Strange quote from Chick Corea

[cih]

Even I've heard George Martin mention The Beatles...

Edited November 3, 2011 by cih

[jazzbo]

Well, it doesn't seem that odd to me because I really didn't pay attention to the Beatles for a few decades. Once they stopped releasing albums I just didn't listen to them. I listened to Chicago blues, fusion, hard rock and funk, and began my jazz addiction. I really thought that the Beatles were for kids, I listened to them when I was kid, I never really saw what a big deal they were. And I still don't hold them in incredible esteem. I also know a few musicians who are deeply into THEIR music, to the exclusion of almost any other soundwaves that encounter their ears for long periods of time, years and years. Corea may have had a similar dedicated focus on his musical production.

Just saying. Not paying attention to the Beatles is something that I can relate to. It's not such a big deal to me if Corea didn't.

[AllenLowe]

1) I don't believe in communication as an artistic goal. I go with Beckett who said of Proust "he has nothing to say - only a way of saying it." Art isn't about anything, it just is. Or as John Cage said, "I have nothing to say and it's poetry."

2) Corea is full of it and is just voicing the fake populist sentiments of Billboard-America. Or rationalizing his own inner recognition that he is a great pianist but mediocre artist, IMHO (we should bring Larry Kart in here; Larry has perfectly, in his book, summed up Corea's basic shallowness).

3) It reminds of the story of when Georgie Jessel was at the funeral of some Hollywood star who was, privately, a horrible person. Somebody said "look at the crowds here." Jessel responded: "Give the people what they want and they'll always turn out."

Edited November 3, 2011 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Looking back, I think that's maybe why I've liked almost any and all of Chick's other work better than his fusion, even going back to the original electric RTF. You look at the "Big 4" of fusion back in the day...McLaughlin was certainly aware of popular trends, Zawinul lived on the Cannonball soul circuit and he himself helped define it with "Mercy...", Herbie was an innate populist from jump, but Chick...maybe you're right, Lon, maybe his own gifts were enough that he never bothered to be touched by more popular elements.

That never hurt his other stuff, but I do think it hurt his fusion. So much of that stuff is just....nerdy!

I mean, if you want to communicate, does it not behoove you to know what people are listening to and why? Or do you just call on Al DeMiola to bludgeon them into submission?

[AllenLowe]

there was a play, I think, years ago, called Insulting the Audience. Now, that made sense.

[JSngry]

Just saying. Not paying attention to the Beatles is something that I can relate to. It's not such a big deal to me if Corea didn't.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "not paying attention" to and flat out ignoring, which is what I get the impression Corea did.

It would be like if Scott Walker overheard somebody playing a Sinatra album in 2005 and came over and in all seriousness asked what that was.

[JSngry]

1) I don't believe in communication as an artistic goal.

there was a play, I think, years ago, called Insulting the Audience. Now, that made sense.

That sounds like communication as an artistic goal to me!

[jazzbo]

Just saying. Not paying attention to the Beatles is something that I can relate to. It's not such a big deal to me if Corea didn't.

Yeah, but there's a difference between "not paying attention" to and flat out ignoring, which is what I get the impression Corea did.

It would be like if Scott Walker overheard somebody playing a Sinatra album in 2005 and came over and in all seriousness asked what that was.

I flat out ignored the Beatles as well, so it's not beyond the pale in my estimation. Granted I wasn't "in the industry" or trying to "communicate" in the market, but I had a plan for musical study and appreciation and the Beatles weren't on the map. I had one friend who ignored the Beatles because he was trying to be the next Jimi Hendrix without seeming to be trying to be the next Jimi Hendrix, an obsession in his life. And another who ignnored the Beatles because Mick Jagger and Jimi Morrison were GODS. I just can see it happen.

Edited November 3, 2011 by jazzbo

[JSngry]

I can see people ignoring The Beatles, just not Chick Corea, not for that long, not being around where he's been around. You'd think that if nothing else, him & Gary Burton would have had that talk at some time.

[cih]

1) I don't believe in communication as an artistic goal. I go with Beckett who said of Proust "he has nothing to say - only a way of saying it." Art isn't about anything, it just is. Or as John Cage said, "I have nothing to say and it's poetry."

I like Antonin Artaud's short essay "All Writing Is Pigshit":

"People who leave the obscure and try to define whatever it is that goes on in their heads, are pigs." ...etc....

[jazzbo]

I can see people ignoring The Beatles, just not Chick Corea, not for that long, not being around where he's been around. You'd think that if nothing else, him & Gary Burton would have had that talk at some time.

I can imagine him ignoring them, and not discussing it with Burton. I have a huge imagination.

[Leeway]

Ah, the myth of the great artist.

Why myth? I really don't get your dismissive response to the idea that, yes, there are great artists, and yes, they do create from themselves, and no, they don't do audience polling ahead of time.

[fasstrack]

Ah, the myth of the great artist.

...yes, they do create from themselves, and no, they don't do audience polling ahead of time.

There's a self-absorption that has crept into jazz performance in the past-innovation and progress notwithstanding. It's as if many people are in a bubble. I find it so disturbing I do not wish to play with certain people. They simply are not about what I stand for. It's not about taking audience polls. IMO it IS about using art to bring out people-to uplift, and I don't mean merely oneself. But what was good enough for Pops and Pres and other real greats who were incredibly creative besides doesn't seem to cut it for, ahem, 'geniuses' like Kurt Rosenwinkel (whose playing I like BTW). With this new breed it's not about the people. It's not even about the songs anymore-unless they are used to show how clever one is. Now 'jazz' is about me me me.

[alocispepraluger102]

i found his arc trio music very exciting and promising and those records of miniatures for ecm brilliant.

to me, chick never fulfilled the promise of what i thought i saw in those early days.

pursuit of the dollar may have had something to do with that.

for whatever reason he seems to have run out of creative gas, or will, or just dropped the ball.

[fasstrack]

Make that 'the past 50 yrs. or so'.

[Leeway]

Ah, the myth of the great artist.

...yes, they do create from themselves, and no, they don't do audience polling ahead of time.

There's a self-absorption that has crept into jazz performance in the past-innovation and progress notwithstanding. It's as if many people are in a bubble. I find it so disturbing I do not wish to play with certain people. They simply are not about what I stand for. It's not about taking audience polls. IMO it IS about using art to bring out people-to uplift, and I don't mean merely oneself. But what was good enough for Pops and Pres and other real greats who were incredibly creative besides doesn't seem to cut it for, ahem, 'geniuses' like Kurt Rosenwinkel (whose playing I like BTW). With this new breed it's not about the people. It's not even about the songs anymore-unless they are used to show how clever one is. Now 'jazz' is about me me me.

Sorry, I don't buy into the "art as uplift" concept, at least not as a statement of its purpose. That motive usually produces something that is definitely not art. I just find it interesting that the idea of a great artist (I'm not thinking Rosenwinkel here) seems to be dismissed out of hand. Maybe the age of the iPod is incongruous with great art.

[JSngry]

Sorry, I don't buy into the "art as uplift" concept, at least not as a statement of its purpose. That motive usually produces something that is definitely not art.

I buy into it as an option, a choice (and I don't buy into the "great artists DON'T HAVE A CHOICE!!!" idea either. Great artists might sometimes be compulsives & compulsives might sometimes be great artists, but only sometimes, and being one does not "prove" being the other) - but only one choice out of many. An overt expression of joy intended to uplift is just as valid a "purpose" as is an overt expression of alienation intended to piss people off.

I also think that there's a circular logic at work if you want to say that art must or must not be this or that, so if it is this or that, then it cannot be art. To me, that's simply creating your world in your own image and then not allowing anything else into it.

Ultimately, character of motive and quality of results don't have a whole lot to do with each other, an individual's needs and their subsequent definitions do, and people gonna be who and what they are before it's all over.

I can believe in art without a whole lot of difficulty. Much less so Artists. Like Geniuses, they exist, but in far fewer number than anybody wants to believe. But in the end...fuck it. I either like it or I don't, for whatever reason(s), and I fully reserve the full right to change my mind about any and all of it whenever and whyever.

Edited November 4, 2011 by JSngry

[thedwork]

...at least for me Chick's best music (last 35 years and prior) more than makes up for the stuff I find marginal or worse. In the right setting with the right attitude, he remains a remarkable improviser and bandleader.

x2

[cih]

Of course there is more than one way, and entertainment is great - but it was, after all, Chick Corea who was using the broad brush – all. The fact remains that a glance through the derisive reviews of the majority of the major art exhibitions – those that mark the great changes of the last 150 years reveal that it is the audience lagging well behind and show that the artists involved are fighting a battle with them – the most well attended show of modernist works last century was the ‘Degenerate Art’ show in late thirties Germany.

i know he's a musician, and not a painter - but it looks to me like music advances in a similar dialectical way - one movement rises up in reaction against the last from the inside - and away from the 'general' audience expectation, whether its punk or bebop

That's all besides those individual iconoclasts or 'outsiders'

If someone wants to adjust to the demands of the audience in order to uplift them, or entertain them, fair enough, but don't then conveniently define that as the sole locus for all feeling and depth and value at the expense of those who choose another way

Edited November 4, 2011 by cih

[fasstrack]

Leeway, don't you hear the humanity, the love of humans in the work of Dizzy, Wayne Shorter, etc? Ellington's Black Brown, and Beige-if that doesn't celebrate/uplift his (and ALL) people, I give up. Of course w/ the 'pure music' approach much worthwhile, even great, music is made. Artists, above all, must be/believe in themselves-or risk being failed artists. How do I know? It's only my life. Leeway, it's NOT either/or.

[jazzbo]

Ah, the myth of the great artist.

Why myth? I really don't get your dismissive response to the idea that, yes, there are great artists, and yes, they do create from themselves, and no, they don't do audience polling ahead of time.

I don't mean to be entirely dismissive, but I just have learned and feel that not one sentence in that paragraph was absolute, and to string them altogether that way is to make a myth of "the great artist." That's just how it is for me, I used to actually believe this, I no longer do. I don't always believe great artists are compelled to make great art, I don't always believe they always did so without input or reaction from "audience," I don't always believe they were ahead of all their audience.

This "great artist" thing has really made it hard for me to read a lot of biographies of artists.

You're entitled to believe so. if your learning and experience have led you there..

Edited November 4, 2011 by jazzbo

[AllenLowe]

there is love and affirmation in a lot of great art, but that's just a lucky, occasional side effect, and one missing in a lot of great art - think Kafka, Soutine, Bud Powell (we will disagree here, but I think he's answering to a much deeper muse than humanity); also Tristano, who was a grade a asshole IMHO and had contempt for audiences; Beckett, without a doubt; Buchner, who invented modern theater; Robert Johnson had other concerns, as did Son House - we could go on and on here.....

[JSngry]

We could go on and on in both directions, which to me just says that it's not so much a lucky and/or occasional side-effect when you get love and/or affirmation nearly as much as it is one possibility out of many, and that the "art", where it exists, is someplace other than in the "mood".

I mean, I have no trouble being happy, and I have no trouble getting dark. All I ask for is quality happy and quality dark, as well as, definitely, quality ambiguity (and that's the tricky one!).

Edited November 4, 2011 by JSngry

[Hot Ptah]

Of course there is more than one way, and entertainment is great - but it was, after all, Chick Corea who was using the broad brush – all. The fact remains that a glance through the derisive reviews of the majority of the major art exhibitions – those that mark the great changes of the last 150 years reveal that it is the audience lagging well behind and show that the artists involved are fighting a battle with them – the most well attended show of modernist works last century was the ‘Degenerate Art’ show in late thirties Germany.

i know he's a musician, and not a painter - but it looks to me like music advances in a similar dialectical way - one movement rises up in reaction against the last from the inside - and away from the 'general' audience expectation, whether its punk or bebop

That's all besides those individual iconoclasts or 'outsiders'

If someone wants to adjust to the demands of the audience in order to uplift them, or entertain them, fair enough, but don't then conveniently define that as the sole locus for all feeling and depth and value at the expense of those who choose another way

Music does not necessarily advance in a dialectical way. It could instead exist as musical events without causal impact on other future events. The dialectical theory seems to be a common way that jazz history has been written, but I have come to increasingly believe that it is a lazy, convenient way to write up jazz history concisely, and does not reflect how the music has been, and is, created and played.

[cih]

don't say that - I've been waiting for the Revolution