minew

Love the pans on this one. The "tour" following this one stopped here in N.O. for a free (!) show (sans Turrentine) One of the best I've ever seen. Jamal became quite the maestro in his later performances.

Allan Silva and Frank Lowe

The Ellington/Coltrane album on the other hand is a good place to start. All kinds of possible listening directions from that.

Greg, if you're still looking for WMDs, you won't find them in here either.

Leo artists that I don't hear nearly enough about: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, John Wolf Brennan, Eugene Chadbourne, Marilyn Crispell, The Ganelin Trio, Joelle Leandre, Joe and Mat Maneri, Simon Nabatov, Sainkho Namchylak, Lauren Newton, Evan Parker, Ned Rothenberg, Tibor Szemzo, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Reggie Workman. Where is all the ink or bandwidth being spilled over these geniuses? I'd sure be interested to read it. Also, I could surely do with more, not less, info on Charles Gayle and Moondoc. I can't figure out why I keep hearing about the likes of Casandra Wilson, Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton, Roy Hargrove, Diana Krall, and Stephon Harris.

Now THAT's entertainment!

Another version of this question (the race car driver one) has always occured to me about tennis. That is, it's quite possible to win more games in a match than your opponent and yet not win the match.

one last cry for help

bttt

Saw the Parker trio on 5/1 and Die Like a Dog on 5/13 as they passed through New Orleans. Was so intrigued by the joint appearance that I nearly flew to Victoriaville. Could you please review this show and describe (if possible to express in words) how the two groups meshed? Length of pieces? How did Drake and Lytton mesh? Was the style relatively "quiet" and spacious like the Parker group or the waves of huge sound like DLAD? Or a mixture? Do tell. Also interested in your impressions of Mephista whom I saw here a couple of months ago and was intrigued by.

Also just noticed that the Okkadisk site is back up, at www.okkadisk.com, of course. Everything looks exactly the same except for the (snail) mailing address.

Thanks for the info. Hope they're up and running again soon. I NEED that Tentet set. Maybe I'll turn to Mr. Nessa...

Anybody know what happened to Okkadisk? Their website hasn't been available for several weeks. A "denial of service attack" from the anti free-jazz hacker community, perhaps?

From a friend's spouse, "Can we turn off the instrument tuning?"

F.M.I., What's the best way to order the Nessa AEC box?

In most cases, and I really like this about him, Trane gave responses along the lines of "I'm sorry if what I'm playing makes some unhappy, it's just what I have to play right now."

Anybody remember the early '80's "new wave/punk" song, "We're All Boat People." Hard one to find, that.

JSngry, I like the characterization of the process as a journey from "cell" to "cell" with venting within and in-between. Venting or expressionism is certainly a big part of this music but perhaps it's the collaborative nature of the expressionism that moves a piece from cell to cell. In other words, musicians responding to expressions of colleagues creates "forward progress" in a piece. As a non-musician, trying to piece this together is something I enjoy about this music, especially when I "see" it. How is piece being formed? How much is composition, how much is venting, where and how do they meet? It's interesting that it always varies. Have recently seen the Vandermark 5, Mephista, and Anderson/Jordan/Drake/Parker Quartet. V5 used lots of composition with venting within (freebopish or restructuralist?), the Quartet improvised 2 60-minute pieces (expressionists), and I'm still trying to figure out what happened at Mephista (experimentalism?). Musicianship was never a question in any case.

The "R" in CD-R now stands for revenge. Let's all share some copies for "personal use."

There are thousands of places to start but why not at the beginning with: Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come John Coltrane, Interstellar Space Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity Or with some current issues, David Ware, Flight of I Fred Anderson, On the Run Anything with William Parker and Hamid Drake as the rythym section. Other can fill in with AACM classics and Cecil Taylor, musts that I am underqualified to comment on.

I believe that, in many ways, it's harder musically to create great music without formal or traditional structures which can be both limiting and a crutch. I see in players like Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, and Hamid Drake (and Coltrane, of course) not only great technical accomplishment, but also a much fuller exploration of the possibilities of the instrument than in more traditional forms. The idea that free jazz players get up there and just blow overlooks the dedication to developing the music that one can see so clearly in a figure like Braxton, or all of the AACM for that matter. While this music may have some posers, so does the straight-ahead genre. Some people, like myself, just aren't cut out to play instruments. There is a notion in avant-garde music sometimes that amateur approaches to music and instuments can open up new sonic possibilities that might have been stunted by musical training or whatever I'm sure this fuels the idea of free jazzers as "kids banging on instruments." While there may be something to be said for this approach, I can generally do without Ornette's trumpet playing for example.

Should be noted for the record that the offending party has apologized and everyone has made nice in the AAJ thread that launched this thread.