AOTW Jan 23-30

[JSngry]

The alternate takes are all placed at the end of the disc, and the sound is a lot better than on the standard OJC edition. It really does make for an altogether different listening experience.

As does, I swear to you, having two distinct sides with an enforced pause between them.

[SNWOLF]

I'll look out for that one, Late.

Cornelius - with regard to Rock as a springboard for later jazz investigation - there's wankers in any field. Jazz musicians and listeners often look down on the theatrical, charismatic, and emotionally immediate gratifications of rock, but within that aesthetic mosh pit there's music as equal in artistic achievement as anything jazz has produced.

I started out listening to jazz. But before I got into jazz it was traditional Japanese music and German synth stuff - suitably precocious and pretentious material for a 12 year old, I guess. When I finally stumbled upon rock it was a love affair that has run in tandem with jazz ever since. I think half the sneering dismissal of rock by jazz fans is that for many jazz fans their aesthetic is highly cerebral, an emotionality of appreciation that likes complex, slow burn restraint or, in the case of freer material, a more pointilistic diffusion.

In contrast to this rock just sounds dumb. In the case of a lot of it, even the best of it, it is! So what - pull out yer butt plug and enjoy yourself! But with other material it's a complexity of emotional depth and subtle nuance. That's right, you can have subtle nuance when your amp's turned up to 11. Many jazz musicians make the same mistake with regard to great rock that many people have made to abstract and expressionistic art: "My kid could do that!" etc. Well their kid can't. Just because something is superficially simple doesn't make it stupid, or easy. Any more than the pseudo-primitivism of a Brancusi could be pulled off by an idiot.

A lot of jazz attitudes to rock have a historical foundation of sour grapes: the white, middle-class, college kids who made up a large part of the market for jazz switched allegience to rock, chiefly because rock had more middle class practitioners who gave it an arty, bohemian agenda.

Some of the animus towards rock is clearly psychological: many jazz musicians are socially awkward, charisma-free introverts who, in the jazz field, not only have an outlet, but have an outlet that allows for considerable technical virtuosity and, in some cases, real artistic eloquence and depth. And they're making nothing compared to some moron kid with his contrived poses and institutionalised rebellion.

A jazz musician like this is usually not going to be immersed in a cultural milieu that will give him access to rock which has real artistic substance and enduring value. And so he isn't going to know, to look, or care. And this jazz musician is not likely to be of the temperament where he goes to a nightclub and dances all night to rock, hip hop, dub or whatever, and so can appreciate the unadulterated pleasure of music whose chief aim is to entertain or alter consciousness, and yet, despite this apparent "vulgarity", there is an extraordinary degree of musical skill involved in doing this music well.

Most of the rockers though, who eventually graviate towards Mingus, or other visceral players, are making a reasonable transition. Inevitably, some of them are just getting off on the surface emotion (like beatniks and hippies who loved Coltrane because of his emotional power, but who had very little artistic insight into what he was doing).

People who gravitate towards rock when they're young are, with the exception of the more obvious, egregious scenesters, possessed of a fairly physical and emotional romanticism, and at a youthful age, when hormonal agitation compells a search for transcendence, that transcendent rush is acquired potently through music - the more primal and yearning the better. To someone of a more equable temperament, all this would strike them as pathetic, anti-intellectual self-indulgence.

It's only as someone much older that I can appreciate Lee Konitz for example, who when I was a teenager stuck me as an anaemic wimp. I like Joe Lovano, but there's no way in hell I would have appreciated him a few years ago, I would have found him too burnished and avuncular.

So the point is, although many jazz afficionados like to see themselves as relatively objective critics, we are all slaves to our temperament, sensibility, and idiosyncratic cognitive styles. And these features change with maturity and experience. But I think baseline sensibilities do not change, they are modulated, diversified, seasoned, complexified, but very rarely do they radically change. Some people only want to listen to mid '50s cool jazz. Some people won't listen to anything except the most abstruse free-jazz. Some people think Wynton is God. And if they're are jazz fan that can type, they'll make their case, immoderately, like I do and like most members of jazz forums are inclined to. Now, I like Iggy Pop's music, but there's no way in hell I'm going to spend time in an Iggy Pop forum (I had a brief look around once - it was gruesome. Not because the people were stupid, but because they were at the age where they had to be as inarticulate as possible to hide their middle class backgrounds. Doesn't make for great conversation)

[Cornelius]

SNWolf, thanks for another fine post. What rock recordings do you feel to be art as great as anything jazz has ever produced? I will look out for them. Anyway, I'm not sure that jazz appreciation is so cerebral. At least it's not for me. And the comparison between rock and jazz need not be one of achievability. If something sounds good, then it's not of great importance to me whether it's an effect that's difficult to produce or not. There's even a sense in which much rock suffers not from simplicity but from over-complexity. You might hear a musician playing all kinds of amplifications, distortions, and computerized effects, but he's got no tone on his instrument. Meanwhile, a jazz musician can astound you with a tone that doesn't even have a vibrato! [Old joke: The rock band is doing the sound check for one of its mega-concerts. The walls of the auditorium are shaking as the lead guitarist tests and retests every pedal, reverb, and synthesizer effect blasting from banks and banks of amps and speakers. The janitor who's been sweeping up says, "You know, last week Segovia played here. He showed up five minutes before the concert with his acoustic guitar, he took about twenty seconds to tune up, and he played a two hour concert". So the rocker says, "Yeah, some guys just don't give a shit."] Personally, I don't disdain music just for satisfying its own values and the needs of its audience, but, I wonder if there are more people than we're aware of who come to jazz through rock still expecting (even if tacitly) jazz to satisfy those needs. Jazz writing, at least, has not, in the main, improved with more and more critics, reviewers, and journalists whose first love was rock.

Edited January 28, 2005 by Cornelius

[SNWOLF]

In terms of listing great rock recordings, that would be a subjective affair - as in jazz; would take another thread to do it properly; and I've already gone off-topic with this. The music and mentality which you've ably satirised belongs to one small strand of the rock world, and the over-complexification side of it tends to be taken up by tasteless techhead boffins or airheads, or that classic male-ego species: the stunt-guitarist. A one-dimensional virtuoso in classical and jazz, due to social context and instrumental timbre, will always fool a few shallow highbrow twits; but in rock, with the exception of some aspergered zappophiles, it's a dreadful treck through finger-tapping and other crimes against music which are transparently risible to all.

[gdogus]

Well, that was fun, y'all! Thanks for the great discussion.

[mr jazz]

I confess, I love this album but don't currently have it on cd What's the best version available on cd-soundwise, extra tracks....??????

[mikeweil]

Probably one of the two SACD hybrid releases (they play on any standard CD player, usually with great sound).

After the Analogue Productions SACD will go OOP Fantasy will release this in the US as well, I'm sure - the second available is from Fantasy Hongkong.

Go here for info.

There is a K2 remaster from Fantasy, that should sound fine, too.

p.s. all but the Analogue Productions SACD inlude three alternate takes as bonus tracks.

Edited February 17, 2005 by mikeweil

[mr jazz]

thanks for the info.

[Guy Berger]

I was really surprised to recently read someone trashing this album (not on this thread):

You really like Way Out West? That album always sounded a little corny to me and that cover. Whose idea was that?

The first thing that came to mind is "dude, your sense of humor is broken."

Guy

[skeith]

one of my favorite Rollins albums - I really love this one!

[fomafomic65]

Late - you expressed that very eloquently.

Nice insights indeed, Late.

I always loved Way Out West too, particoulary being a fan of Shelly Manne drumming. It captures a really magical freeflowing moment of music; what else is "jazz"? I find some of Rollins greatness more in relatively lesser considered things like these two Contemporary sessions and his RCA/Victor ones than in more celebrated recordings (Prestige, Blue Note which I love too).

I remember an interview of Rollins a few years ago in which he said in '50s and '60s he used to play and reharsal 8 hours at day (it astonished me!) always playing with focus and energy, while recently he feels he can only play "less than three hours" each session... I always wished they have recorded more, that night in 1957, in a kind of 'all night session' mood.