Recordings that were critical flashpoints

[RDK]

Kenton, definitely, although I don't know if it was any one single recording. By the time City Of Glass hit, the controversy was already going, and had been.

While I've no doubt of the controversy at the time, I still can't quite figure out just what it was due to. Maybe I'm just not listening to the right Kenton.

Regardless, this subject fascinates me, and not just re: jazz, but in how critical opinions can change wildly over time when something "cutting edge" is first introduced only to then become accepted into the mainstream.

And yeah, Wynton is undoubtedly the biggest flashpoint over the last 25 years or so. I would include Kenny G as well except for the fact that virtually all jazz critics are in agreement that he sucks as a jazz artist.

[Scott Dolan]

I would say that Ayler's Spiritual Unity and Trane's Meditations would definitely qualify. As I remember, There were a number of critics who hated those records and a number who loved them. It was around that time that I came to the conclusion that reading critics who merely had opinions (as opposed to critics who had ideas and insights) was a waste of my time.

I would still think Ascension would have to be considered more of a flash point than Meditations.

Although, expanding on your premise, I guess you could say Coltranes late period was a serious flashpoint all the way around. Especially the shock it must have created coming right after the Classic Quartet.

I'll also second Machine Gun. An album that to this day I cannot stomach.

[BruceH]

Tristano's "Intuition" perhaps?

[Scott Dolan]

The 55 minute version of My Favorite Things from the Tokyo concert.

BAH!! Even I can't get with that one.

[BruceH]

Koko/Now's The Time got eitehr zero or one star.

Wow! That's a little startling.

[Rooster_Ties]

Probably NOT what you're looking for (for the radio show, since this is much more recent), but how about...

Song X??

Spy vs. Spy??

and isn't there some sort of noise-oriented Metheny disc from a few years back (memory is that it was a double CD, maybe even a triple?) -- I'm betting that didn't go over well with most critics, with a very few though that probably loved it.

These, of course, are all examples of really noisy discs, that are obviously gonna cause great consternation for a number of critics (maybe even most of them).

By the way, how were Andrew Hill's dates critically received at the time?? (For an example of something that isn't as noisy.)

Edited December 12, 2006 by Rooster_Ties

[BruceH]

Come to think of it, just about EVERY major turning point in Ellington's career came in for some negative criticism from some quarters before people got used to it. Not only "BB&B" but the Suite albums of the 50's/60's, the first Strayhorn stuff (not as good as the Cotton Club stuff don't you know)...over and over, some scritics were quick to say that whatever Duke was doing now wasn't as good as what he used to do.

[Brownian Motion]

Bunk Johnson.

[Scott Dolan]

and isn't there some sort of noise-oriented Metheny disc from a few years back (memory is that it was a double CD, maybe even a triple?)

I believe you are referring to his experimental album Zero Tolerance For Silence, which was just a single disc. And OOP as far as I know.

I have one of the ten copies of it that sold.

[ep1str0phy]

Ah, you mean you have one of the ten copies still in possession. That album has flooded the used joints.

[Scott Dolan]

I can't imagine why.

Hell, maybe it will be a big collectors item one day and I can sell it for a sweet profit!

[ep1str0phy]

Although we'll be trailing off topic, the Braxton Aristas are excellent...

I do get the sense that both the "leftishization" of the jazz review mags and the increasing visibility of the AACM members may have dulled some of the "WTF!?"-level impact of the recordings. The Downbeat review of For Alto, again, was extremely positive, IIRC... in retrospect, we can appreciate the importance/sheer explosiveness, but I'm not sure how many people really understood what was going down back then.

[Scott Dolan]

huh? both Ornette/Metheny & Zorn/Berne = Ornette were very well received; you can always find some jackoff but no, to the extent folks had opinions, neither was "controversial"... Free Jazz is another story to this day, the Prime Time stuff too for those who don't wanna get it... i ain't done the research-- somebody else's mission, but i'd be surprised anyone gave enough of a shit about Silva etc to revile + Euros were well used to cacophony via avant classical anyway... once in a while you can still meet old-timers who don't git Dolphy... who said For Alto? that's more on the mark tho' there was a steady stream of Brax that...

cd ALSO be reviled, even by non-Wyntons, before there ever was a Marsalis, Marsalis & Sycophants, LLC.

if Mosaic ever gets it together to do the Braxton/Aristsa box*... the kids could hear some stories.

c

* fuck they should it by subcscription or something but stop waiting, even tho' i kept most of the vinyl... sold my creative orch box, alas, AND my "half gentleman not beasts." (the wages of penury.)

p/s... Jandek!

Wow!

It's like a Robert Altman movie!!

[B. Clugston]

Although we'll be trailing off topic, the Braxton Aristas are excellent...

I do get the sense that both the "leftishization" of the jazz review mags and the increasing visibility of the AACM members may have dulled some of the "WTF!?"-level impact of the recordings. The Downbeat review of For Alto, again, was extremely positive, IIRC... in retrospect, we can appreciate the importance/sheer explosiveness, but I'm not sure how many people really understood what was going down back then.

Phil Woods brutally panned it in a Blindfold Test around that time. For Alto did get a lot of positive reviews, but there was hostility from some conservative critics. Some of the critical reaction is mentioned in Graham Lock's book Blutopia. I'll check when I have the chance.

[ep1str0phy]

Didn't Phil Woods brutally pan everything?

Braxton has always been among the more polarizing creative music figures, although it says something about the state of the scene that For Alto earned as many accolades as it did. Perhaps it's taken a couple of generations and a wave of reactionaries to bring us to some understanding regarding just how revolutionary that record was and is.

On another level, it may be difficult to judge the impact of actual albums (versus the artists themselves) when the distribution of some very important works may have been poor to virtually nonexistent. The digital age and the easy travel of information has truly changed the game for the canonical discourse in this music.

[Nate Dorward]

and isn't there some sort of noise-oriented Metheny disc from a few years back (memory is that it was a double CD, maybe even a triple?)

I believe you are referring to his experimental album Zero Tolerance For Silence, which was just a single disc. And OOP as far as I know.

I have one of the ten copies of it that sold.

R_T has in mind The Sign of 4, a triple-CD set on Knitting Factory with Metheny, Derek Bailey, Paul Wertico & Gregg Bendian. I had a copy, got rid of it (ditto Zero Tolerance). There's about 45 minutes of decent music on the set if you sift patiently through it. Mostly Metheny just blares over everything to the point that you can't hear the drummers or Bailey.

I think that it's actually a case of an album that ought to have been more controversial--I recall its getting a pretty respectful review in Downbeat for instance when it should have been ripped to shreds. An awful clunker.

[Rooster_Ties]

and isn't there some sort of noise-oriented Metheny disc from a few years back (memory is that it was a double CD, maybe even a triple?)

I believe you are referring to his experimental album Zero Tolerance For Silence, which was just a single disc.

R_T has in mind The Sign of 4, a triple-CD set on Knitting Factory with Metheny, Derek Bailey, Paul Wertico & Gregg Bendian.

Actually, I was probably thinking of both releases -- and confusing the two as being one in the same.

Edited December 13, 2006 by Rooster_Ties

[Scott Dolan]

Actually, I was probably thinking of both releases -- and confusing the two as being one in the same.

Doesn't matter. They're both god awful turds.

Edited December 13, 2006 by Scott Dolan

[clifford_thornton]

I'm trying to think whether we have critical flashpoints now - (fucking) Jandek being a good example, maybe someone like Arthur Doyle also, though neither appear in the "jazz" rags and who knows what to call Signal to Wire. I mean, the Bagatellen crew (full disclosure here: I post there occasionally) gets its undies in a bunch on Bill Dixon and Jon Abbey Music, but... I think Dixon's music is some of the most beautiful music made (with a few clinkers), but I dunno if the "establishment" has caught up to him as much as it has even Silva (5-stars for Skilfulness?).

I mean, as one who writes about music (or makes a valiant effort to), I haven't felt like I've seen any flashpoints. I have come across a lot of records I enjoy, and a bunch I could give a shit about. In an age of creative oversaturation, there are fewer flashpoints, I think. And it may be harder to see some of them for what they are.

[Scott Dolan]

Sadly, I just don't think enough people are paying attention for there to be a "flashpoint" these days.

Many of the flashpoints that have been listed happened back in the days when Jazz was still considered popular music.

[clifford_thornton]

I'm not sure if I'm on the right track; I was merely posing something that maybe someone more "eloquent" than me (Sangry?) could tackle.

This kind of dovetails with the whole "overrated/underrated" business that I really couldn't get myself into. Is it just that we're to blase to recognize something as estimable or total dreck, unless it happened twenty or more years before we were born? I don't know.

[JSngry]

Sadly, I just don't think enough people are paying attention for there to be a "flashpoint" these days.

Many of the flashpoints that have been listed happened back in the days when Jazz was still considered popular music.

Well, thank god it's ART now. Hardly anybody cares, hardly anybody listens, but so what? We got CULTURAL LEGITIMACY now!

[JSngry]

Is it just that we're to blase to recognize something as estimable or total dreck, unless it happened twenty or more years before we were born? I don't know.

I don't know either, but I do know that "the world" and "the music" have more often than not been going off in somewhat different directions for the last howmanyever years. It's nice to be right, and it's ok to be alone, but sometimes I ask myself if what was once even a tenuous connection to "real life" has become no connection at all. In a few cases (Braxton, Threadgill, Cecil, a.o), the answer is a resounding no, but sometimes I get the feeling that a party's being given and nobody's coming because it just ain't that much of a party in the first place unless you've never been anywhere else...

[clifford_thornton]

It's not like we're asking the popular consciousness to drop everything and listen to John Tchicai (though it might be nice if they did!), but even the jazz/other music public doesn't seem to get tied up in music - and I mean really tied up - rather being unequivocally accepting or mildly dismissive. I'm guilty of it too sometimes, though I still feel like a nutjob doing an entire radio program on the onetime Ayler trumpeter Norman Howard (which went very well, thank you!).

[ep1str0phy]

Just out of curiosity--when/where did you do the Norman Howard thing?