinking of publications like Signals to Noise and Wire (both of which I read and enjoy) that we have produced a post-modernist generation that talks the talk better than they walk the actual walk. This may be related, as well, to a larger problem of a post-literate generation that has really neglected history (and I ain't talking about GREAT BOOKS history but Harold Rosenberg, Richard Gilman, Beckett, Isaac Rosenfeld, Isaac Babel, Peter Handke, to name just a few of major modernist impact on me) - and that has learned the symbols but not enough of the substance. Same is true of American music - ignore Wynton's middle class crap about why you should know music history (because it's GOOD for you) and listen instead becasue there's so much amazing music that's been almost forgotten. Listen for the same reason that I should listen, as Clem Says, to Davey Graham or, as Steve says, to Keith Rowe -

Edited December 26, 2005 by AllenLowe

[7/4]

7/4, just start getting hep to Davy Graham, there's some at Downtown, maybe they'll play it for you (& don't be misled if the only Davy you previous heard was his Kicking Mule)...

It shouldn't be a problem getting them to play anything in stock that isn't sealed, it's a store policy dating from the Lunch for Your Ears days. DMG are a former customer and I remain on good terms with the folks I know there. I just saw Bruce last Thursday, he lives around the corner from me in Jersey.

I'll get to the Davy Graham sometime.

And Jon Abby exists. I've met him a few times.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I think the formalism issue is real, and not just among music people; I was watching the Ovation channel on TV the other day and they have a regular contemporary arts show, and it struck me how mastubatory so much of it is - bad art with smart rationalization, great theory, mediocre practice, but than I don't suppose this is really new in the scheme of things; I do believe, thinking of publications like Signals to Noise and Wire (both of which I read and enjoy) that we have produced a post-modernist generation that talks the talk better than they walk the actual walk. This may be related, as well, to a larger problem of a post-literate generation that has really neglected history (and I ain't talking about GREAT BOOKS history but Harold Rosenberg, Richard Gilman, Beckett, Isaac Rosenfeld, Isaac Babel, Peter Handke, to name just a few of major modernist impact on me) - and that has learned the symbols but not enough of the substance. Same is true of American music - ignore Wynton's middle class crap about why you should know music history (because it's GOOD for you) and listen instead becasue there's so much amazing music that's been almost forgotten. Listen for the same reason that I should listen, as Clem Says, to Davey Graham or, as Steve says, to Keith Rowe -

I agree with a lot of this.

[7/4]

Me too.

I do believe, thinking of publications like Signals to Noise and Wire (both of which I read and enjoy) that we have produced a post-modernist generation that talks the talk better than they walk the actual walk.

Hell, all you have to do is hang in NYC and be disapointed. It's not all bad, but there are are some folks..I don't know how they made a name for themselves.

Any thoughts on that Clem? You seem to be familiar with the NYC scene.

[jon abbey]

Clem, I don't recall anyone offering you promos, first off, so no worries there. I basically just wanted to know what the hell you were talking about, and quoting the Minutemen doesn't especially help me. you still have offered zero specifics, instead writing off a genre that stretches from Marcus Schmickler to Taku Sugimoto with bland generalities. as for it being a "marketing scam", I have one title that's sold over 1000 copies, that's pretty piss-poor marketing if that's what it is.

as for originality, Byron Coley called, he'd like his prose style back.

[7/4]

as for originality, Byron Coley called, he'd like his prose style back.

Maybe he is Byron Coley?

Have we solved the clementine mystery at last?

[Steve Reynolds]

we get lotsa comments from the gallery of those hipper than thou, cooler than shit , who just don't know shit

I tend to the abstract from time to time, but one can understand the words

tell me Rowe/Beins live is a marketing scam

fools unite - and co-sign each other's shit

where is Chris Kelsey when we need him most?

[jon abbey]

nah, Byron runs a record store, he knows better than to spout gibberish about "marketing scams" from labels averaging maybe 400 in sales per title.

[jon abbey]

maybe a joint Erstwhile/Southern Lord festival w/special guests Pan Sonic will loosen ya'll up?

I also feel compelled to point out how specifically stupid this comment is, as anyone going to a Sunn O))) or Earth or Pan Sonic show knows exactly what they're going to get, whereas the range of music presented at the recent ErstQuake festival included Daniel Menche, Hive Mind and Joe Colley solo sets, not to mention quite a few sets that were serious surprises in terms of style and approach to everyone in the room, even me, who put the whole thing together. if you'd gotten off your couch over there in Brooklyn and come in for a night or two, maybe you wouldn't be blabbering quite so much here.

and I'm well aware that this discussion has zero to do with the initial point of this thread, but that's life on a discussion board.

[7/4]

if you'd gotten off your couch over there in Brooklyn and come in for a night or two, maybe you wouldn't be blabbering quite so much here.

If he does in fact live in Brooklyn. If you check out his other posts - take my word, you don't have to - he's all over the map.