Simon Weil

Well, the Settin the Pace notes has the guy (effectively) state he's Jewish at the top - and saying he was drugged out on lack of sleep. So then he's writing his thing as an evocation of a drugged out Jew's experience - i.e. his. What I don't see is why you say "sounds like". I mean, is there something specifically "Jewish" in the way those notes were written. Is this like the blindfold test where people affirm they could tell the difference between black and white players? Or perhaps you meant something different. Simon Weil (My subject)

Still, over 15 years since I took that class, I marvel at the quote above. It is real, I assure you. Our own Spontoonious has seen the book with his own two eyes, and can verify its authenticity. Read it again. This was the book every student who took "Western Music History 101" got to read. I stand before you, dumbfounded. (And, strangely enough, the passage does read much like album liner-notes often do, doncha think?? The rest of the book isn't nearly as bad as this one passage (how could it be??) -- but the passage above is real, and really does kick off nearly 11 pages about Wagner's place in music history.) Well, Wagner is kind of a religion to many Wagnerians. It is kind of Crouch-like in its "elevation". Wagner is v. important in Modern art, so it's kind of defensible, the quote. The style is out of the Wagner as God school, which isn't defensible unless you're a Wagnerian. Simon Weil [You should check Norman Lebrecht on Jazz]

The Solo Sessions are tremendous - but the're also kind of unbearable - he's so naked, like Martin Williams says in the sleevenotes, it seems an unfair intrusion to listen to them. There is something very self-destructive about Evans - and, for me, all the discussions about drugs or narcissism are subsumed into that. It seems like he was almost the classic melancholic and lived his life out of that. I mean those last Village Vanguard sessions are so sort of expansive, and yet he's dying. Like the time he gets to spread his wings is when he's got no more time. There is a big connection between melancholia and depth of thought in the Western cultural tradition, and Evans seems to fit into that. He's a tremendous fit on Kind of Blue, where he infuses the blues of the album with a kind of melancholic vibe. There's a kind of blackness to the thing. Anyhow that's how it seems to me. I think there is a kind of blackness to Evans, to put it another way. Simon Weil

Well, to judge him on the basis of his Albert Ayler article (available in chopped form online) - really, this is pretty insightful. AND he gets Ayler to talk intellectually (just about the only guy to, in my estimation). YES, it isn't the whole story. And, when he gets down to talking about Ayler in his VV sleevenotes, it's such an exceptionally chopped form of his original interview, that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Hentoff was really struggling. I like "Jazz Is" and, really, like Hentoff. But, if you take another (famous) example the idea of Coltrane and Sanders "speaking in tongues" (from the sleevenotes to Meditations), I just think he gets that wrong - and says it with such conviction that that's what everyone remembers. Or then again he does get Coltrane to reveal important conceptual stuff in those same notes. I guess sleevenotes are complex things and reveal (or can reveal) multiple sides. (Yours patronisingly....) Simon Weil

Wow! S'wonderful criticism. Thankyou, Larry. Simon Weil (I mean there's a million things you could say, but I couldn't just now= Gobsmacked.)

Oh well, if we're going to go there, I think his "poem" to "The Majesty of the Blues" must be mentioned. I mean, it does make me laugh out loud. Irony-free. Gawd, a school of Crouch... Simon Weil

This thread has a bit of "The Sidewinder" about it. Simon Weil [Added 16th May: It's got too many people getting in their licks to prosper, in my opinion.]

... The thing I think about here is how close this argument is to the one used by the film industry - where the threat is (illegal) downloading and video-piracy. They do these desperately hipper-than-thou adverts which you have to watch because they've stuck them at the beginning of DVDs. This is in the UK... They used to do this advert which said video-piracy funds organised crime and...terrorism. At the word "terrorism" my heart just revolted. I mean, OK, the film industry doesn't want us going to external sources to get its movies - but using "terrorism" as a threat....I just hated it. And it shows how desperate these big companies are to prevent an erosion of control of their product. Thus, behind this argument, as used by Koester - a small retailer - there is a very self-serving argument proseletyzed (sp?) by the big companies. They obviously dread the hipness of alternative sources of supply. Simon Weil

Re: independent record stores, wouldn't online ordering also account for a big drop in these shops' business? I think it's more that anything off the beaten track has trouble these days. I mean Koester says as much when he says that his label is 50% off because it's not distributed by a major. My impression is that more and more these days "big is boss" in both the sense that big chains or big distributors determine what reaches the public - and what these big bosses are into is things that will make the bottom line bigger. That's the supply side, which is conservative - restricted to the big sellers. But I think there's also a demand side, which is also conservative. Like I've said before, this is a pretty hyper-conservative age - and I think that's fed into people* wanting (Or more correctly, not wanting) Jazz (or anything else "different"). Maybe the supply side is a rationalisation of the demand side. I've always thought (for 4+ years) that this hyper-conservative age is the last kick of the Reagan-Thatcher era - Basically attempting to crush out everything that, when it's gone, can form the beginnings of the Liberal era that's would follow. If that's so, Jazz will again have the chance of being popular; big will become less beautiful - and we might see some interesting stuff. My myth... Simon Weil *Just the core audience.

She did a really nice duo record with Hersch on JMT in the 80s called (I think) "As One". I saw this in the cutout bins a few weeks ago. It's where I came to her and is still my favourite. There's a freshness to it. I quite like her stuff since then - I mean it's all worthwhile, but I still kind of miss the promise of something I heard on "As One". The excitement of a woman just coming into her own. Simon Weil

Well...I think "the enemy is us" - in the sense that all these societies (Western) are getting more hollow, aggressive and nasty and the task for us is to reverse that. Which is easy to say. Inasmuch as it is a real, pervasive, slow descent it is hard to see how one can get a handle on it and which bit one can fight against and land real punches. But I also think it's kind of simple. I mean, what I long for is some kind of decent society. So if I feel that someone is particularly against that - like Bush is with all his million and one nasty things in the cause of a supposedly democratic world - then I'm against him. In Jazz, what I have against Marsalis is that he brings such a nasty spirit with him. I think he's like the Jazz version of Bush. Fighting nastiness is one thing, but fighting hollowness and aggressiveness is different. For that, in my opinion, you need something you really can believe in - a positive ideal. For me, it's the decent society. For other people, it'll be other things. But, I think, that's where the hollowness in society comes from - a lack of core ideals that people really believe in - not say they believe in, but do believe in. I mean once you get that, society isn't so hollow - per se, because people have things to believe in. And they're also not so aggressive because they have, on some level, an idea that there's some point to life - and they don't feel pissed off and futile and running round in circles like fruit loops. So I'm nostalgic for when decent people believed. Simon Weil

I just want to say one other thing about nostalgia. It tends to assert that the past was wonderful compared to now. Now thinking about how I related to jazz, coming up in the 70s - I always tended to think of the 50s and before as a golden age. Which in a certain sense, and compared to now, it probably is. But, then, on the other hand - there is buried in that is a sense that what was happening "now" can never be any good, really, compared to what went before. I think that is how I've felt about Jazz ever since I came up. But why? I mean - just because the whole Golden Age thing is a myth - there is no particular reason to think that the future, in Jazz or whatever else, can't compete with the past. The trouble is, if you buy into the Golden age myth, you're never going to try - because of the unexamined proposition that it can't be. That's what's wrong with nostalgia. Simon Weil

"Nostalgia never goes out of fashion". I mean if Eve hadn't eaten that apple of Free and Fusion forbidden knowledge we never would have gotten kicked out of Eden/Blues and Swinging Heaven. Oh, wimper, weep, sad, sad, sad. Bleet, bleet, bleet, bleet, bleet. Simon Weil

then what makes jazz different from other musics ? I like a lot of the things you're saying but, well...You're being too rigid. You have to leave a space for: "I don't know". Look down. Simon Weil

You can have things happening which, while they may have value and be valid in a general sense, don't really address the spiritual/emotional issues that press in on you. That's where I've been. Simon Weil

In my opinion culture has been flat for the past several years. The non-existence of interesting new Jazz musicians has been part of that. But Jazz has got a remarkably committed core audience. The music has been, and remains, relatively a deep cultural experience. In a society that doesn't want to look too deep (aka flattens culture), that's not an advantage. But things do change. Whether they change enough and in our direction remains to be seen. But, in the meantime, I think Jazz ought to do something about women. That has the potential for both increasing the core audience and tapping on a relatively unused resource of creative energy. And it would make us feel oh so moral. Simon Weil

Yeah, but the point is not that Ellison like the result but that he identified a possible mindset from which the music might have been created - and identified it as existing amongst blacks at this time. Or not. Simon Weil

Well, I mean, I don't think it's directly protest. But related....on the question of protest. This is from Invisible Man, which is later, but not much later: "I am an invisible man...I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me...I am not complaining, nor am I protesting (underlining added) either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist...It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time..." The Invisible (Black) Man chooses not to protest, but instead chooses to "live in a hole...in a state of hibernation." And: "My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light....Perhaps you think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form.." To interpret this (validly or otherwise), a man who is told by society he has no value - as blacks were told - and who is unable to protest because it is ineexpedient, needs something to convince him he is still alive - light in the darkness. In that sense, maybe, producing a new form of culture - bop - might have convinced those blacks that produced it that they were still alive, did exist, despite what the world told them. In that sense, bop might have been produced as an alternative to protesting - but, because it was produced thus, it could later have been, legitimately, picked up on as a source of Black identity. Like whites could take everything from blacks but not that. Simon Weil

Well, I don't know...This is probably BS but...Black culture hasn't historically been a written one - As I understand it. I mean much of Jazz "teaching" is word of mouth. I guess there must be newspapers, maybe recorded sermons, stuff from nascent Civil Rights type movements..But how much? I just wonder if you're not better off looking for non-written sources - I mean contemporary blues etc. (with written lyrics) which might evoke black consciousness from a different angle. Isn't it often the case of putting your resources in the right place with research? I'll stop sucking eggs. Simon Weil

On the specific point of where Ayler's technique came from...I think Don Cherry's comment, that he was conveying the spirit of the Sanctified Church, more or less fits the bill. But I do think it's more likely that his development was via R+B. I mean he played R+B as a teenager - and himself says the influence on his music is clear (Edited here). Moreover there's a record of him playing before his fully formed style where his solo style is an R+B one (He also does a Jazz style solo on a companion recording) - and etc. What seems to have happened is that, after leaving the army, he "spiritualised" his music through listening to Coltrane (he says this) - and rather "reconstituted" an religious-style sound by adding this spiritual vibe to his capabilities as an R+B player. Kind of the root from Gospel to Soul in reverse. To set against this is the fact he played sax in church as a child. On the zeitgeist stuff...it does seem like the whole changing the world vibe, chanelling grandiose powers, of the Civil Rights movement and whatever else - got into his work... I mean, the scale of it. Simon Weil

As you know, he specifically mentions Ayler as key influence (in the Kofsky interview) - and Ayler's statements back this up (to do with him sending Coltrane records etc.). If I ever get manage it, I've got an article to write on Ayler which attempts to elucidate one core element of these extended techniques. You're right, Ayler does attribute it to R+ B - but I'm inclined to think he's lessening his achievement when he does that. I mean it's vastly expanded, and it's made central, as a basis for musical expression. Simon Weil

Happy...birthday... Simon Weil

I like this quote from Martin Williams: "[Young's] temperament was not universal. Indeed one sometimes feels he was gaily gentle to the point of deliberate innocence and innocent to the point of self-delusion. Yet his musical personality is so strong that, while one is in its presence, little else exists. He did create a world in which one can believe fully, but when his personal world came in touch with the real one, we know the results might be tragic." The Jazz Tradition 1983 ed p133 In a way, then, you can say that both Hawkins and Young kept the world at bay: Hawkins a seemingly relentless juggernaut of creation - invulnerable like that - and Young creating this special little world of his. I mean, aren't seeming invulnerability and ultra-sensitivity two parts of the same thing? And what if they were both responses to the 30s? - after all that was what popular art was about then - keeping the world out. Some political philosophies too. Simon Weil

In a certain sense it does seem like Dizzy and Bird "descended from the clouds" with this stuff. I don't mean, necessarily, in a technical sense (in which regard I'm hardly qualified to comment) - but in a kind of vibe way. I mean "where did all this stuff come from?" is kind of my first response to bop, in that it just feels so very different from all that came before it in Jazz. But there is a parallel that can be made - and that's to Film Noir, also a distinctive genre within its form. It's the unease, the darkness - and, I guess, the access to strange and not terribly pleasant depths that gets me. Both of these are products of 40s (late 40s for Film Noir) America - and, because I see a parallel in them.... Well, it's kind of hard to see bop as a response to elements only occuring in black society. I know Film Noir comes about, in part, from the infusion of Expressionist elements (e.g. from 20s German cinema) and Bop also seems to involve the greater absorbion of "serious"(Like Bird liked Stravinsky) elements - and I'm just wondering if this doesn't have to do with American culture maturing (or attempting to do so) by looking at darker, deeper forces within itself. And Black people stating their case at the forefront of that. Simon Weil

I could never get on with this book (which I've got). I thought it's largely a sensibility issue - his sensibility just feels largely at odds with mine. He seems to take a sort of micro-attitude to social problems (which I agree need dealing with) - (My feeling:) missing the wood for the trees. On Allen's point about historiography. He's super on that - he's got an article that's been anthologized a couple of times (at least) which may well prove to be a real contribution (i.e lasting). But being good on critiquing the critics ain't the same as being a critic (speaking from experience). Actually his attitude to the social basis of the music reminds me of the historiographical trend that came up in the 70s, according to which everything historical was reducable to the social and economic. This is an instinctive response, but I do feel the secret of Jazz lies more in the area of Grace. I like the Proper box (not that I like Proper). Simon Weil