Roscoe Mitchell Predicts the Future Back in 1971

[sgcim]

I've been reading the Downbeat anthology, "The Great Jazz Interviews" (75th Anniversary), and there's one article on the AEOC entitled,

"There Won't Be Any More Music"

Roscoe says, "You know, someday soon there won't be any more music. Oh, there'll still be musicians, but they'll only be playing in their homes, in their living rooms, for their families and other friends. Money! That's what it's all about." -Roscoe Mitchell, Oct. 1, 1971

[johnblitweiler]

1971 to 2015 = it took 44 years

[sgcim]

1971 to 2015 = it took 44 years

Well, things like that take time...

I didn't know you were on this forum, great article!

I look forward to reading "There's a Mingus Among Us".

As someone who was writing for DB, John, what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today?

[colinmce]

what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today?

Money! That's what it's all about." -Roscoe Mitchell, Oct. 1, 1971

[xybert]

I've got some thoughts on Downbeat. Up until about 18 months ago i probably picked up about one issue per year, then randomly the place that sells magazines next to the supermarket that i regularly go to started stocking it. I started buying it pretty much just for the sake of it, got in to the habit and i think i've only missed a couple of issues over the last 18 months or so.

When i was a kid i loved videogame magazines, would read them from cover to cover over and over. Also, film magazines and for a period in the mid 2000s i loved the 'low-brow' art magazine Juxtapoz. By comparison, i barely skim through Downbeat and i've read what i want to read from it.

Random thoughts:

- Almost all the ads are industry related, as in ads for college, for reeds, for intruments and sheetmusic. You don't read a magazine for the ads though, right? Yeah but it definitely adds to the overall dullness of it all. Ads in videogame magazines etc were for things that you actually might be interested in as a fan.

- Which leads to the next point: redundancy. Magazines used to be one of the only ways to get news of new stuff, whether via an ad or an article. So if i picked up Downbeat and saw a review for the new whoever: "holy crap, whoever's got a new album out! So glad i picked up DB to find that out and read a bit of info on it'' Nowadays, while DB actually does cover a lot of really cool stuff in it's reviews, you already knew about it via the internet and had the skinny on it months ago. It takes off that shine of discovery that used to come with opening a magazine.

- Interviews with artists. I've read some interesting ones, but overall they are dull dull dull. Comparing to Juxtapoz, even if i wasn't in to the artist's work the interviews were usually written in a way that was interesting to read and usually the artist at least had some interestng things to say. I get that with Jazz everyone wants it to be all about the music and not about 'personalities', but we've dug too deeply in to that hole to the point where dull/dry is the rule (see sample article below). And it is possible to be interesting when talking about music!

- Lack of unity/celebration. Again comparing to videogame magazines, just about every month there was a game on the cover that videogame fandom as a whole could collectively be excited about. In jazz, no one knows what everyone wants to celebrate so nothing gets celebrated. This... may not be DB's fault as such, more a sign of the times for a magazine that tries to cater to everyone and ends up spreading itself too thin.

Sample DB article:

Steve Mikkelson has a big year coming up. With a new album coming out on Brown Note records and an upcoming three week stay at Club Pepsi-Cola, thing are looking good for the young up and comer. "Yeah we've been working hard on the music for a long time so it's great to have things coming together at the moment." Mikkelson is no stranger to success. Born in Maybury Minnesotta, he grew up listening to his dad's jazz records. In 1995 he moved to New York to study at Juilliard. "It was a real eye opener for me. It was just amazing to be surrounded by all these people that were just as passionate about the music as i was." After graduating etc etc etc... So what does the future hold for Mikkelson? "I just want to keep playing and working on my music. I've got some shows lined up with Storky Johnson in the new year so that will be a dream come true. Things are looking good at the moment!" They sure are Steve, they sure are.

Every... single... freaking... interview with the odd exception to the rule.

End rant! Sorry about that but after reading the magazine fairly regularly for the last 18 months i needed to get this out of my system.

[sgcim]

what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today?

Money! That's what it's all about." -Roscoe Mitchell, Oct. 1, 1971

Well put Colin, and you didn't have to type a letter!

[jlhoots]

I don't know, but you seem to be saying that DB is making a lot of money.

I love Roscoe but I wonder if he was referring to all of the money that DB is / was making.

I doubt that any jazz magazine makes a lot of money or so many of them wouldn't have gone out of business.

[Hot Ptah]

What Roscoe is talking about has happened in jazz and blues. However, it has not happened in country, dance/pop, Latin music, or hip hop. Those genres fill 20,000 seat arenas and 70,000 seat stadiums.

When I go to a blues concert now I am struck by how many of the audience members are elderly looking. At some blues shows, you could have the same crowd if the band set up in the TV lounge at a retirement home.

The whole issue of why the masses of American people under age 65 seem to genuinely love country and hip hop, and by comparison to have little feeling for jazz or blues, is fascinating to me. When I was in school (1960s--1970s) what young people knew as music was so blues based. That is no longer the case. How did that happen?

(Needless to say, I am speaking in broad generalities, just based on ticket sales and concert bookings. I imagine that we all know a 17 year old who loves jazz and blues, who we could describe in glowing terms, to refute what I have just said. But I am speaking of concert ticket sales in general).

Edited March 10, 2015 by Hot Ptah

[AllenLowe]

I can predict the past, but that's it.

[Leeway]

The internet bulletin board killed the jazz magazine, just like video killed the radio star. DB is no longer a primary source of jazz information.

Artist websites are also more useful than DB's after the fact information.

DB has some of the worst journalism, if you can even call it that. Cover stories are simply PR puff pieces. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the interviews are a form of disguised advertisement. Always thought it was kind of odd that DB and JazzTimes would run the same cover stories with the same puffery.

The audience for jazz if very small; hence, small subscriber base and few retail outlets.

The magazine is, ultimately, tired and dull (Xybert touched on this). It needs to dump the formula and get out in front, shake people up, make some noise.

[johnblitweiler]

1971 to 2015 = it took 44 years

Well, things like that take time...

I didn't know you were on this forum, great article!

I look forward to reading "There's a Mingus Among Us".

As someone who was writing for DB, John, what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today?

In part I wrote about this in my article on 21st-Century Jazz, see http://www.goodbaitbooks.com/events.htm- also relevant is Hot Ptah's link to http://thejazzline.c...ar-music-genre/

More directly to your question about Down Beat: In the 1970s originals like Mingus, Ornette, the Art Ensemble, Braxton, Blakey, HInes, Eldridge, Pepper, Stitt, Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, Breuker, Bailey, Sarah, Ella, Cecil Taylor, on and on and on were very active. It was interesting to read and write about them. Precious few similarly original artists are active today - plenty of wonderful musicians, probably, but not as colorful.

One reason Down Beat doesn't interest me so much any more is that there's a lack of interest in the history of jazz among present Down Beat editors. Sometimes you get the idea that any idiom that originated before LPs were invented simply did not ever exist. The family that owns Down Beat are printing company heirs, not basically jazz people, which has affected their editorial hires. BTW to my knowledge, this magazine about an originally African-American art form has had just one black editor in the 50+ years I've been reading it. (And Down Beat editors sure do come and go.)

[.:.impossible]

I can predict the past, but that's it.

That's a lot harder than it sounds.

[Hot Ptah]

1971 to 2015 = it took 44 years

Well, things like that take time...

I didn't know you were on this forum, great article!

I look forward to reading "There's a Mingus Among Us".

As someone who was writing for DB, John, what do you think were the reasons for DB going from a great jazz magazine back then, to what it is today?

In part I wrote about this in my article on 21st-Century Jazz, see http://www.goodbaitbooks.com/events.htm- also relevant is Hot Ptah's link to http://thejazzline.c...ar-music-genre/

More directly to your question about Down Beat: In the 1970s originals like Mingus, Ornette, the Art Ensemble, Braxton, Blakey, HInes, Eldridge, Pepper, Stitt, Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, Breuker, Bailey, Sarah, Ella, Cecil Taylor, on and on and on were very active. It was interesting to read and write about them. Precious few similarly original artists are active today - plenty of wonderful musicians, probably, but not as colorful.

One reason Down Beat doesn't interest me so much any more is that there's a lack of interest in the history of jazz among present Down Beat editors. Sometimes you get the idea that any idiom that originated before LPs were invented simply did not ever exist. The family that owns Down Beat are printing company heirs, not basically jazz people, which has affected their editorial hires. BTW to my knowledge, this magazine about an originally African-American art form has had just one black editor in the 50+ years I've been reading it. (And Down Beat editors sure do come and go.)

Thank you for your link to your article, which I find very interesting. The situation which you described in 2008 has not changed in the seven years which have followed. William Lenihan has provided this comment, in response to the article which I posted, and which you mentioned:

William Lenihan

I agree with Eric Person and virtually any other practicing jazz musician that jazz is not the cultural force it once was. Jazz 'as it once was', represented in musical form more of what the society was. (this, of course is a big question). America's social and psychological dynamic is not what jazz is, or was. The society that spawned jazz is gone. Like classical music - where America is no longer 'europeanized', with old world values of art and music - the values of this music no longer communicate.

Jazz has become more about 'doing jazz' and not providing or provoking any musical experience the audience could possibly have. This is the antithesis of the jazz experience given to us by Miles, Coltrane, Evans and others.

The movement of the 1980's, and ironically jazz education helped to diminish real, true-emotional connection with jazz.

[clifford_thornton]

DB is pretty bad these days.

This interview with Kenny Barron hardly talks about the scene in Philly in the '50s-'60s. He probably has some fascinating stories, but I guess it's better for the mag to spend time talking about what he's done in the last 5 years than the "old days."

At least they kept in the text in Mazurek's interview about Bill Dixon but as I've spent time with both (in person) there's a lot more to the story than one or two lines.

[JSngry]

Down Beat exists to feed "the industry", not to drive it. Of course, it was always so (I've read the back issues going back to 194(or so), and it wasn't until the early/middle 1950s that there was not a strong/stronger/strongest on "the bands", meaning any damn band, not just jazz bands.

They need money, of course, so you can't blame just them. The people who fund "the industry" have an agenda, as do the people who don't fund it, but you know what they say, money talks, bullshit runs a freakin' marathon.

I've been giving this advice o all "jazz people" for a while now, might as well do it one more time - stop worrying about "acceptance" and "spotlight" by and from "the industry". They don't need you, you don't need them. Do your thing for your people, and be happy about getting that done.

That's right, jazz and jazz people - when it comes to all this, NOBODY LOVES YOU! Get over it and move on from there.

[clifford_thornton]

At the same time, a well-written review in a newsstand circular is nothing to sniff at.

[David Ayers]

At the same time, a well-written review in a newsstand circular is nothing to sniff at.

I guess the aim of most recordings is to get reviews. There is no way most of the records reviewed in DB are selling in any kind of number to anybody - exception for the Jarretts and Methenys of course. In *that* respect the illusion of "the industry" is a prop for human effort, and in that respect (alone) the persistence of a lets face it - dull - review culture is laudable.

[AllenLowe]

I hear they are changing the name to DeadBeat.

[clifford_thornton]

At the same time, a well-written review in a newsstand circular is nothing to sniff at.

I guess the aim of most recordings is to get reviews. There is no way most of the records reviewed in DB are selling in any kind of number to anybody - exception for the Jarretts and Methenys of course. In *that* respect the illusion of "the industry" is a prop for human effort, and in that respect (alone) the persistence of a lets face it - dull - review culture is laudable.

Well, since mine are usually heavily fact/context-based, they're ultra-dull.

[JSngry]

I guess the aim of most recordings is to get reviews.

Either selling product or(and) making a statement is a laudable goal, each n its own way.

But to make a record just to get a review, jeez, that's about the lamest, weakass reason to do anything.

[JSngry]

...the illusion of "the industry" ...

Oh, it's no illusion. Once you get a look at the 1-3 agencies that book damn near ALL the "big" festivals (such as they still exist), you realize that SOMEBODY'S making some pretty good bread off of this music.

Where the illusion part comes in is the same place it does in any other industry, in the lie that all you have to do is work hard and live right and buy the right gear, then you too can be somebody, just like Jazzstar Artist X. Uh, sure.

[johnblitweiler]

The former owner Jack Maher and his publisher Chuck Suber saved the magazine from extinction after Jack took over in the late 1960s. They saw jazz education was the coming thing. So they went after advertising from instrument manufacturers, encouraged articles about pop music, and eventually made Down Beat a profit for (so I'm told) the first time ever. But Jack was a jazz novice and made some dreadful editorial hires, at least in his first decade. He's worth a long separate story in himself. He was kind to me above the call of duty, for which I'm forever grateful, but sometimes he drove me nuts too.

[sgcim]

John, I just finished "There's A Mingus Among Us", another great interview. Here's my favorite quote when you asked Mingus about the influence that Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman had on the jazz of that period:

"How can you talk about Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman? Eric Dolphy was a master musician. Ornette Coleman can only play in the key of C.
Ornette Coleman doesn't have any color in his music. Jazz is supposed to have a tradition. I don't hear any tradition in Ornette Coleman. I don't hear any Charlie Parker in his playing.
Now I like the songs he writes- they're good songs. But he could never be the the player Eric Dolphy was." Downbeat Feb. 27, 1975.

[mikeweil]

I should have these down beat issues in the basement - time to dig out the crates, sort the magazines and put them on the shelves properly.

Edited March 12, 2015 by mikeweil