Bill Dixon Soul Note Box

[JSngry]

Whenever it's not good enough for somebody to be The Unique Who They Are & somebody else has the need to play the They Are/Are Not ABCXYZ Game, keep in mind that that's a game that somebody else needs to play, not The Unique Who They Are.

The Unique Who They Are has already played the game they needed to play, and by becoming The Unique Who They Are, they have won it, and won it splendidly.

All the other little wigglies who have not a clue about this don't even know what the real game is.

[jazzbo]

I pretty much agree with both Joe and Jim. Though the real game is mumbly peg.

Edited April 26, 2011 by jazzbo

[clifford_thornton]

So often on this board we pass over into hype. We want to say Dixon was a great composer, comparable to Webern. For that to be the case we need to be able to point to the compositions (publically circulated) and their performance tradition (other than by their author) and we need to be able to construct an argument explaining in what way Dixon formulated compositional concepts that went beyond the things of which he was a contemporary and inheritor (Boulez, Stockhausen) to the same extent that Webern went beyond (say) Mahler and Zemlinsky, or Schoenberg. Once we have that argument in pace we can discuss it, but until we do there is nothing to talk about. On this board attempts to open such a discussion generally end in abuse and 'ah but you haven't heard such-and-such a CD'. It's like The Wire: everyone who blows a trumpet is Webern; everyone who plays electronica is Stockhausen. In the end the merely good are damaged by this hype.

I don't recall anyone here comparing Bill Dixon to Webern until Moms did. Also don't recall anyone comparing Dixon to Boulez or Stockhausen until you did. Bill Dixon did what he did - take it or leave it. And it's your right to do the latter if you choose. For me, comparing music from different genres is a waste of time. In the end, there's good music and music that's not. For me, Bill Dixon's falls into the former camp. Others may feel differently.

I don't think he would have wanted to have been compared to anyone. Among other things, Bill was taken by the brevity of Webern's pieces and did have a trumpet bagatelle entitled "Webern." Bill liked to say that he "just liked the sound of the word 'Webern' - what if I titled it 'Monk'? It might not have had the same ring to it.'" Picture that being said with a wink. Andrew Raffo Dewar has an interesting analysis of the piece from a musicological standpoint in his MA thesis, which I have at home and cannot quote directly right now. But it was a way to go from the lowest to the highest tones he could produce on the instrument in the shortest distance possible, in simple terms a sort of extended and somewhat particulate glissando. It's more than an exercise and less (perhaps) than a fully fleshed out composition. I am not doing it justice here but that at least gives you an idea.

The thing is that composition is too much tied to having other people do the work that you originally wrote/assembled. Is it "composed" or not if only the composer (and in some cases, the sidepeople that the artist chooses to flesh out ideas) does the work? Bill has said that he doesn't want a repertory ensemble performing his music (at least in the ensuing years - who knows how long that will last). But does that mean that it's not great music? Or that it was painstakingly conceived over years of work?

I heard a recent CD of Mingus covers, very well-played but without the sense of risk and almost inevitable failure that is part of Mingus' best work when he's there. Most of us would never say that Mingus didn't compose, but I would wager that we'd prefer to hear his compositions with him in the mix, for better or for worse.

[David Ayers]

Oh hey I know Dixon's music well - from LPs even. So don't get me wrong. It's one thing to like something, another to sign up for all the hype. And to those catching up on 20 years of Dixon's output on Soul Note: welcome on board! Lots of fun to be had, in a kind of grumbly-rumbly way.

[clifford_thornton]

Nothing wrong with 'hype' if you believe that someone's work deserves wider knowledge and/or acclaim.

[JSngry]

What is the "hype" exactly? I've been enjoying Dixon for too long, in too many different places, to have become a target of it, I guess. All I know is that the guy had a voice and a vision of his own, and that he fully exercised them both to some delightfully stimulating ends. What else is there to really know, really?

[clifford_thornton]

I don't think of hype as negative. Just spreading the gospel, as it were.

[JSngry]

Well yeah, but judging by some of the reactions here, there's been some sort of odious-type hype that's playing the "as great as ABC" game and all that, which is apparently infuriating some of the reactors, and I'm all like, wot's this, then? I've never seen any Lincoln Center-scale effort to redefine Bill Dixon as The Great American Post-Webern MegaGreat Composer, or whatever it is that is...<b> upsetting </b>these people who feel that their world of "composerdom" is being violated or peed upon or whatever it is that's filing their rankles...if there's any of that type hype out there, I've not seen it, which is ok, because that would be for and about a world I have no real interest in anyway, it being half-past dead already, with it's time winding down and it's period of relevance winding up.

Edited April 26, 2011 by JSngry

[David Ayers]

OK OK. I guess I have to think that hype is not aimed at me but at the unconverted and the unaware. I see a danger in hype in that it puts off the smart, who don't swallow the exaggeration. In other words, hype makes things look dumb and uncool, since only the impressionable would believe the silly fibs.

[JSngry]

I still don't know what this "hype" is. Either knowingly or unknowingly, I've somehow escaped it. Could you point me to an example or two, please, just so I know what the hell is going on in that regard, because I'm, like, a glutton for punishment with a seemingly unlimited capacity for the inane.

[MomsMobley]

Roy Harris

&

George Walker

Edited May 15, 2014 by MomsMobley

[David Ayers]

The infamous notes to November 1981 compare Dixon to Beethoven, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, as well as Armstrong, Tatum, Ellington, Young, Parker, George Russell, Cecil Taylor, etc. etc.

[JSngry]

Oh, so Dixon is not among your favorites, or even semi-favorites & it upsets (apparently tremendously so!) you when people who like him more than you do express enjoyment of his work & recommend it to others on no grounds other than that enjoyment.

That's a bit...cranky, I think, to say nothing of irrational. But hey, go with what you know. It's gotten you this far!

There's lots of Dixon hype albeit from few people. You yourself contribute it by plumping for his dull-- or 'subtle'-- records.

I argue that there is NOT a whole lot worth digging for in Dixon's recalcitrant work that ya'll haven't already gotten elsewhere. And no, he's NOT a great composer-- or so very rarely so it's silly to pretend otherwise. Absolutely I'll grant him a unique and worthy artistic totality but I have on the desk next to me, recordings of music by--

Carlo Giorgio Garofalo

James Whitbourn

Giorgio Federico Ghedini

Julian Wachner

Eric Whitacre

Mark Adamo

Michael Daughtry

Einar Englund

Miklos Rozsa

Leonardo Balada

Peter Schulthore

Roy Harris

&

George Walker

This covers chamber, orchestral, choral music etc-- ya'll name it.

SOMEHOW I think there's more in that than listening to Bill Dixon sigh, again, and Tony Oxley scrape a fucking cymbal real slow like.

As I said, Dixon's fine, and the creator of an original, sometimes interesting sound world (I'll let others debate-- or not-- his visual art) but where's his Treemonisha? his De Organizer? etc.

If I were drunk I'd maybe credit the solo trumpet stuff bootleg Berio but really that's an insult to both.

Just don't pretend re- re- re- re- re- re- listening to boring Bill Dixon music is more than habit or personal affection; in the world of music history, it sure as shit is noone's DUTY.

CHARLES BROWN ** is ** holy, no argument there--

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=EhV1SvrDTJg

My all-time favorite Dixon jam is this one, btw--

http://www.youtube.c...feature=related

I still don't know what this "hype" is. Either knowingly or unknowingly, I've somehow escaped it. Could you point me to an example or two, please, just so I know what the hell is going on in that regard, because I'm, like, a glutton for punishment with a seemingly unlimited capacity for the inane.

[JSngry]

The infamous notes to November 1981 compare Dixon to Beethoven, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, as well as Armstrong, Tatum, Ellington, Young, Parker, George Russell, Cecil Taylor, etc. etc.

That's it? 30 year old liner notes? Post-Marsailis liner notes? Liner notes written when everybody and their half-sister's pimp was staking claim to somebody being A Great American Artist? That's the "hype" I'm (or somebody) supposed to have been suckered in by?

Geez, no wonder I'm not in the hype loop!

[clifford_thornton]

Re: Ayers, yeah, they do, you're right. There is some interesting musical analysis in there in spite of knotty comparisons (Beethoven's late quartets vs. November 1981 would leave a lot out as a simple dichotomy). If Ms. Mabley is here to "debunk," that doesn't really do much of a service to the music. Mabley not digging it is not "authority," because Mabley hasn't really made much effort with the music or really given much of a shit about it. One doesn't have to like the music but that doesn't mean it's not good or worth someone else's time, or that he didn't do the things he did. Other than that, I can't really say anything that I haven't said before.

Superlatives aren't exaggerating, really - if I am guilty of anything, it's in fueling the belief that if one digs Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, 60s Coltrane, and whoever else might fall into that canon, one will likely also enjoy Dixon's music immensely. There is nothing wrong in that.

Edited April 26, 2011 by clifford_thornton

[jazzbo]

Hey hype is how many of us get laid, and the race continues. Mom Clem is full of hype for HIS opinions. A salt shaker is always a handy implement.

When the mood strikes Dixon and so many others, all the stuff of music really, can be like Goldilock's porridge. And that's damned fine stuff. Especially with some salt.

[paul secor]

The infamous notes to November 1981 compare Dixon to Beethoven, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, as well as Armstrong, Tatum, Ellington, Young, Parker, George Russell, Cecil Taylor, etc. etc.

"infamous"?????

I've listened to the music, but can honestly say I've never read the notes. Had to look to see who wrote them - someone named Jimmy Stewart. I don't know if that's the saxophonist who recorded for Cadence Jazz or someone else. Whoever it might be, his liner notes didn't have any effect on the way I heard the music. You're laying stuff on Bill Dixon's music that he didn't lay on it, nor did anyone else here - excepting you and Moms.

[David Ayers]

The infamous notes to November 1981 compare Dixon to Beethoven, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, as well as Armstrong, Tatum, Ellington, Young, Parker, George Russell, Cecil Taylor, etc. etc.

"infamous"?????

I've listened to the music, but can honestly say I've never read the notes. Had to look to see who wrote them - someone named Jimmy Stewart. I don't know if that's the saxophonist who recorded for Cadence Jazz or someone else. Whoever it might be, his liner notes didn't have any effect on the way I heard the music. You're laying stuff on Bill Dixon's music that he didn't lay on it, nor did anyone else here - excepting you and Moms.

Not at all. I thought I was being clear. I am discussing the hype and exaggeration around his music.

[JSngry]

the hype and exaggeration around his music.

jeezus dude, what kind of a world do you live in where there's not hype and exaggeration around anybody's music?

Or what kind of a world, for that matter, where somebody who doesn't like some kind of music as much as others thinks that whatever acclaim said music has received that outreaches one's own taste for said music is due to hype and exaggeration?

Some people preach, some people bitch, hey, it's all bullshit. Proceed accordingly.

[David Ayers]

the hype and exaggeration around his music.

jeezus dude, what kind of a world do you live in where there's not hype and exaggeration around anybody's music?

Or what kind of a world, for that matter, where somebody who doesn't like some kind of music as much as others thinks that whatever acclaim said music has received that outreaches one's own taste for said music is due to hype and exaggeration?

Some people preach, some people bitch, hey, it's all bullshit. Proceed accordingly.

I guess it bothers me is when it gets difficult to have a conversation either about judgement or about music history because the hype is a distraction from more measured claims. If you say anyone in jazz might be less than a compositional genius or a technical wizard on this board you get a furious response. Same when I pointed out that Horace Parlan was hardly Sviatoslav Richter and Anthony Braxton was not yet Wagner. There just seems to be no scale. Yes, people are enthusiastic, and don't always get it if you seem to be saying something different from what they assume. The problem on the end of it though is, I think, that music we care about is not widely liked. As I am always saying, there are two reasons for that - one is lies in the music, which has limitations both as music and as audience-proposition we are often unwilling to acknowledge - and the other lies in the mediation.

[JSngry]

And part of it lies in people having different needs out of music, but at some level thinking that all needs should be the same You say that Braxton is not yet Wagner, like it really matters to you, and I'm sure it does, and I'm sure you have your reasons, valid reasons, but for me, I really don't give a fuck, because the whats and whys and how muches of me needing Braxton and/or Wagner don't really intersect that much, and truth be told, for my life, as I've lived it, I really don't need Wagner, and anybody who tries to tell me that 'I should have this ineffable need to need Wagner, well, hey, go fuck yourself, ya' know? Wagner foes to a place that I can get to just as well otherwise, except for those places he goes that I really don't have a need to go to, and I'm more than ok with that. There's plenty places I choose not to go, and plenty more places that wouldn't let me in even if I showed up. They don't need/want me, I don't need/want them, and afaic, we both of us are well-served by it being so. And ditto the vice-versa.

Not everybody needs to be legitimized by somebody else's legitimacy. They create their own. Bill Dixon is one of those, so is Anthony Braxton, hell, so is freakin' Frankie Valli. True, Frankie Valli is hardly Enrico Caruso, but if that matters to somebody, I doubt that that somebody really get either one of them.

People make me sick sometimes, they just be all kinds of stupid. Seeking, claiming, and especially needing relative legitimacy in every damn thing is just one way to be stupid. If you're dumb enough to go there, serve you right to stay there.

[MomsMobley]

Braxton is much closer to Wagner than an egret.

Edited May 17, 2014 by MomsMobley

[David Ayers]

Well, Jim, I'm not totally sure that corresponds to anything I said... but anyway, how can you not need Wagner? Modern music is pretty much unimaginable without him, as I think you know... He's in your blood!

[JSngry]

We live in totally different worlds, and for that I'm sure we are both grateful. I know I am.

Add that that's for both Klem & David, albeit for different reasons.

Edited April 26, 2011 by JSngry

[clifford_thornton]

a quirky black dandy with an excessively high opinion of his own philosophy

Rude...