Lists, and other sources

[clifford_thornton]

yeah. I mean, he wrote that thing in 1995. Most people were unaware of that music at the time, myself included. He was 37. I was 29 when I was writing dorky comments about it on organissimo 11 years later. We're all a bit older and wiser, and his list stands up better than most quick takes on it... wonder if he's found the Byard Lancaster on Dogtown by this point???

 

[T.D.]

5 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

... wonder if he's found the Byard Lancaster on Dogtown by this point???

 

Live at Macalester College? TM must have found that by now, unless he insisted on the pre-release hand-made cover. For non-vinylites willing to wait 13 years or so, the Porter CD released 2008(!) eventually became easy to find; even I own a copy.

[clifford_thornton]

yeah, I've had that LP for many years. It's good. Those few handmade copies that exist are exceedingly rare -- I remember the one time I saw it on eBay my jaw dropped.

the Porter CD has some nice extra material with Lance Gunderson and others from the Boston orbit.

[ep1str0phy]

On 9/12/2023 at 9:23 AM, clifford_thornton said:

yeah. I mean, he wrote that thing in 1995. Most people were unaware of that music at the time, myself included. He was 37. I was 29 when I was writing dorky comments about it on organissimo 11 years later. We're all a bit older and wiser, and his list stands up better than most quick takes on it... wonder if he's found the Byard Lancaster on Dogtown by this point???

 

With only a handful of exceptions, all of the records that Moore selected are landmarks. The heavy-handed language may grate a bit, but there's something telling about the fact that we're talking about this list nearly two decades after the fact.

In the interval between Moore's list and now, a defined subculture has emerged that valorizes lo-fi free jazz. This contingent is at least significant enough to to have forced a critical appraisal of what constitutes valid improvised music. The advent of streaming fostered a transformation in how we access anachronistic art, which has in turn reshaped the canon. I've leaned away from posting on most topics as of late, largely because of how many of my friends and peers are discussed on this board, but this fact is worth noting: a lot of music that was considered decisively marginal some 10 or so years ago is now quite widely traded. 

In the early days of new media - back when one's listener base was mediated by literal physical access to LPs, CDs, etc. - history was, by necessity, shaped by the winners. Things are different now. To be perfectly frank, I don't know of many musicians who currently think of Wynton as an existential threat - he merely carries the opprobrium of having made a series of very loud and incredibly ignorant referenda on music that he didn't understand. Talent wins out in the end. I saw it happen, in literal real time, when Roscoe Mitchell began getting his flowers some 15 or so years ago. That dude is a literal genius, but culture had to catch up to his accomplishments.

All of this is to say that that Moore list doesn't look nearly as dumb now as it did back when I started checking out this board. Twenty years ago, I would have said that Nommo was an exciting document that is very much of its time. Now that I'm older and am slightly less stupid, I recognize that those Pullen/Graves records are a high watermark for a vernacular that remains undigested. That shit is really advanced. Go ask Jason Moran. Go ask Steve Coleman. It's dealing in rhythmic and timbral concepts that are just so perpendicular to the norm that cats in the past fifty years did not know how to properly copy it.

The fact that mammoth figures like Coltrane exist shouldn't numb people to the fact that it's very easy to be wrong about art - a fluid, ultimately subjective thing. Yesterday's dorky free jazz list is today's bellwether for a change in thinking. I'm not saying that Moore is a genius and that the essay is particularly well-conceived - I'm only saying that stuff happened behind the scenes that people rethink a lot of this music. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by ep1str0phy

[JSngry]

Lists are for winners! 

[clifford_thornton]

Agreed, Karl.

Actually, I didn't really connect with Nommo until I acquired a copy of Live at Yale and could listen to the whole thing in "order." The playing on those records is very different from what you hear on the first Giuseppi Logan LP, more of a piece with what's on offer via More Giuseppi Logan, but even then, it's a dialogue on its own terms. Owning records doesn't mean you immediately "get" what's on them and it can take a long time to figure this stuff out.

The lo-fi stuff is also appealing on a very basic level to me... the Boston scene around Cosmic/Musra/John Jamyll Jones, the Abdul-Hannan record, the Mark Harvey LPs, those are very special albums, and there isn't much out there like them.

[Rabshakeh]

50 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

the Mark Harvey LPs

Which ones are these?

[clifford_thornton]

https://www.discogs.com/release/5415473-Mark-Harvey-Group-In-Concert-At-Harvard-Epworth-Church

https://www.discogs.com/release/10922454-Mark-Harvey-Friends-Duets

[Rabshakeh]

5 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

https://www.discogs.com/release/5415473-Mark-Harvey-Group-In-Concert-At-Harvard-Epworth-Church

https://www.discogs.com/release/10922454-Mark-Harvey-Friends-Duets

Thanks! Never heard of them. Will check out.

[clifford_thornton]

The Epworth Church LP is particularly strong.