A Lark Ascending

Interesting point. And given that from Romanticism onwards, western culture has given a higher rating to music that is dark and gloomy ('deep', addressing an artist's 'pain' etc) over that which is bright and optimistic ('childish', 'naive') it's not hard to see why those Miles records have cultural currency where much rock doesn't. Though there was plenty of gloomy prog...Van Der Graaf Generator, anyone?

Most jazz songs were standards based. And those standards were not just sung by jazz singers. In fact I associated them with cabaret/MOR/supper club singers. They had no appeal at all, seeming to be Mum and Dad music. I know that when I took a shine to Ella's voice I had to suspend my disbelief listening to the lyrics. And that was the 'Rogers and Hart Songbook' - Hart is normally held up as an exemplar sophisticated song writer. But to a 19 year old the lyrics sounded Tin Pan Alley and irrelevant to my world. I like them now - but I wonder how much that is because they 'are' sophisticated, how much to me buying into the jazz view of the world.

'Bitches Brew' was my first Miles album and nearly stopped my bothering with Miles. I hated it. It took over 15 years to click! I think you are right in pointing out how little that era of Miles impacted on the average rock listener. In the UK I'm not sure how available they were in the 70s but by the 80s only BB seemed to be easy to find. I waited a long time to get a copy of Live Evil - mid 90s, I think. In the neo-classical era of the 80s it was hard to find much enthusiasm for it - I recall being quite surprised to read Ian Carr's bio in the 80s and see it so highly praised. And Miles was still playing a variant of that music then. There's been something of a reappraisal of that period in the last ten years or so. For me the real problem with that music - and, I suspect a real problem with many rock listeners tackling jazz in general - was they way it often sat on a single chord for a long time or alternated between two. The one track that did make a big impact on me was 'Spanish Key' but that has a point where the minor key mood spectacularly changes into a bright major passage. An awful lot of prog music was built on the colouristic effects of frequent key changes - think of all those multi-part tunes which changed key (and often instrumentation...electric bit...acoustic bit...back to electric bit) several times. Attuning yourself to what initially sounded like a long drone with the same instrumentation throughout took some doing. And, thinking about it, maybe that's where Mahavishnu could break through. Not only did the look like a rock band with the guitar at centre, but many of their pieces were segmented that way. Think of 'Meeting of the Spirits' with its dark, energetic main passage and then the ecstatic, slowed down release.

There's also an interesting class battle at work in the criticism of prog-rock lyrics. The dominant critical voices in rock writing view rock as essentially working class (even though, I suspect, most of those critics are wannabee working class rather than real working class). Prog rock was essentially a middle class music by musicians who had stayed on at school after 15 and often attended public schools - the lyrics are full of literary allusions. Genesis lyrics reek of classical mythology and TS Elliot. Which, of course, is anathema to the standard rock critic. Which is not an attempt to say there was anything wonderful in those lyrics - merely that they were no worse than other lyrics in popular music (and an awful lot of opera!). They just presented themselves as perfect targets to a particular critical mindset.

Long stretches of prog were vocal free - after Wyatt left the Soft Machine were totally vocal-less. Large stretches of King Crimson are also vocal free, certainly the 72-74 band where the few songs acted as islands to launch the (often improvised) instrumentals. The Pink Floyd of Umma Gumma, Atom Heart Mother and Meddle were a mainly instrumental band (Dark Side changed that and returned them to their earlier song based style). I disagree that jazz lyrics are any better than rock lyrics - most vocal jazz is based on pretty trite lovey-dovey lyrics, no more sophisticated than the pseudo-Romanticism (large R) of prog-rock lyrics. There's a real danger of running into the 'jazz is for sophisticates, rock is for the undiscriminating/immature riff-raff' simplicities there. Are the lyrics of Escalator Over the Hill really any better than those of Genesis? Maybe the difference is that jazz singers often pay scant attention to the lyrics meaning, just using them as vehicles to sing off (think Billie Holiday and those daft songs she recorded in the 30s); whereas prog-rockers often seemed to want to invest the (admittedly frequently daft) lyrics with some sort of portentous meaning. But then Jon Anderson's lyrics for Yes were totally meaningless (except perhaps in his brain) - he seemed to just like the sound of the words, regardless of meaning.

MG is not posting lately due to computer/ISP problems. Yes, I read his post about that. I'm not suggesting that any have left in a huff. Merely that I particularly enjoyed their posts - they each have a very distinctive take on music that they are able to express with humility. Anyway, Kenny is around as he's mentioned above; and I've noticed Jim R reappear more recently. Seeline pops in every now and then when a world or Latin thread goes active.

I think that's true - though the influences did go the other way. I can recall the impact Mahavishnu had on the existing prog-rockers. I remember Phil Collins being interviewed around '72 and saying he wanted 'more Mahavishnu' in Genesis (ironic given the later direction of his career) and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't influence Bruford's move from Yes to KC. Collins also played occasionally with a band called Brand X who were more in the American fusion mould. I don't think US jazz in general has ever been very open to being influenced by jazz beyond the US and Latin America. Yes, it has taken influences from other musics (Sketches of Spain etc) but rarely from non-US jazz. I get the feeling that there is such an idea of jazz as an American music that there's never been a sense that there's much of interest to absorb. Most non-American musicians who have gained a profile in the States and had an impact have had to move there and 'go native' (Holland, McLaughlin, Shearing etc). US rock or rock related music has always seemed more open to overseas influence. Not a complaint. A (possibly mistaken) observation.

Wouldn't Mahavishnu be better advertising herbal tea?

On the hosting side of things, I think you would find it hard to find a site as light-touch regulated as this one. The moderators give an awful lot of rope. I got a slap on the wrist once but it was done via PM and very politely. I must have used three or four different jazz bulletin boards (and one folky one). This one has by far the most consistent and (to my mind) fairest approach to moderation. The flip side of that is that you do have to tolerate some very loud personalities, utterly convinced that they are bringing truths inscribed on tablets of stone down the mountain.

Thanks, Serioza. I just point the camera...nature does the rest! I hope this thread keeps going now that Chris has gone - I loved his shots of NY from his window! I really like looking at the views of the world from other posters' locations - the States, Japan, Russia. Very different from what you get in the papers/magazines!

I think the music magazine coverage had a big influence in enabling us to cross genres in the 60s/70s. I used to religiously read Melody Maker and the New Musical Express. They had dedicated folk and jazz sections. I think I must have absorbed them without acting until about '75. I do recall very specifically buying records by Jarrett, Mike Westbrook, SOS (Surman-Osborne-Skidmore) and Stan Tracey after reading rave reviews in one or other of those. I'm not sure how that works today - the only rock orientated magazine I read is Mojo and that is designed for greyhairs so does feature jazz reviews and articles. There must be some sort of mentioning - there are a wave of jazz bands in the UK like Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland who have a strong audience on the indie-rock scene as well as playing jazz gigs. If contemporary culture could escape from the tyrrany of niche-marketing and target audiences there would be more scope for all of this. There is an interest in crossing genres today - think of they way bits of jazz or classical are sampled - but I'm not sure it leads to a fuller exploration. Kids I teach often tell me they like all kinds of music and show me their ipods with a bit of Mozart or Nick Drake or Ella. But I don't get a sense that most go beyond that. The difference is those who either grow up in homes where alternative music is played or who learn an instrument and come into contact with other types of music that way. There's a wonderful group in the East Midlands of the UK who play big band (in its broadest sense) jazz, made up of school kids - I think it's run by a relative of Brian Eno. They did a concert of one of Graham Collier's pieces a while back with Collier conducting or supervising. They never-ending stream of young jazz musicians in the UK must be coming from somewhere!

I think if you are distinguishing jazz-rock from fusion you are right. Both prog and jazz-rock were largely white musics and appealled to kids like me who had virtually no cultural reference to black music. I can recally actively disliking soul music and not being very keen on blues rock. In American fusion you had a more pronounced funk element - Weather Report, Stanley Clarke etc. I had an album by Clarke - 'Children of Forever' or something similar - for about five minutes. Could not cope with it. My education in black music came via jazz. I think that in the English version there was very much a case of independence-declaring. A group like Fairport were actively trying to create a music that was different to American rock. You see that at its most extreme in the Canterbury scene where the music very definitely aims for an ironic take on Englishness to set it apart from American rock. Henry Cow had virtually nothing of the black element in their music, substituting European avant classical. In all of this McLaughlin was - or became - quite unusual. He was there at the heart of the Miles bands who upped the funk elements in fusion and has frequently expressed his love of that side of things. Unfortunately (to my ears anyway), by the late 70s the jazz-rock movement in the UK had become more homogenised, becoming absorbed into the wider funk-based fusion movement. You see this in Soft Machine in particular whose last albums are almost by a different band (well they were a different band!) from even the SM of Third, let alone the SM of 1 and 2.

The Blue Note twofers I remember were beige with orange writing on. The Mingus/Farlow was actually a Savoy twofer reissue - another series of that time. I had a Charlie Parker double in that same series. I recall those A&M albums - only lasted a short time. I had 'Closeness' and one that I don't think has ever been reissued - a marvellous Jim Hall record called 'Commitment'. Very much a studio record with each track quite different to the next - duets, trios, full band etc. Would probably have seemed to much of a 'concept' in later times but I still play it and love it. A beautiful version of the Albinoni Adagio (a track that has been cross-overed to death) with Art Farmer playing exquisitely.

My favourite place on earth...Cornwall, the furthest point west in England...over a glorious Easter weekend...

Absolutely right on all counts. It was actually the tunes that I later learnt were from 'Crescent' that grabbed me off the Pablo album. I had many of the Prestige Miles albums, and the Bill Evans Riversides along with Monk albums and other things on those twofers. There were also a number of twofers from a reactivated Blue Note around that time - I had things by Gil Evans and the Tal Farlow/Mingus trio as well as a Konitz/Mulligan set that I've only recently acquired in original album form via various CDs.

I suspect this was a very British/European student experience. They were never wildly popular even here. One marvellous band who somehow started up and kept going for a couple of years during the punk years was National Health - essentially built around Dave Stewart, the keyboard player from Egg and Hatfield and the North. I went to their first concert at the London School of Economics where Bill Bruford played drums - I think alongside Pip Pyle...not sure there. There's a 2CD box of the three National Health albums that I'd strongly recommend. Stewart is insistent he doesn't play jazz but rock but there's plenty in the music to interest a jazz fan. More melodic and 'straight' than Henry Cow but with the whimsy of Caravan or early Soft Machine. There was a more funk based jazz rock in the UK too that seemed to relate to Nucleus - Morrissey-Mullen, for example or Barbara Thompson's Paraphenalia. That had a livespan well into the 80s but never interested me that much. I think I'd convinced myself I liked 'authentic' jazz by that stage!!!!

I recall chancing it with Dexter Gordon's 'Homecoming' album in late '77 around the same time as I bought 'My Favourite Things', a Rollins twofer and the Coltrane Pablo double LP from early 60s European concerts. Those records convinced me I could venture into 'proper jazz' and get rewards. I was also being hurried that way by the fact that the music I was used to listening to had been almost completely swept away by the punk revolution. I'm not suggesting punk destroyed experimental, improvisational rock - it had run out of steam by itself. But I was driven to look elsewhere. When I started earning money in a paid job in early '78 it was jazz and classical music that got my attention.

I've always enjoyed Chris' posts and recollections about music both here and elsewhere. I don't pay much attention to the political forum. A pity to see him go. There are a number of people who talk a lot of common sense about music - Chris, MG, Jim R, Kenny Weir, Seeline spring to mind - who have either vanished or make rare appearances. That's a pity.

I experienced it a bit differently - I recall a general feeling that jazz was something that 'grown ups' listened to. I had an English teacher at school who talked music with us - he would usually urge us to try jazz but I didn't know where to start. I recall hearing things like the jazzy bit at the end of Buffalo Springfield's 'Broken Arrow' and being attracted but did not know where to turn to. I was also listening to things like Keith Tippett's Centipede which also suggested some later lines of enquiry - that fitted nicely with Soft Machine and Henry Cow. I think by 1975 I was growing weary of electricity, volume and, above all, the rock beat. Straight jazz was still too distant but I found what I was looking for in Keith Jarrett, Ralph Towner, Eberhard Weber etc. In a very different, acoustic way they were also 'fusion'. They almost seemed like an acoustic version of what I liked in the instrumental part of prog or fusion. I also started to follow up the Tippett/Soft Machine musicians into the much more pure jazz Ogun records. After that it was a case of randomly buying/borrowing things by Miles/Coltrane/Mingus/MJQ and finding my way. Though this was not happening in isolation - I was also following pointers from early 70s rock into folk and classical music. Again, I think it was the less electric sound and more subtle use of rhythm that drew me in.

Nine Intakt recordings added today - it would be good if this was the start of the full catalogue. Intakt is not always easy to get hold of. http://www.emusic.com/browse/l/b/-dbm/a/0-...00255187/0.html

Ah, wearing those ex-Army greatcoats and carrying the 'right' albums under one arm so that the covers could be recognised. Those were the days! Never had an ex-Army greatcoat...I've always been fashion-clothing-challenged...but I did the album carrying thing! The equivalent today seems to be kids walking around with their mobile phones blaring out their techno-sensibility!

Apologies for dragging this back if it had already died but I've been away. Whilst I can see the big impact the "psychedelic era" had on both 'prog' and 'fusion', I think it has a much wider origin. If you think that McLaughlin came up via the English version of blues; a fair few of the UK jazz-rockers and straight jazzers cut their teeth there. A group like Colosseum - one of the very earliest UK proggers - came straight out of the John Mayall line. Many of the John Mayall players were in the thick of prog and people like Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker hopped between the two. It's also worth noting that both prog and fusion musicians also fed off jazz pure and simple. You can hear the Roland Kirk influence in everything from Colosseum to Jethro Tull. I'm convinced I can hear the Jimmy Giuffre/Jim Hall Trio in parts of In the Court of the Crimson King (and the centre part of 21st Century Schizoid Man' sounds like he music of people who were familiar with free jazz. Just like the Beatles were listening to avant garde classical (however superficially), the Soft Machine clearly knew their early minimalism as well as more abstract jazz (Robert Wyatt says he grew up on jazz and thn went on to discover pop). Dave Brubeck can be heard in various prog pieces - from direct lifts like The Nice's 'Rondo' to the fascination with odd time signatures. I suspect Bill Bruford's new autobiography will have some interesting things to say about this - he too was a jazzer who found himself in a pop band. Something very interesting happened to pop music between the mid-60s and mid-70s. However it has subsequently been interpreted it was mainly seen as something throwaway for teenagers until the mid-60s with few musicians aspiring to do much more (I bet they are pretty surprised to read some of the learned articles written about them). From the mid 60s to the mid-70s you get a period when anything was possible - the idea that pop/rock music could do much more than just put out a three minute burst of melody or energy was positively encouraged. From the late 70s onwards the aspirations shrank again as everyone was told that pop should be about the street, ordinary experience, things ordinary kids could play or relate too etc. And it seems to have remained that way ever since (despite mavericks at the side). Which is why, for those of us who did come of age at that time, it still continues to charm. I imagine to many of those whose musical tastes had already formed by 1965 in jazz, folk or whatever, it all must have sounded like a terrible din!

You might enjoy Stuart Nicholson's 'Jazz-Rock' which dates the origins of what was called fusion in the States much earlier than BB - he tends to give a lot of credit to the blues boom era. Use with caution - Nicholson (like most critics) has his own construction of the past he wants to foist on us and it is Britocentric. I was very much of that era - first started listening properly to music in 1969. A bit late to be in on the very start of the Prog era but there at its height and saw its very sudden decline and fall (which in UK terms was 1976 - I know it lasted longer elsewhere). It was an exciting time, though probably more so for middle class boys with a smattering of higher education than for the public at large. But then I imagine being in on the early to peak of any musical movement is exciting. There was an overlap between prog (which we didn't call prog) and fusion (which in the UK we didn't call fusion) - mainly through Mahavishnu and Santana who certainly got me curious about who Miles Davis and John Coltrane were. But most of the American fusion bands had only a limited popularity amongst prog listeners (though I recall Weather Report being quite popular here). Probably had more of an influence on the musicians. I veered more towards the more whimsical Canterbury scene which had fusiony elements but with daft, endearing vocals to make it all seem less self-important. That whole era has been terribly misrepresented by the orthodoxies of post-punk/New Wave popular music writing. What I remember - with both jazz-rock (or fusion) and prog - is a time when musicians thought anything was possible and went off on all manner of flights of fancy, often turning up something daft, sometimes music I can still listen to with joy today. This, in the official musical interpretation, is call pretension. I prefer the word aspiration. The best reimagining of that era I know is Jonathan Coe's marvellous novel 'The Rotter's Club'. At times it reads like the story of my late teens!

A fascinating tale of a famous set of stories told from a different side of the fence. I think we're living in a golden age for popular history. It's great to see so many books around with real narrative drive.

I think EMI's strategy is more cynical than that. They've rested on their laurels, not feeling any sense of urgency, assuming that an extension in copyright will protect their assets. Suddenly that seems far less sure. So, belatedly, they are trying to put something together that will look so attractive it will beat off the competition. I assume the video game thing is to try and win the younger audience who might then buy the CDs. What chance Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole, the video game? It's a bit sad because EMI were very early in the compilations game with these: These came out in the summer of 1973. I never had the first but got the second for Xmas in late '73. It became the soundtrack to many a late night Mah Jong game in my university years and my introduction to the Beatles on record (though they'd been a constant presence on the radio since the early 60s).