Ornette Coleman and Prime Time Video

[Lazaro Vega]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHTdc36627k

Don't know if that has shown up here previously.

[PHILLYQ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHTdc36627k

Don't know if that has shown up here previously.

THANK YOU, LAZARO!!! That absolutely smoked!!! WOW

[Spontooneous]

IIRC, when that show was rebroadcast later in the season, the Ornette segment was clipped out and replaced with a Leon Redbone performance.

[JSngry]

IIRC, Milton Berle was the host & the show was a disaster because of that.

[DTMX]

On the same page there's a clip of Last Exit on some television show, maybe Austin City Limits or American Bandstand:

Last Exit on American Bandstand

[Lazaro Vega]

During that era Prime Time was the only way to hear Ornette live -- some people compare this music to disco. It seems to me he's working with similiar musical ideas he'd always expressed though with electric tone colors and volumes with what was then called a "free funk" underpinning. Of all the musicians from his bands in that era, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumming has stayed with me the longest. In any case, is Prime Time an abberation, or part of a continious whole?

[Jazz Kat]

Wow! I'm gonna but some Ornette sides now. Wierd, but nice!

[JSngry]

During that era Prime Time was the only way to hear Ornette live -- some people compare this music to disco. It seems to me he's working with similiar musical ideas he'd always expressed though with electric tone colors and volumes with what was then called a "free funk" underpinning. Of all the musicians from his bands in that era, Ronald Shannon Jackson's drumming has stayed with me the longest. In any case, is Prime Time an abberation, or part of a continious whole?

I think you answered your own question!

[kh1958]

Prime Time was no different from Ornette's other music, it was just louder. The group was actually closer to Free Jazz than to rock, a double trio with Ornette in the middle. The group with Bern Nix, Charles Ellerbee, Jamaladeen Tacuma, Albert McDowell, Denardo and one other drummer is one of the greatest groups I've seen in my life. When they played a set that worked, they were devastating, dense, multilayered, complex, overwhelming. The recordings do not match the live experience in a small club.

[ep1str0phy]

Man, I would have loved to have had those rhythms, tones, and timbres swirling all 'round--they must have been hard, hard core in a small club. Now Prime Time is generally restricted to festivals and large venues. There was that SF Jazz performance a while back that featured live body piercing and acrobats in bondage gear...

[kh1958]

Man, I would have loved to have had those rhythms, tones, and timbres swirling all 'round--they must have been hard, hard core in a small club. Now Prime Time is generally restricted to festivals and large venues. There was that SF Jazz performance a while back that featured live body piercing and acrobats in bondage gear...

Prime Time played three two or three night engagements circa 1983-86 at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth. They also played live music for a very bad play in the Caravan's theater (the music was great, however, I wish there were a soundtrack recording). Ornette also played there with Pat Metheny/Charlie Haden/Denardo for a one night engagement. And he played a set with the Charles Moffett Family Jazz Band. I feel very lucky to have seen around 14 or so sets of Ornette in an intimate setting.

[Chuck Nessa]

Prime Time was no different from Ornette's other music, it was just louder.

Not really true from my experience - recordings and in person. Prime Time restricted Ornette's melodic flow and restricted his rhythmic alterations. These are the two most important aspects of Ornette for me. I can appreciate the Prime Time on its own terms but I will never "love it" as I do most of his output.

[Lazaro Vega]

In a 1992 interview Ornette told me he favored the electric band because it gave him an orchestral range without having 60 instruments. Skies of America was a contemporaneous project as I recall.

Yes, Prime Time as part of a continuuing whole, as well as an attempt to bring his ideas to situations they might not normally occur in.

Heard Prime Time at The Power Center in Ann Arbor and at the Chicago Jazz Festival -- they were ear splitting, and, musically, what's mentioned above was harder to discern: The trouble with the volume was the multi-layered, multi-linear aspect sort of smashed together on one dynamic level. The interactivity of the current band is easier for me to hear. It's cool to hear "Sleep Talk" from the Prime Time era done on Sound Grammer. Ornette's melodies (themes) are adaptable to just about any setting.

Edited October 21, 2006 by Lazaro Vega

[Lazaro Vega]

"Prime Time restricted Ornette's melodic flow and restricted his rhythmic alterations. "

Disco did that to people.

[JSngry]

"Prime Time restricted Ornette's melodic flow and restricted his rhythmic alterations. "

Disco did that to people.

Can't say that I heard "restrictions" as much as I did "restructurings" and/or "redistributions". Never heard him sound less than himself.

[Chuck Nessa]

"Prime Time restricted Ornette's melodic flow and restricted his rhythmic alterations. "

Disco did that to people.

Can't say that I heard "restrictions" as much as I did "restructurings" and/or "redistributions". Never heard him sound less than himself.

Please explain the "restructurings". I do want to understand.

Who said he didn't sound "like himself"?

Edited October 22, 2006 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

Not you.

To me, "restricted" means that there's a struggle involved, if only at the level of not being able to do exactly what you want to do. I don't hear Ornette struggling at all in PrimeTime.

All I mean is that instead of the melodic flow & rhythmic alterations being "restricted", which to my mind would mean that he was unable/less able to make them, that he found another way to do them, other places to put them. I still hear the melodic flow & the harmonic/rhythmic twists & turns, just maybe a little more "stretched out", less sudden and more "inside" the overall group texture.

Truthfully, though, I don't hear that as anything new. To me, the truly "freest" Ornette in those regards was the L.A./early NY Ornette. Once Haden left the band, things started changing (hardly an original idea, but...). His playing became more "formal" to my ears, more consiously "developmental" in focus instead of "freely melodic". The change became really pronounced after the hiatus. Solos were based on motifs instead of longer melodies, and the scales in thirds thing really became the most frequent ground from which he built. Still marvellous, but definitely different. And it's a difference that did not at all conflict with the sounds & rhythms in PrimeTime, at least not to my ears.

There's also the matter of playing/leading in a group like that as opposed to a smaller (and acoustic) one. There was a lot more going on in Prime Time at every level, and everything I've read Ornette say about it indicates that he wanted it like that. Ornette's music has always been built around group interaction, but he seemed to be really obsessive about it with this band. The whole Harmolodics theory came out publicly then, and as evolving/vague concept as that seemed to be, the one thing that was always stressed was that every voice was equal at all times. Well hey - six voices, three of them amplified and able to play multiple notes simulataneously, is going to create a different group dymnamic that an acoustic horn(s) + bass/drums one. The way that Ornette responded to that different dynamic seemed to me to be by submersing himself into group's collective mentality even more than he had in his previous bands. He had to,

You may hear that as "restricting", but I hear it as leading the band by example. The music of Prime Time could have easily veered off into total chaos, but Ornette's playing always held it together, gave it its gravity and focus. Ornette, willingly it seemed to me, changed just enough to make the group work the way he wanted it to work. I think that was a pretty astute move on his part, because it allowed the band to stay together & evolve in a most organic/wholistic manner. As much as I love DIYH for its raw energy and gonzo physicality, I think that the Antilles album (name escapes me at the moment, is it Of Human Feelings?) shows the group functioning much more as a group, if you know what I mean.

The comments that Lazaro referenced regarding the "orchestral" thing are reflected in the ongoing evolution of the group sound. This wasn't an "Ornette soloing" band (not that any of his bands have been just that), this was an "Ornette orchestra", and the leader was just one member, albeit the central one. I think that Ornette relished both the concept of the band and his role in it. I've spoke in the past about my awe at Tone Dialing what a visionary & viable conceptual and practical model it is for music of the future that aspires/needs to at once be free & creative while at the same time in touch with the densities & textures of the contemporary world. There's a lot of information in that music, and it all works for me. But the density of the information necessitates adjusting one's concept of being a "soloist". "Soloing" per se is rapidly becoming less an imperative than is creating a healthy, organic group environment that's in tune with the struggles of the times (fighting today's battles with yesterday's weapons is always an option, but so is suicide...). 'Twas always so, but the landscape is radically different now than it was in 1959, 1969, 1979, or even 1989. Tone Dialing points the way as well as anything I've heard.

Ornette's always been very vocal about his music being about, at root,/basic helping people be more fully human. It makes perfect sense to me that as the challenges & obstacles to reaching that goal change, so does his music. And I don't think that his ego is such that he's going to place his "style" as a soloist above doing what it is that he thinks needs to be done to make his groups do what it is that he thinks they need to do to serve his greater goals at any given time. Is it really "restrictive" to do that? Or even if it is in a literal sense, is it a bad thing when/if it's done knowingly & willingly in the service of a perceived greater cause? Some might call that discipline in the service of vision. Great people do that, and Ornette, crazy as he might be in "practical" matters is nothing if not a great man with a great vision of what it means to be human.

Now, have the concepts of Prime Time ran their course as far as Ornette's visions for humanity goes? The "retro" sound of the Sound Grammar group might suggest so. But I'd rule nothing out from/about Ornette, especially since the world at large is just now beginning to sortakinda get its ears & souls around the sounds of his 1959 music. Maybe that's where he's coming from, sensing that there's perhaps more real hunger (as opposed to a niche market) for that earlier sound now, so bring it back home for the people to taste in the flesh. I'm just thankful that he continues to put it out there, because no matter what format he puts it in, electric, accoustic, large group or small, that "it" is the stuff of life - unrestricted life.

Just my opinion, and I'm not looking to change anybody's mind. As if I could.

[Lazaro Vega]

Thanks Jim. Yes, "Of Human Feelings" is the Antilles record, which includes "Sleep Talk," a number included on the new recording, and "Mob Job" which he revisited on the "Sound Museum" records.

Somehow your mentions of "Tone Dialing" have evaded me up to this post. Will have to check it again with these insights in the back of mind.

In this video, which seems to be from an early period for Prime Time, the rhythm feels more hemmed in by the dance rhythms, and the multi-linear aspect of the band isn't as likely to lead the collective to another "place" as the rhythm dominates the performance. Not that "Happy House" would morph into "Lonely Woman" on any given day. Yet in his development of collective group improv this seemed to be resolved or dealt with having a general "home" rhythm for each piece, even if Ornette is the only one playing it. In the review from the Ann Arbor performance by the current band I tried to convey how different lines within the ensemble were going at different velocities yet all were heading around the "sun" (home rhythm) somehow together. Denardo is really good at doing that these days. From what little I know of physics it seems Ornette is dealing in music with ideas about how objects in motion are percieved to be in motion only as they relate to other objects.

[JSngry]

In this video, which seems to be from an early period for Prime Time, the rhythm feels more hemmed in by the dance rhythms, and the multi-linear aspect of the band isn't as likely to lead the collective to another "place" as the rhythm dominates the performance.

Well, see, this is where it all gets totally subjective. I don't feel (never have, really) that dance rhythms intrinsically lead to a "hemming in". Quite the opposite, in fact. I find them quite liberating. Not the obvious, heavy-handed dance rhythms that are lowest common denominator tools of hammering into submission domination, but the slinky propulsions that get your mind and soul into a different place by going through your body instead of bypassing it entirely. I've never haqd a problem with that type of dance rhythm, and yes, it existed in the disco era. It wasn't the norm, not by a long shot, but it existed.

One of the reasons I started a thread not too long ago about do you dance or not was because I more and more see a resitance to dancing in jazz circles, and it both puzzles me and bugs me for a number of reasons. But that's another matter for another time, maybe...

Anyway, I guess if dance rhtyhms per se are not to your liking, or if you find them intrinsically limiting, then yeah, Prime Time is going to leave you wanting something different. Like I said, totally subjective.

[Lazaro Vega]

For me "Prime Time" was the only way to see Ornette live up to now, and I listened to "Of Human Feelings" A LOT when it was new, as well as "Body Meta," "Dancing In Your Head," and "Tales of Captain Black" by Ulmer, all the while digging "Soapsuds, Soapsuds," the Charlie Haden duo albums on A&M and "Old and New Dreams." The overlapping multi-directional aspect of his career was cool. It never dawned on me to read him as an acoustic or electric artist, but a "yes, and" artist. As for rhythm's on "Of Human Feelings," it sounds to me like the bass is the ground floor on the funk aspect and the drums were free as can be. The drums might start out together with the bass, but didn't stay with that for long.

As for "restrictions," I was taking that indirectly from Mark Gridley in the way he talks about how Miles directed Tony Williams as Miles went towards his electric period, specificially on "Paraphenilia" from "Miles In the Sky."

Edited October 22, 2006 by Lazaro Vega