What has happened to AAJ?

[JSngry]

What's testosterone without estrogen?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

The probelm as I see it is not that men are too tough, it's that they're too insecure. And women are too insecure too. They need to call men on that shit, not to beat them down, but to cut down the bullshit that men get away with. If a man can't handle that, can't handle being busted for being a fraud, and if a woman can't handle calling the man on his shit becasue she's too "afraid" or "put off" or wahtever, you got two weak people and nothing will change, except for the worse. It takes two to tango.

Women cut men WAY too much slack. Whining about it and playing the blame game is just another form of slack-cutting. It's easier to nag than it is to act. Can't nobody make you a victim unless you let them, at least not under normal circumstances.

Now, if a man can't deal with that, that's his loss. Any "victories" he obtains will be Pyrhhic ones. The smart guys figured this out a long time ago. The rest of them keep tilting after windmills. Between the insecure men and the weak women, you end up with a society full of people looking for an enabler rather than a mate. Pitiful, that's what that is, and the blame is equal. When you are weak, it is hard to respect anything, and respect is where hope and success lives. It takes a strong person to have and show respect, and both sexes are woefully lacking in strength these days, or so it seems to me. Opposites are meant to compliment, not destroy, each other, but it takes the strength of confidence to have the respect of that which is your complimentary opposite. And strength, TRUE strength, not illusory strength, belongs to those who choose to have it. It is not an easy choice, nor is it always anywhere near the top 100 options put before us. But somewhere along the line, it IS a choice.

We all have choices, or at least we do once we REALIZE we do. Make 'em and live with the results. If you don't like the results, make different decisions. And if you want to but can't, ask yourself why not before looking for somebody else to blame. Sure, blame can always be placed on the outside, and usually with great justification. But fixing the outside wrong and NOT fixing the part inside that is wrong is a guarantee of the same old shit happening again and again and again. This works both ways - I have as much sympathy for the insecure male who overcompensates by attempting to limit others as I do for the weak female who overcompensates by nagging and complaining and being the perpetual victim. This goes for jazz and society alike.

End of sermon.

Edited September 12, 2003 by JSngry

[Simon Weil]

Chuck, Moose, (and now Jim),

I think there's more "give" than people realise. If you go there, things happen.

Simon Weil

Edited September 12, 2003 by Simon Weil

[JSngry]

I like going places. But I like being visited too.

Ideally, I like being visited while visiting.

BTW - where's the women in this discussion? COME VISIT ME!

Figuratively, of course...

[Jazzmoose]

...female who overcompensates by nagging...

Which reminds me, if I don't get off this computer and get that window in the living room sanded, there'll be hell to pay...

[JSngry]

That's not nagging, that's keeping you honest!

Believe me, the lovely and talented Brenda KEEPS me honest, and for that I'm thankful.

Maybe not at the moment, but...

[Guest Chaney]

Men differ from women in some ways.

Women differ from men in some ways.

I kinda' like it that way.

Edited September 13, 2003 by Chaney

[chris olivarez]

Vive la difference.

[Christiern]

Here's the latest posted info:

14-Sept-2003
All three music sites should be completely restored by the end of the week.

[Daniel A]

I am on the Jazzgrrls list and I remember this one discussion where a woman teacher mused that there seemed more females playing jazz at the school band level than males - and where did they go? So I drew the conclusion that she felt women were put off. This is before talent even enters into it. Just put off.

She talked about "being tough enough", like women were put off by rather testosterone driven hard-nosed competition - so that, implicitly, otherwise talented women got put off by the vibe in Jazz.

There are more female instrumentalists, stars, in classical music - where, I suggest, the vibe is quite different.

Not a good thing, in my opinion.

I have no statistics on this, just a story from real life. (I posted this at the BNBB shortly before its demise)

One of the most gifted jazz musicians I've learned to know is a woman. I've played with her in the past, and she has of course played with much better musicians than me. Ten years ago, she was aiming at a carreer as a jazz musician, and I think she would've managed very well. But she disrupted her musical studies because she thought that there was more to life than just music and football. Unfortunately those were about the only things a lot of the other (male) musicians she was playing with cared for. She began medical studies instead, while still continuing to play occasionally at a very high level. After graduation, when working full time as a doctor, she decided that she would stop playing the saxophone alltogether, because she pressure of having to practise hours not to feel that she was losing it grew to big. Now it's been years since she touched the instrument, which makes me sad every time I think of it.

Now, I'm not suggesting that male jazz musicians are all the same. Neither do I think my friend quit jazz because of some macho attitude from fellow musicians. But I do think that men in general seems to be perfectly happy dedicating their life (or their spare time) to a more narrow scope of things than women. We've all met the fanatic record collector - in fact many of us on this board are slightly fanatic about collecting records ourselves! But why is always the fanatic collector, regardless of if it's of records, stamps or butterflys a male?

[Joe G]

I'm not sure that's true. Women can becomes fanatical collectors as well. A friend of mine had a stepmom who had just cases and cases of china teacups. Why? No one knew. And what about those beanie babies that people (mostly women) were collecting just a few years ago?

Personally, I struggle with the idea of dedicating my life to "just" music. I'm also very much interested in nature, and have often wished I could work in some job relating to that. There's only so many hours in the day though.

[rockefeller center]

There are more female instrumentalists, stars, in classical music - where, I suggest, the vibe is quite different.

The Status of Women In German Orchestras:

A Report Based on Practical Experience, by Abbie Conant.

http://www.osborne-conant.org/status.htm

[Christiern]

Apropos female collectors, let us not forget Imelda Marcos and her shoes!

[Simon Weil]

There are more female instrumentalists, stars, in classical music - where, I suggest, the vibe is quite different.

The Status of Women In German Orchestras:

A Report Based on Practical Experience, by Abbie Conant.

http://www.osborne-conant.org/status.htm

OK, on German orchestras, the first thing to be said is that Germany is a special case. As is not commonly known, one of the things that the Nazis did was remove women, very largely, from society. Kinde, kirche, kuche [children, church, cooking] was the litany. This was enacted as law and that law was not repealed until the early 60s. This tells you something about Germany, that the institutionalized anti-feminism of the Nazis was not unpalatable to Germans - who even after Hitler was safely dead did not repeal this law. Women in Germany remain disadvantaged in comparison to the rest of Europe (and, presumably, the States).

So, basically, you'd expect less women in German orchestras.

Here is the representation of women in four countries including former East and West Germany:

USA  36%

United Kingdom  30%

West Germany  16%

East Germany  16%

Austria  16%

Representation in Major US orchestras                    25%

Representation in Major German orchestras            11%

There is nowhere near 25% women in Major US Jazz groups. Not even 11%..So...

Simon Weil

[rockefeller center]

There may be more female instrumentalists in classical music but I'm not sure whether "the vibe is quite different."

[Simon Weil]

the law you mentioned was repealed early on in GDR history. Everybody used to work in the GDR, women as well as men. The numbers for east and west being the same cannot be explained by their equal stance to women needing to be "removed from society."

Right, but what I'm pointing out is that the supposedly ideologically free West, Germans chose not to repeal that law. In the East they were compelled to do a whole bunch of things in line with true socialism . I'm suggesting that the tardiness of the West in repealing that law says something about German society, which may be have been masked by the ideological strictures in the East - and that this may be a possible explanation of why you get the same, low, level of female representation in orchestras from East and West Germany.

Or maybe not...

Simon Weil

[A Lark Ascending]

'Vive la differance'

Quite.

But with more women on the jazz bandstand just think how much more of a 'differance' that could make to the varying directions of jazz?

I'm more than happy to sacrifice 'babe' discussions for that.

[Simon Weil]

There may be more female instrumentalists in classical music but I'm not sure whether "the vibe is quite different."

Evidence of the vibe thing. Yeah, well, next time I discover how to nail down smoke...But I sure as hell notice when there's a woman instrumentalist in a Jazz (or Rock, come to that) band. But women instrumentals in a classical orchestra or as

star soloists - completely unremarkable.

All I can do is tell you of my experience on Jazzgrrls (the internet women in Jazz discussion group). My feeling is that women there are kind of are beaten down in respect of hoping for any change in Jazz (for women). I don't feel they want to try, to initiate, because in their own personal, individual experiences, they get kicked to shit if they try. I don't know this, I intuit it - but there you go.

If you contrast that with discussions about women in Jazz I've had here and elsewhere, I get the sense of a degree of fear and apprehension - and it is quite a lot of fear and doesn't feel entirely rational.

So...

I conclude that these things are related.

Simon Weil

Edited September 15, 2003 by Simon Weil

[Rooster_Ties]

I just noticed that the AAJ board is back up again, though it might just be for testing. The "front page" now says...

19-Sept-2003

We have started the process of restoring the websites. We hope to have the home page, the reviews and the articles restored this weekend. We'll know if we can fully recover all the data next week.

Again, we appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience. We're doing our best to restore the articles and directories in a timely manner.

FYI, the most recent post there (except for a couple posts just today, probably just within the last hour) dates back to 18-MAY-2003 11:51 PM, although it's possible there are some incremental backups they haven't applied yet.

Edited September 21, 2003 by Rooster_Ties

[Brad]

They appear to have lost a lot of threads not to mention posts. I posted something there just to see and looks like about a third of my posts. Not that anything that was lost would have changed the world, as we know it

[patricia]

Mike is in the process of restoring the site.

Apparantly some hacker [may he/she roast in the eternal fires of Hell] gained access and screwed up the site.

It took Mike and his associcates SEVEN YEARS to create and establish the site and a few hours for some miscreant hacker to wreck it, just because they could.

The "Birthday" thread on the site is, apparantly, gone, as is everything after the middle of May. Damn.

Also, I can't log on at all, because I "don't have permisssion" to do so and my e-mail address is already in use by another poster [ME].

I've e-mailed Mike and haven't heard from him yet.

As for hackers, so revered by many; they are a plague!!!!!

[Claude]

It took Mike and his associcates SEVEN YEARS to create and establish the site and a few hours for some miscreant hacker to wreck it, just because they could.

Well, there is a second reason for the current disaster: the automatic backup had stopped working in may of this year.

A webmaster must always be prepared for hacker attacks or hard drive crashes that destroy all the server data, that's what backups are there for. Too bad Michael noticed that late there was something wrong with it.

Edited September 21, 2003 by Claude

[Jim Alfredson]

That's a real bummer about Mike's site. Who would want to hack a jazz website? Seems rather silly.

I back this board up every week manually, just for the record.

[J.A.W.]

I back this board up every week manually, just for the record.

[patricia]

It took Mike and his associcates SEVEN YEARS to create and establish the site and a few hours for some miscreant hacker to wreck it, just because they could.

Well, there is a second reason for the current disaster: the automatic backup had stopped working in may of this year.

A webmaster must always be prepared for hacker attacks or hard drive crashes that destroy all the server data, that's what backups are there for. Too bad Michael noticed that late there was something wrong with it.

I agree with you, but the fault, ultimately, is with the benign acceptance of the practice of hacking. If the hacker were breaking into our homes and destroying our belongings, one of which is our computer, there would be a huge outcry.

I assume that it is considered vandalism when a hacker breaks into a site and destroys data. Why are people more concerned about what the victimized site has lost, rather than in effect blaming them for the damage the hacker has done to their property??

Because of these cyber-scum, we have to have programs which save our data and take extraordinary means to prevent this from happening. If the hacker were tampering with the mail, they would be reviled, prosecuted and jailed. They would not be being hired to develop programs for companies to guard against what they, themselves, consider a marketable skill.

As it is, there is a large segment of the world which excuses the vandal and blames the victim of their malicious burglary and vandalism for their lack of forsight. Are we trapped in some parallel universe in which it is OK to destroy other people's property, if you are more computer-literate than your victims?

[Claude]

Patricia,

I did not want to minimize the criminal acts of hacking, but these are risks a webmaster must live with, and the data loss could have happened for purely technical reasons too and would have had the same results. Hard drive crashes and virus infections can happen anytime.

It would only have needed a weekly check of the backup to prevent such a major data loss. Michael was probably too busy with the content of the site to take care of this, but a successful site like AAJ, with so many readers and contributors (and sponsors) would have deserved more technical assistance.

Let's hope he can get copies of the articles and reviews that were missing in the backup. Normally the external authors should have a copy, for example in their email outbox. The message board content is not so important in my view. Since this year we are used to losses of complete jazz discussion board contents -_-