Jazz Times -- no white writers admitted now? per Nate Chinen

[mjzee]

“My father liked to use poems to teach me things, and this was one of his favorites,” Bankston’s daughter told mourners at the funeral before reading aloud Rudyard Kipling’s popular “If”: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too . . .”

Kipling goes on to affirm the power of personal choice, which is something worth remembering in a culture that no longer places poetry at its heart. If poetry isn’t popular anymore, that doesn’t mean I can’t choose to enjoy it.

-- From an article in WSJ 4/11/16

[HutchFan]

4 minutes ago, mjzee said:

If poetry isn’t popular anymore, that doesn’t mean I can’t choose to enjoy it.

Yeah. Right on!

 

[Teasing the Korean]

8 hours ago, mjzee said:

If poetry isn’t popular anymore, that doesn’t mean I can’t choose to enjoy it.

Actually, poetry has had a renaissance of sorts, given the popularity of rap and hip hop, and also slam poetry.

[JSngry]

Whistle me up a memory

Whistle me back where I want to be

Whistle a tune that will carry me

To Tombstone Territory

 

If your past has run afoul of the law

It's a handy place to be

cause your future's just as good as your draw

In Tombstone Territory

 

Whistle me up a memory

Whistle me back where I want to be

Whistle a tune that will carry me

To Tombstone Territory

 

M

[Ken Dryden]

On 4/18/2023 at 9:23 PM, mjzee said:

The good thing about the old system (regularly-appearing critics writing in regularly-appearing publications) is when you find particular writers you like, whether because your tastes or outlooks are similar or you simply like their writing style.  A level of trust then develops, and you're more inclined to take their opinion about a new release more seriously.  I don't know what the new system is, or even if there is a new system.  I know there are a lot more paid advertorials and influencers, but I don't think that's a good thing, at least for me (it's great for them).

That was certainly true for me when I started collecting Jazz. There is also the occasional writer whose taste is so opposite mine that I can easily skip any recording or film which received high praise from him or her.

[Big Beat Steve]

5 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

That was certainly true for me when I started collecting Jazz. There is also the occasional writer whose taste is so opposite mine that I can easily skip any recording or film which received high praise from him or her.

But could you always be sure that the items that OTOH he blasted were by necessity right up your alley (because according to your reasoning it was HIM who had blasted them so they could only be great)? Or wasn't it so that regardless of how "opposite" the tastes were, this "oppositeness" was hardly ever likely to extend 100% across the full spectrum of the music and artists? Which should leave quite a few areas where input from a different point of reference can still be useful. 
I've read a huge lot of reviews from a lot of different sources over time and usually found (and still find) them quite informative as a "guideline" or "orientation mark" (which is all I ever expected them to be - I never take them to be the 100% final gospel). But even contrasting reviews on one and the same item were (and are) useful to me because they at the very minimum were "food for thought(s)" that I found (and still find) worthy of being thought.

[Hoppy T. Frog]

I know that we are all competing to say how long Jazz Times sucked but for me it was worth the $17 a year (if you caught a promotion) just for Mark Stryker's column and the reviews at least kept me abreast of releases I might not have known about otherwise. 

[sgcim]

Maybe white jazz critics will start to understand what white jazz musicians have had to go through.

[JSngry]

"had to"???

LOL. 

[Dan Gould]

21 hours ago, Hoppy T. Frog said:

... and the reviews at least kept me abreast of releases I might not have known about otherwise. 

Reviews and label display ads ... but alternate sources of that information changed my calculus a long, long time ago.

[sgcim]

13 hours ago, JSngry said:

"had to"???

LOL. 

Still?

[JSngry]

Yep 

[Ken Dryden]

On 4/22/2023 at 4:00 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

But could you always be sure that the items that OTOH he blasted were by necessity right up your alley (because according to your reasoning it was HIM who had blasted them so they could only be great)? Or wasn't it so that regardless of how "opposite" the tastes were, this "oppositeness" was hardly ever likely to extend 100% across the full spectrum of the music and artists? Which should leave quite a few areas where input from a different point of reference can still be useful. 
I've read a huge lot of reviews from a lot of different sources over time and usually found (and still find) them quite informative as a "guideline" or "orientation mark" (which is all I ever expected them to be - I never take them to be the 100% final gospel). But even contrasting reviews on one and the same item were (and are) useful to me because they at the very minimum were "food for thought(s)" that I found (and still find) worthy of being thought.

My comment was more directed at film critics. One in particular from years ago regularly praised films that I hated. 

The 100% opposite taste comment was not something I considered to a two way street. 

I still remember wasting time and money seeing the unfunny comedy Between the Lines in 1977. I was coming up with better lines from the audience and getting more laughs, too. We finally gave up on it after twenty minutes or so. We should have noticed all the scowling faces from the previous showing as people exited and one woman remarked, “What a waste!”

 

[Big Beat Steve]

9 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

My comment was more directed at film critics. One in particular from years ago regularly praised films that I hated.

I understand your point and see your comment in a somewhat different light now. But FWIW that would be a touchy aspect for me. We had a fairly astute (IMO and not only "M" but many others I knew too ;)) movie critic at a local radio station years ago. He was almost an institution but he clearly spoke his mind and never was afraid of calling the "the emperor is nude" bluff on many a movie that actually did deserve it. (There was and is an awful lot of dross out there that they try to shove down your eyes) But then he disappeared off the station, and from what came next in movie reviews there clearly showed that he was silenced because he evidently interfered with "ulterior" interests that boiled down to "keeping the moviegoer-cum-radio listener" happy and motivated. "Panem et circenses", you know ... So, coming across as a "grumpy old fart" critic may not quite be what a critic can be reduced to after all if you care to accept that a critic is at least as much there to "criticise" as to "praise" ... (The attitude of "If I don't like it I won't review it" is childish IMO, never mind the editor's or publisher's demands ...)

Edited April 24, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Hoppy T. Frog]

You folks really owe it to yourself to flip through a copy of the May issue at a library or Barnes & Noble and see how coocoo bananas it is. If you thought it was bad before... 

[sonnymax]

48 minutes ago, Hoppy T. Frog said:

You folks really owe it to yourself to flip through a copy of the May issue at a library or Barnes & Noble and see how coocoo bananas it is. If you thought it was bad before... 

"Cuckoo bananas"? Care to explain?

[JSngry]

Not sure I understand why I would want to spend time with some that's worse than something I already don't spend time with? 

[Eric]

1 hour ago, sonnymax said:

"Cuckoo bananas"? Care to explain?

I don't have my copy handy, so going from memory.  No reviews, no artist feature stories (save for a lightweight piece on Billy Harper).  There was a bunch of other stuff that really did not interest me.

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, sonnymax said:

"Cuckoo bananas"? Care to explain?

Obviously a newly coined phrase, combining CooCoo for Cocoa Puffs insanity and Gwen Stafani-inspired "this shit is bananas", for good measure.  I applaud his creativity.

[JSngry]

https://byeletterman.tumblr.com/post/110077254457/chris-elliotts-brando-banana-dance/amp

[sgcim]

58 minutes ago, JSngry said:

https://byeletterman.tumblr.com/post/110077254457/chris-elliotts-brando-banana-dance/amp

I always looked forward to Chris Elliot's appearances on Letterman.

Letterman himself made one demand of Paul Shaffer when he hired him as MD of the show: "Listen Paul, you can play whatever you want to play on the show except that Jazz stuff. I can't stand that jazz stuff."

[Ken Dryden]

I couldn’t stand Paul Schaefer. He was a complete disaster on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz.

[Dan Gould]

10 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I couldn’t stand Paul Schaefer. He was a complete disaster on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz.

Why would the co-writer of "It's Raining Men" even get booked on her show? I never knew him to have any yearning for playing jazz or being inspired by it though I guess there was some incipient threat of it if Dave had to tell him not to play that style.

[unitstructures]

 

3 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Why would the co-writer of "It's Raining Men" even get booked on her show? I never knew him to have any yearning for playing jazz or being inspired by it though I guess there was some incipient threat of it if Dave had to tell him not to play that style.

Doesn't he play with Tisziji Muñoz sometimes?

[ghost of miles]

Chris Elliott is Paul Shaffer!