crabgrass

I once heard an interview with Miles Davis where he pointed out that "jazz" was a "nigger" word... meaning it was originally a word used in a derisive way to refer to a type of music made by black people.

I saw Emerson, Lake & Palmer on their "Works" tour. They had a full 40-piece orchestra (with every instrument miked) with them. I was so expensive, by the following night they had cut the orchestra to 20 pieces and after that they did without it altogether. I'll bet one or more of them lost one of their mansions over that tour. Still though, it was the loudest, purest, least distorted sound I think I've ever heard.

I'm sure there are many remarkable players here right now... but if they aren't playing startling new sounds, it's still just a museum. What new jazz movement is currently happening that can be seen as moving jazz forward instead of just regurgitating old forms with more impressive chops? I mean, what is going on today that is different in the way Bird and Dizzy was different when they started playing be-bop in the 40's... or different the way Ornette was different when he started playing free... or different the way Miles or Mahavishnu were when they began playing fusion? I'm sorry, but as remarkable as it may be, Wynton playing tribute to Louis isn't a startling new sound... and jazz is a shark, if it stops moving forward, it dies. It seems to me that the last new jazz movement was in the 80s and it was, for lack of a better word, smooth. Pretty much everything else has been one for of "retro" or another, be it retro-bop or retro-fusion or retro-swing or even retro-free. But what is truly new in jazz lately? I hope you can show me that I'm wrong here and that there are new sounds out there building a new tradition of jazz. Please educate me what these things might be. If you can, please put a name to this hot new sound that is sweeping the ocean. Whoa! I never mentioned Wynton that's for damned sure! I'm not talking about retro anything. For the past twenty or so years one of the things that strikes me about jazz is that the "Great Man" theory has pretty much run its course. We can't be waiting around for the "next Bird," the "next Trane" or the "next Ornette." There have been lots of musicians moving in a variety of directions and there is no one "hot new sound." It has been and will likely continue to be a period of consolidation and retrenchment. The stunning variety of traditions and approaches that have been incorporated into jazz in the last couple of decades is - to me - the key to why this period is just as exciting as any in the music's history (even - perhaps - more exciting.) It's about evolution rather than revolution. Here's a short list off the top of my head of musicians who have been producing some very creative music. Some are young, some have been around awhile. And most of them defy categorization. Mary Halvorson Taylor Ho Bynum Jason Kao Hwang Cuong Vu Mark O'Leary Joe Morris Carla Kihlstedt Satoko Fujii Natsuki Tamura Rudresh Mahanthappa Vijay Ayer Robert Glasper Paul Rucker Ravish Momin Gust Burns Matt Wilson Ben Allison Michael Blake Steven Bernstein Josh Roseman Uri Caine Steve Coleman Kevin O'Neil Nels Cline Vinny Golia Mark Feldman Chris Speed Jane Ira Bloom Pandelis Karayorgis The Reptet Anat Cohen Tim Hagans Gerry Hemingway Joe McPhee Adam Lane Billy Bang Susie Ibarra Dave Douglas Nicole Mitchell William Parker Khan Jamal John Butcher Peggy Lee Dylan van der Schyff Brad Turner Oliver Lake Cecil Taylor Paul Plimley Bobby Few Anthony Braxton Sabir Mateen Bill Cole Myra Melford Mark Dresser Wally Shoup Reuben Radding Matt Maneri François Houle Matthew Shipp Perry Robinson Steve Swell Baikida Carroll Ron Horton Michael Bisio Tom Varner Marc Ribot Henry Threadgill Wadada Leo Smith Joëlle Léandre Marilyn Crispell George Lewis Roscoe Mitchell Tim Berne Nils Petter Molvaer ... EDIT TO ADD: Daniel Barry (check out Walk All Ways on Origin for an example of music which is accessible yet adventurous) Thanks for the list. I guess I'm not so much saying we need a 'Great Man' as that we need new things. Be-bop, free, fusion... while these things often came out of one of two "great men", they are styles, not players. Before someone called them "be-bop" or "fusion" or "free", the Birds and McLaughlins and Colemans of jazz were also considered to defy categorization. Who on your list will force the music world to define and categorize what they do that is currently defying categorization? Also, I must point out that most young people (even those with a great interest in music) will not so much as recognize even a tiny percentage of the names on your list... and it's not just jazz that suffers this dilemma. Those same young people might very well be able to put together a list of alternative rock artists that most of the jazz-heads here would also find hard to recognize even a few names from. The fragmentation of music isn't confined to jazz.

Here is the honest truth with me: I don't think there has ever been a religion on the planet that I couldn't say pretty much the exact same things about ALL religions, which ALL are a form of myth, and all myths are just different ways to try to explain the same stories.

I'm sure there are many remarkable players here right now... but if they aren't playing startling new sounds, it's still just a museum. What new jazz movement is currently happening that can be seen as moving jazz forward instead of just regurgitating old forms with more impressive chops? I mean, what is going on today that is different in the way Bird and Dizzy was different when they started playing be-bop in the 40's... or different the way Ornette was different when he started playing free... or different the way Miles or Mahavishnu were when they began playing fusion? I'm sorry, but as remarkable as it may be, Wynton playing tribute to Louis isn't a startling new sound... and jazz is a shark, if it stops moving forward, it dies. It seems to me that the last new jazz movement was in the 80s and it was, for lack of a better word, smooth. Pretty much everything else has been one for of "retro" or another, be it retro-bop or retro-fusion or retro-swing or even retro-free. But what is truly new in jazz lately? I hope you can show me that I'm wrong here and that there are new sounds out there building a new tradition of jazz. Please educate me what these things might be. If you can, please put a name to this hot new sound that is sweeping the ocean.

Let's try between 1930 and 1950 for starters. Most kids and teenagers were surrounded by jazz, in homes, soda joints, donut shops, juke boxes etc., (yeah, even jazz had hits on the boxes back then). Let's say after 1960 kids were exposed to jazz but less and less. Remember we are talking about young people. So if you were born after 1960, chances are you were young during the declining years of jazz (there is always a decline and rebirth isn't there) so the exposure was less and less. Well its a start... :bwallace2: I was born in 1959 and I'm fairly sure that if my father hadn't been a trumpet player with a lot of jazz records, I would have had little, if any, exposure to it. I've seen a slight revival of sorts from, of all places, a small group of younger people whom search out the more challenging new stuff as an adjunct to their taste for the current harder forms of rock like speed metal/death metal and noise. Things like John Zorn, Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton, as well as an interest in the fusion of 70s Miles and such are seeing a few young ears tuning in, looking for a similar thrill. Even so, I think it's hard to call any new interest in jazz anything more than a very select special interest among the younger generation. As for the why, I think it's much the same as it was when interest in jazz first began to fail... rock and roll. But nowadays, it competes with not just rock, but rap and hip-hop (which for all intensive purposes has become the new "jazz"), alternative, all flavors of dance... etc. Music seen as genre has splintered so much nowadays. Jazz may not be dead, but it's smelling funnier by the minute. It's unfortunate, but unless some remarkable players come up with a startling new sound for jazz, it sure looks like "jazz" is very nearly completely installed in the museum.

As opposed to when young people used to be exposed to a lot of jazz? I must have missed that, when did that happen last?

I've always thought that the origins of "smooth jazz" were found back on the CTI label in the 70s... things like Stanley Turrentine's "Sugar" album and the aformentioned George Benson... and it's popularity was realized first by Grover Washington's "Winelight" album. To me it's simply a fusion of soul/R&B with jazz instrumentation. It's origins are as much "jazz" as, say... Mahavishnu Orchestra or Weather Report. It's just a type of fusion.

I would respectfully offer another viewpoint. And I may be in the minority, but I really like Ra's lectures/interviews. The second disc of LOST REEL vol. 1 is an exceptionally rare treasure. When John Szwed had tantalizingly described Sonny's class at UC Berkeley in his great bio, he mentioned that tape records were expressly not allowed, so it's a real treat to have this recording. I can understand why many would rather just listen to the music, but I find this UCB lecture especially entertaining. Ra's humor, intricate wordplay, baffling hermeneutics, street parables, koan contradictions, and generally wonderful non-sense. Fascinating stuff. As Szwed writes, "Sun Ra the southern black man, the jazz musician, the reluctant leader, the recipient of outer-space wisdom, the messenger, the militant, the hippie icon, the avant-gardist, was now Sun Ra, visiting lecturer." (p. 295) Lon, you also mentioned some bonuses from Transparency. I did get the bonus live DVD. What other bonus stuff are you aware of? Thanks... I can easily see how Ra's lectures could be hard to take for some people, but I see them as a fascinating glimpse into the process of myth-building. As long as you look at it not as literal teachings, but as a tapestry of ideas being woven into a mythos, it becomes interesting. I found as I tried to absorb what he was saying, I could even see some parallels to how he builds his music. It's as if his thought process in building his myth structures was much the same as his composition... he weaves the Bible, ancient Greek myth and other scholarly subject matter into his lectures in much the same way he weaves Ellington, African folk music... etc... into his own musical compositions. It's a peek into Blount's approach of music as myth.

This sounds interesting... EARTH + BILL FRISELL/STEVE MOORE - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (Southern Lord 90; USA) Earth's 2008 release, The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull, is built on lovely, languid melodies floating effortlessly amidst the band's eye-scratching drone-doom. The long-running Seattle metal experimentalists make music that is arguably the exact opposite of upbeat, but whether it's the presence of fresh blood in the form of Jazz guitar great Bill Frisell and Neo-Prog organist Steve Moore, or something more ineffable, the band is clearly following a new path. Bees Made Honey finds Earth releasing themselves from their sonic hermitage deep within our planet's burning molten core and soaring high above on a wave of lush swirling guitars and organs, stopping just shy of exiting the very realm from which they got their name. This album is monolithic in its beauty and strength.

I really enjoy Frisell's soundtracks to Buster Keaton films... that and News For Lulu with Bill, Zorn and George Lewis.

Sun Ra speaks on the Possibility of Altered Destiny (1979) con't... Iran today is the product of seeking to be free and seeking independence so... if they could just separate themselves from the world completely they would be independent but the fact is whatever they do over there affects us, you see and that's why they're making a drastic mistake because you can't really affect billions of people and do something that you want to do yourself in a selfish manner without regard for anybody when you reach that point you reach past the level of God because not even God does a thing like that selfish people will never make it on earth any longer because there's some more people getting ready to take over these people are not selfish they're people sent to help you of course you won't have any freedom you enter over to 1980 and you got a book called big brother and it's telling you that big brother will be there to tell you everything to do because you.. you've gotten lost down here I was reading in the paper the other day that they'd found out that one of the moons of Saturn is a base for UFOs, you see so the truth is finally coming out I've been talking about Saturn for years, you see I don't ever remember having been there but I'm sure I'm a citizen of Saturn but I have been to Jupiter some things you tell people they... you know they don't really believe it so a lot of people have done things that they are afraid to speak of, you see

Are you talking about the "Live from Soundscape" CD on Disc Union that has a second CD with a lecture called "Sun Ra Talks On 'The Possibility Of Altered Destiny'"? I have that and the music is good, but I think he gets "further out" during the lecture. I tried to transcribe it once, but never finished. Here's what I had when I gave up... Sun Ra speaks on the Possibility of Altered Destiny (1979) I'm talking about equations for a long time now the world has dwelt on faith, beliefs... possibly dreams and the truth and the kind of world you got today is a world that's based on those particular things... how do you like it? you have to judge the tree by the fruit, you see and whatever people have been basing things on it come out to be exactly what it is like Iran, and the students over there and they're only products of what older people talking you see cause they really don't know anything except things they have dealt with in schools and so they're products of the schools and they're products of religion they're not really the products of themselves cause they just got here on the planet so really, they don't have any right to express themselves on anything except through older people somewhere along the way the older people, or so-called older people made the mistake of not preparing the way for the so-called younger people and the kind of world you got today is facing imminent destruction by beings from other spheres because the universe is very delicate, you see and everything you do here affects other beings well, it is said it reaches all the way up to God and down to Satan so, to be in between these two great forces you have to be sure that you are doing something that is possible pleasing to them if you're in between two great forces God and Satan and you're doing something that neither one of them like you're in trouble all in all every now and then the cosmic forces drop down some words to man like for instance Reverend Sun Moon came over and the Americans said that... ah... America had to be very careful because God's agent had landed in America and America was in danger of doing the same thing the people did when they rejected Jesus Christ he also said that.. um... God didn't want anything else to do with man because He can't trust him and he also said that Satan doesn't want anything to do with him either because he can't trust him. now all these different people come along talking things they're not just talking things of their own because as long as man has been on this planet he never has had a thought of his own the thoughts always came from somewhere else and he use it and move along with it according to he always twisted it to be... to fit him, you see instead of trying to twist himself around to fit something greater than himself man finally reached down and started talking about all men are equal and he tried to make all men equal which is against the law of nature man also talked about freedom which is also against the cosmo law because everything has to be turned now where people talk about interdependence and not independence

I think Sony should have made It's About That Time's packaging comply with the cardboard fold out double album re-issue packaging of... Live-Evil Black Beauty Miles Davis at Fillmore Miles Davis in Concert and Dark Magus taken together, these make for a great box set of sorts. What I'd like to see next is for Sony to put out "The Complete Osaka Concerts, Feb. 1, 1975" set, with both the afternoon and evening shows that comprise Agartha and Pangaea, unedited. And speaking of the packaging for the In A Silent Way set, Sony could easily have opened the vaults and included some pre-Bitches live material like "1969 Miles: Festiva de Juan Pins" and fleshed out the box enough to warrant a metal spine.

Live Trane - The European Tours I like this one almost as much as my collection of Mingus' European '64 Tour CDs... and I think Eric Dolphy has a LOT to do with my fondness for both.

I just got the On The Corner set, thus completing the series. They (Sony) say it's the last in a total of eight, but if you include the Cellar Door box (which indeed seems more like part of the series packaging-wise than the In A Silent Way box), it comes to nine. The way I figure it, the series was intended to document mostly Miles studio work (although the Seven Steps set has a good deal of live material). It is for this reason that I feel that despite the deluxe packaging, the Cellar Door set isn't part of the series proper and this is why it's spine has no number. The complete "metal spine" series, as numbered on their spines... 1) Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 2) Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings 3) Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 4) The Miles Davis Quintet 1965-'68: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings 5) The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions (cardboard spine, numbered "5") 6) The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions 7) The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions 8) The Complete On The Corner Sessions I can remember when the Miles & Gil box came out wondering what the number "2" on the spine was for (it was the first of the series to be released). I speculated that because of the way the lettering was cursive and ornately etched on the brass spine, that this was an attempt to mimic Miles' trumpet, with the "2" indicating a Martin No. 2. As the other sets came out with their numbers on them, it became apparent the numbers were to place them into a chronological order. some other box sets of note... the aformentioned Cellar Door set, the Plugged Nickel set, The Complete Friday & Saturday Night at The Blackhawk set, The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux 1973-1991, Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings (1951-1956), The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions and the unreleased Complete Warner Bros. Sessions (which I heard got canceled because they could not get Prince to release his portion of the recordings).