John Gennari's BLOWIN' HOT & COOL

[Larry Kart]

BTW, I'm not saying that there's nothing to any of the stuff from Gabbard and Gennari that I've quoted above. Rather, I'm bothered most by its finger-wagging, pseudo-solemn tone, and the eagerness to judge and dismiss that seems to underlie it (or perhaps more, the eagerness to adopt the role of those who get to judge and dismiss).

[AllenLowe]

"the completist mode of collection ... is the displacement of an anxiety over the wholeness of the body (and of the psychosexual emotional balance that goes with it) within a symbolic order: "the man [Gennari is quoting from Gabbard now] whose collection is complete has no gaps and thus no anxieties about what is not there. The serial collector seeks plentitude, the warding off of castration.""

well, I always wondered why they had that hole in the middle of the record -

Edited September 29, 2006 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

well, I always wondered why they had that hole in the middle of the record -

Real men use 45s.

[AllenLowe]

yes, that's true; I've broken many a 78 in my time -

[JSngry]

well, I always wondered why they had that hole in the middle of the record -

Real men use 45s.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

well, I always wondered why they had that hole in the middle of the record -

Real men use 45s.

yes, that's true; I've broken many a 78 in my time -

At last! Some proper appreciation of the music!

OK - it's been interesting, even if you've all taken it a bit seriously. It's a living for some.

MG

[Chuck Nessa]

[Simon Weil]

BTW, I'm not saying that there's nothing to any of the stuff from Gabbard and Gennari that I've quoted above. Rather, I'm bothered most by its finger-wagging, pseudo-solemn tone, and the eagerness to judge and dismiss that seems to underlie it (or perhaps more, the eagerness to adopt the role of those who get to judge and dismiss).

The thing is it scares the living $hit out of most people, that Gabbard stuff. He's written a book with his brother called Psychiatry and the Cinema, which is really good (my local library even has a copy). The guy has good insights, no question about it. The trouble is, if you go and see an analyst, you're volunteering for this sort of stuff. Not so if you just pick up a book. I've talked to Gabbard via email and he's an OK guy, but I think he's writing stuff that the vast majority of the Jazz audience finds intrusive.

There's no question it's judgemental, his style. I wouldn't called it finger-wagging. To me it sounds more serious than pseudo-solemn. If you write like this for a Jazz audience, you're going to go way out on a limb. He's taking big risks. But I guess I admire his courage. It's easy to get humiliated.

So far, I find Gennari rather characterless as a writer.

Simon Weil

Edited September 29, 2006 by Simon Weil

[Lazaro Vega]

Damn, what the hell was that? They need a prophylactic for the mind to keep their seed off of me! What of the major corporations and record labels who assemble complete sets, what about their constant state of want?

The CD player is a sex bot! Headphone me the surrogate!  That's my new pickup line, "Quarter inch or RCA?"

[Larry Kart]

BTW, when I typed out the sentences below this morning ...

The latter quoted passage above, like much else of its sort on the book, is heavily informed (as they say) by New Jazz Studies-type thinking. For a real treat along those lines, check out the citation on page 398 from if only because Gabbard himself "disproves ... [that] stereotype... by living a life that happily accomodates both his copious vinyl collection and his wife...."

[AllenLowe]

and we haven't even begun to discuss cylinders -

[JSngry]

[AllenLowe]

anybody want to see my transcription disc?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

16" (shock, awe) !!!!!

MG

[Lazaro Vega]

First of all “like all homosocial activities” is wrong on its face. When the NPR news model came in, this is the sort of argument it was premised on, too, and it was used to push aside music programming. It is false. Music is not a mono-social activity. Record collecting is anything but a homosocial activity. In the day of retail the record store was a hive of social interactions, and as I think back across the record shelves there are social stories connected with many of the acquisitions up there. Moreover, as jazz fans especially know, the record is a snapshot of ongoing artistic activity which happens in performance. To reduce the experience of record collecting to a “homosocial” activity is to reduce the record to a commodity, to a thing as an end in itself when in the real outward and inward life of the collector the record is a door to something these author’s are not pursuing with sincerity.

For instance, last night going to hear the Reptet at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids...the band needed a baritone saxophone, I was able to provide one, and the bookstore gave me Ornette’s “Sound Grammar” and Dexter’s “Our Man in Paris” as an appreciative token of helping out at the last minute. That web of social story is now attached to those recordings. When I put them on the radio and thousands of people hear, particularly, Ornette’s recording for the first time there is the potential for an explosion of social associations.

Though today the social activity of collecting is becoming more virtual it is no less social. How man "hits" at Organissimo.org?

Music is best experienced with groups of people. Records are memories of those times, and a window into the musical evolution of the artists they capture.

Secondly, about the Downbeat quote, again, the supposition that Downbeat’s insights and motives were pure and therefore bedrock for new research is blind to the distortions of commercialism in the magazine industry, especially then. And, moreover, the new authors looking at that material are compounding the problem by pulling the story further away from the music and it’s creative, aesthetic evolution. Which Larry already mentioned yet it bears repeating.

The single most important societal, nonmusical, force profoundly influencing music is economic. From the b.s. that Larry hilariously just quoted I can think of several more effective ways to invest in the economy of music than encouraging these high toned shuck n jive men.

(Edit to change "Out Man In Paris" to "Our Man In Paris").

Edited September 30, 2006 by Lazaro Vega

[AllenLowe]

amen -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Absolutely right all through Lazaro

MG

[Larry Kart]

First of all “like all homosocial activities” is wrong on its face. When the NPR news model came in, this is the sort of argument it was premised on, too, and it was used to push aside music programming. It is false. Music is not a mono-social activity. Record collecting is anything but a homosocial activity. In the day of retail the record store was a hive of social interactions, and as I think back across the record shelves there are social stories connected with many of the acquisitions up there. Moreover, as jazz fans especially know, the record is a snapshot of ongoing artistic activity which happens in performance. To reduce the experience of record collecting to a “homosocial” activity is to reduce the record to a commodity, to a thing as an end in itself when in the real outward and inward life of the collector the record is a door to something these author’s are not pursuing with sincerity.

For instance, last night going to hear the Reptet at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids...the band needed a baritone saxophone, I was able to provide one, and the bookstore gave me Ornette’s “Sound Grammar” and Dexter’s “Our Man in Paris” as an appreciative token of helping out at the last minute. That web of social story is now attached to those recordings. When I put them on the radio and thousands of people hear, particularly, Ornette’s recording for the first time there is the potential for an explosion of social associations.

Though today the social activity of collecting is becoming more virtual it is no less social. How man "hits" at Organissimo.org?

Music is best experienced with groups of people. Records are memories of those times, and a window into the musical evolution of the artists they capture.

Secondly, about the Downbeat quote, again, the supposition that Downbeat’s insights and motives were pure and therefore bedrock for new research is blind to the distortions of commercialism in the magazine industry, especially then. And, moreover, the new authors looking at that material are compounding the problem by pulling the story further away from the music and it’s creative, aesthetic evolution. Which Larry already mentioned yet it bears repeating.

The single most important societal, nonmusical, force profoundly influencing music is economic. From the b.s. that Larry hilariously just quoted I can think of several more effective ways to invest in the economy of music than encouraging these high toned shuck n jive men.

(Edit to change "Out Man In Paris" to "Our Man In Paris").

Lazaro -- Obviously we're on the same side here about all or most of this insidious nonsense, but "homosocial" doesn't mean the same thing as "monosocial." A "homosocial" relationship is a social relationship among members of the same sex. Gribbard is saying that male jazz record collectors tend to interact only with other male jazz collectors -- and from there, he gets into his "wink,wink, nudge, nudge" bag. But a gathering of 150 male jazz record collectors would be a homosocial one.

[ghost of miles]

First of all “like all homosocial activities” is wrong on its face. When the NPR news model came in, this is the sort of argument it was premised on, too, and it was used to push aside music programming. It is false. Music is not a mono-social activity. Record collecting is anything but a homosocial activity. In the day of retail the record store was a hive of social interactions, and as I think back across the record shelves there are social stories connected with many of the acquisitions up there. Moreover, as jazz fans especially know, the record is a snapshot of ongoing artistic activity which happens in performance. To reduce the experience of record collecting to a “homosocial” activity is to reduce the record to a commodity, to a thing as an end in itself when in the real outward and inward life of the collector the record is a door to something these author’s are not pursuing with sincerity.

For instance, last night going to hear the Reptet at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids...the band needed a baritone saxophone, I was able to provide one, and the bookstore gave me Ornette’s “Sound Grammar” and Dexter’s “Our Man in Paris” as an appreciative token of helping out at the last minute. That web of social story is now attached to those recordings. When I put them on the radio and thousands of people hear, particularly, Ornette’s recording for the first time there is the potential for an explosion of social associations.

Though today the social activity of collecting is becoming more virtual it is no less social. How man "hits" at Organissimo.org?

Music is best experienced with groups of people. Records are memories of those times, and a window into the musical evolution of the artists they capture.

Secondly, about the Downbeat quote, again, the supposition that Downbeat’s insights and motives were pure and therefore bedrock for new research is blind to the distortions of commercialism in the magazine industry, especially then. And, moreover, the new authors looking at that material are compounding the problem by pulling the story further away from the music and it’s creative, aesthetic evolution. Which Larry already mentioned yet it bears repeating.

The single most important societal, nonmusical, force profoundly influencing music is economic. From the b.s. that Larry hilariously just quoted I can think of several more effective ways to invest in the economy of music than encouraging these high toned shuck n jive men.

(Edit to change "Out Man In Paris" to "Our Man In Paris").

Lazaro, Gennari does talk at length about record-collecting as a social activity (esp. in regards to the early hot-club groups and societies). (And I want to distinguish Gabbard's clinical language from Gennari's style as a writer, whatever others think of it--while Gennari is somewhat sympathetic to Gabbard's way of thinking, he does not generally write in such high-theory terms). I guess it depends on how you define homosocial--Merriam-Webster Online says this:

Main Entry: ho·mo·so·cial

: of, relating to, or involving social relationships between persons of the same sex and especially between men

And many jazz listeners/record collectors are men--this board is an example of that. Regarding Gabbard's quote about completism, well, completism is a rather neurotic fetish, and hell, I've got the bug myself. What is the underlying explanation for it? Maybe Gabbard's explanation is b.s., maybe a cigar is just a cigar in this instance, but what's wrong with investigating it? I don't particularly want to dwell on it, but there's something going on there (and how the hell could Mosaic overlook those two Hodges tracks on the 1955-60 Verve set? )

I agree w/Jim (pretty much agree with ALL of his post) that the sociological approach should not supplant either the music itself or other ways of writing/talking/thinking about it. But I think that when it's well-done, especially by people like Deveaux and Gennari (who each have an obvious passion for the music itself), that it certainly deserves its place on the shelf. (Much like the Hobsbawm quote that I alluded to earlier in his review of Schuller's THE SWING ERA.)

I don't want to rehash the Downbeat quote argument, except to say that I wasn't saying that Downbeat's motives were pure (far from it!). Yes, Deveaux should have drawn on more to substantiate his case, but the case he was making--that for a variety of reasons it was tougher for black swing bands to make it, and that racism was a large factor--is IMO almost impossible to dispute.

The single most important societal, nonmusical, force profoundly influencing music is economic.

Exactly--and that's certainly something that underpins some of the NJS approach to jazz history.

I also think it's interesting that (as Gennari points out) many of the old-school, first-generation jazz critics were academics themselves.

Edit: Larry posted while I was writing this, so don't mean to sound redundant about "homosocial."

Edited September 30, 2006 by ghost of miles

[Lazaro Vega]

Thanks for that clarification, Larry.

Iron John meets Cecil Taylor.

While we're on the subject, the estrogenated world of Kid Beauty Pageants has a higher degree of weirdness associated with their homosocial activity than jazz record collectors. Let's see 900 pages on that, using notations with direct access to Mattel's promotional archive and police blotters, propping the door open. Then we can nudge about playtime.

And Church Craft fairs ? They have woodworkers, anyway.

My response was colored by the anti-music bias of upper management at NPR when they pushed through their talk agenda by saying music was a solitary activity and talk generates water cooler responses and is therefore more social. I read it in one of the many articles circulating at the time. Yes, what small, tiny places Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Orchestra Hall, Davies Symphony Hall and Royal Festival Hall are. Sure glad they didn’t waste too much money on making them large because music is such a solitary preoccupation.

It irks me no end that no one put the lid down on that toilet.

[Simon Weil]

As this thread has turned out, I think people have got worried unneccessarily. In that Gabbard takes a pyschoanalytic approach, he's going to say things that bug people. But I don't think he's at all representative of the deconstructive approaches in Jazz. Gennari kind of distances himself and there's nobody else doing anything at least vaguely parallel in Jazz scholarship. In general, post-modernism is antithetical to universal explanations of the sort Gabbard proposes. So he's sui generis in Jazz.

What I don't see is why, given all that, Larry posted the Gabbard quotes from Gennari. It gives the impression that Gabbard is representative of Gennari and of the whole deconstructive movement in Jazz overall.

I'm just wondering if Gennari used Gabbard to spice up his text.

Simon Weil

[Larry Kart]

As this thread has turned out, I think people have got worried unneccessarily. In that Gabbard takes a pyschoanalytic approach, he's going to say things that bug people. But I don't think he's at all representative of the deconstructive approaches in Jazz. Gennari kind of distances himself and there's nobody else doing anything at least vaguely parallel in Jazz scholarship. In general, post-modernism is antithetical to universal explanations of the sort Gabbard proposes. So he's sui generis in Jazz.

What I don't see is why, given all that, Larry posted the Gabbard quotes from Gennari. It gives the impression that Gabbard is representative of Gennari and of the whole deconstructive movement in Jazz overall.

I'm just wondering if Gennari used Gabbard to spice up his text.

Simon Weil

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted.

[Simon Weil]

As this thread has turned out, I think people have got worried unneccessarily. In that Gabbard takes a pyschoanalytic approach, he's going to say things that bug people. But I don't think he's at all representative of the deconstructive approaches in Jazz. Gennari kind of distances himself and there's nobody else doing anything at least vaguely parallel in Jazz scholarship. In general, post-modernism is antithetical to universal explanations of the sort Gabbard proposes. So he's sui generis in Jazz.

What I don't see is why, given all that, Larry posted the Gabbard quotes from Gennari. It gives the impression that Gabbard is representative of Gennari and of the whole deconstructive movement in Jazz overall.

I'm just wondering if Gennari used Gabbard to spice up his text.

Simon Weil

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted.

Well, if you scan Gennari's home page at the University of Vermont, he's an Associate Professor of English. So that deconstructive paragraph probably comes out of his experience of literary criticism - I mean it would be an absolutely standard bit of criticism in that area. I'd say it's sociology-based. As I was trying to explain, Gabbard's is psychoanalytically based (his brother's a psychoanalyst). One looks to the outside world (society) for explanation, the other to the internal world (the psyche) for the same.

You're actually [con]fusing the two, when you say "Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice". I get the impression that you think there's one mode of thought running through NJS into Gabbard and Gennari. But, if you look at Gennari's home page he has an article "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies," in BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25 (Fall 1991).

This is likely to be the article that generated his book. As it was written 15 years ago, his core way of thinking must presumably have been in place then - and probably a few years before. I can't see how NJS can be made responsible for it, unless you want to place NJS as a recognisable movement back in the late 80s.

The closest thing I can think of to "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat"" is Tom Piazza's take on primitivism.

Is he an NJS writer?

Simon Weil

[AllenLowe]

I don't know, youse guys are losing me here. We better ask Scott Yanow what he thinks about this...oh no - that's that other thread -

[Larry Kart]

As this thread has turned out, I think people have got worried unneccessarily. In that Gabbard takes a pyschoanalytic approach, he's going to say things that bug people. But I don't think he's at all representative of the deconstructive approaches in Jazz. Gennari kind of distances himself and there's nobody else doing anything at least vaguely parallel in Jazz scholarship. In general, post-modernism is antithetical to universal explanations of the sort Gabbard proposes. So he's sui generis in Jazz.

What I don't see is why, given all that, Larry posted the Gabbard quotes from Gennari. It gives the impression that Gabbard is representative of Gennari and of the whole deconstructive movement in Jazz overall.

I'm just wondering if Gennari used Gabbard to spice up his text.

Simon Weil

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted.

Well, if you scan Gennari's home page at the University of Vermont, he's an Associate Professor of English. So that deconstructive paragraph probably comes out of his experience of literary criticism - I mean it would be an absolutely standard bit of criticism in that area. I'd say it's sociology-based. As I was trying to explain, Gabbard's is psychoanalytically based (his brother's a psychoanalyst). One looks to the outside world (society) for explanation, the other to the internal world (the psyche) for the same.

You're actually [con]fusing the two, when you say "Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice". I get the impression that you think there's one mode of thought running through NJS into Gabbard and Gennari. But, if you look at Gennari's home page he has an article "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies," in BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25 (Fall 1991).

This is likely to be the article that generated his book. As it was written 15 years ago, his core way of thinking must presumably have been in place then - and probably a few years before. I can't see how NJS can be made responsible for it, unless you want to place NJS as a recognisable movement back in the late 80s.

The closest thing I can think of to "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat"" is Tom Piazza's take on primitivism.

Is he an NJS writer?

Simon Weil

Gennari's "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies" and Scott DeVeaux's "Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography" both date from the same year (1991) and were printed in the same issue of the same journal, BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25. DeVeaux's essay is commonly regarded as the text that launched/announced the NJS movement with its concluding exhortation: "But the time has come for an approach that is less invested in the ideology of jazz as aesthetic object and more responsive to issues of historical particularity. Only in this way can the study of jazz break free from its self-imposed isolation, and participate with other disciplines in the exploration of meaning in American culture." No doubt, though, before the movement crystallized and/or became visible, it was latent or developing in quite a few minds. In any case, assuming that the gist of Gennari's essay is incorporated in his book, I'd say that DeVeaux and he are coming from much the same place, though I'd judge DeVeaux to have a good deal more intellectual candle power (at his best, DeVeaux is much better than that IMO rather gassy passage I just quoted). As for the similarities I see among Gennari, Gabbard, DeVeaux, and many of the other NJS writers I've come across, the main negative one is a matter of tone and intent -- too often, as I said above, "interests" are rather freely detected or imputed and then used to dismiss arguments that one might prefer to see ... I suppose, argued with. As for Gabbard's psychonanalytic background, I've spent a fair amount of time around one prominent analytic institute and am aware of how readily in that profession some people can use "insights" and rankings of the psychic health (or lack of same) of other people, especially one's analytic colleagues, as tools in less than intellectually legitimate power operations.