uhh........

[CJ Shearn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zARk737as8k isn't this guy getting it all wrong? The stuff he's playing has been around for 40 years too. Isn't it kind of crazy to say avant garde stuff is fresher than straight ahead because straight ahead guys play in a style created 40 years ago? So has this stuff.

[Dan Gould]

All I know is that I will never understand how anyone can call that musical or pleasurable or any of the things that I associate with musical enjoyment.

[Matthew]

Feedback huh?? Nothing that Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo weren't doing fifteen years ago.... T

[CJ Shearn]

Feedback huh?? Nothing that Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo weren't doing fifteen years ago.... T

exactly. I looked at the guy's profile he lists every interest to be "different" when he's like 20 million other ppl. Cuong Vu does what this person does a million times better. It's FRESH to him, not seasoned fans.

[Free For All]

There are some guys who have done/are doing some interesting things with electronics and trumpet- Cuong Vu, Erik Truffaz, Randy Brecker and of course Don Ellis, to name a few. Those guys can play the horn and aren't using electronics to hide crappy brass technique (like this guy). You can tell when he plays with the open horn sound that he's a weak brass player. That's all I need to know, for me that negates any preaching he wants to do. Pass.

[Spontooneous]

Ignore the pretentious dink (the one with the trumpet and the inflated prose, I mean) and he'll go away.

[CJ Shearn]

yeah, I don't have the energy to get into a flame war with a faceless YT'er

[JSngry]

Whatever this one was, what's the next one going to be like? Any different? My bets are on no.

Anybody can walk through an open door... but then what?

[7/4]

There are some guys who have done/are doing some interesting things with electronics and trumpet- Cuong Vu, Erik Truffaz, Randy Brecker and of course Don Ellis, to name a few. Those guys can play the horn and aren't using electronics to hide crappy brass technique (like this guy). You can tell when he plays with the open horn sound that he's a weak brass player. That's all I need to know, for me that negates any preaching he wants to do. Pass.

He sounds horrible!

the electronics sound pretty cool though...

[CJ Shearn]

the open horn was............. not even Miles sounded that bad!

[JSngry]

Well, one could argue, and not without some validity, that anything could serve as the trigger for the electronics, and that the trumpet playing itself is "besides the point", a usage of the instrument to make a point about all that shit don't really matter any more. Ok, fair enough, and like I said, I'm ot entirely unsympathetic to that POV.

But still - after this, what? You gotta have some kind of skills, some kind of innate musicality, some instinct towards parenting, not just for randomly sowing your seed and saying fuck it, which was really all I heard going on.

At the end of the day, after all the revolutions and mindfucks and bloodletting are over, you still gotta make music - in whatever form - if you wanna keep the shit going.

Just as anybody can walk through an open door, anybody with cum in their nutsack can make a baby. Big fucking deal.

Then what?

[Spontooneous]

Justice will be served when this guy is asked to play "Mustang Sally."

[ep1str0phy]

The jazz wars are over. I just always wanted to say that.

Like many people here, I play in many "free" situations, many "inside" situations, and, lately, many "inside" situations with "free" players and "free" situations with "inside" players. Whatever-

This dude's fighting a straw man. I can guarantee that a large proportion of masters anywhere near the jazz idiom who commonly play in so-called "free" contexts place a premium on mastering some conventional/"traditional" technical practice; I ran into this headfirst when Roscoe Mitchell schooled me on a Villa-Lobos guitar/flute duet (and, even as a largely electric player, I've taken the curriculum of acoustic classical guitar very seriously since...)

Additionally, although its likely the case (I couldn't confirm this either way) that "traditional" methods of acoustic manipulation hold no water for a certain segment of the free improv crowd (many EAI, lowercase folks), I do know many musicians operating in this sphere who (1) have forgotten as much "traditional" stuff as they can do now--that is, they learned fundamentals at some point and just decided that it wasn't for them, or (2) operate with equal facility in more conventional realms and electroacoustic contexts.

Conventional technique really isn't necessary to get a message across, but it is empirically true that a large body of musicians working in "free" realms do have some concept of traditional discipline that (to whom it may dismay) bows to some form of conventional wisdom. When taking the traditionalism v. progressivism into consideration, these ideas can't be ignored.

I, myself, have a bit of a personal problem with creating music under my own heading that follows, wholesale, jazz convention, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy music or musicmaking in that mode or that jazz convention can't inform what I do--it's just a choice I made once I sat down and knew that I had things to choose from. I actually think it's pretty lazy, maybe even cowardly, not to consider what the alternative has to offer and what you can learn from being (like it or not) a part of the same world.

Edited May 19, 2010 by ep1str0phy

[ep1str0phy]

I'm also pretty interested in this assessment:

"Electrity is inevitable. Life is electric. We're powered by electricity, and we can no longer pretend to be a hunk of brass and wood glued together anymore."

Which is in principle a perfectly reasonable statement--but taking the pure technophilia to its logical conclusion, you're in a boatload of shit. Science music is its own ethos, yes. But the intermingling of electronics and traditional instrumentation opens up a can of worms; I'll again stress that it is empirically true that it's easy to mask a lack of technique with electronics. It is, for example, pretty easy to replicate gale force, late 80's Sonny Sharrock without actually knowing how to play guitar; what concretizes and validates that approach is the concept that goes behind it and, ironically for trumpet dude, Sonny's clear connection to and personal engagement with an ethos of traditional jazz that he is himself building upon. Sonny also said this:

"Fool + Noise = Bullshit."

So what's the problem if it doesn't take a lick of technique to play the "new" music? I think we've been struggling with that for decades. As hard as it is for me to articulate this point sensitively, I'll just (existentially) say that I don't want to live in a world where anyone can do what anyone else can do and that work, effort, love, or dedication don't mean anything. I'll take an ethos over pure anarchism any day of the week.

This of course reminds me of a conversation here a while back when Jim said (and I paraphrase) that "Ayler was a freakin virtuoso"--which was totally a right-on moment for me, because--as crazy as the actual music may sound--there's a lot of love and effort in it. Nothing would have happened without the work.

[CJ Shearn]

Interesting post. I think the creator of that video, uses the fact he lacks technique to play something in a "free" context and prove anyone can do it. I think he'd be surprised to learn that even Brotzmann, one of his favs, listens to tons of inside stuff like, Hawk. Brotzmann often sounds to me like if Hawk was a free player, if you know what I mean, tone wise, at least.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Interesting username: Vomitself7. I guess if it makes himself vomit, it must be pretty bad.

[papsrus]

The YouTube video is just an expression of teen-age angst/rebellion. In that context, it's quite good. Beats the hell out of smashing mailboxes with baseball bats.

Young people commonly reject things (like 'traditional' jazz) before later accepting them on their own terms.

As a piece of music, it's awful. Lack of technique aside, the musical statement is made in the first 10 seconds, then nothing comes of anything after that. Like electronic noise elevator music.

[CJ Shearn]

I really want to see if that guy will come here and discuss jazz with us, but I don't think it'd be worth it.

[Free For All]

I really want to see if that guy will come here and discuss jazz with us, but I don't think it'd be worth it.

Do we really need another bluenote82?

Seriously, I doubt he'd be interested. I think (as paps said) he's being youthfully rebellious (as one should be at that age)and I'd expect the last thing he wants to do is hear a bunch of old dudes tell him what to listen to. He needs to discover the music on his own terms.

[ep1str0phy]

To be fair, I remember being like that as a teenager. I later came to the very sobering realization that even in the outest music--or maybe especially with the outest music--there are no shortcuts to doing what you want to do. I think that a lot of what separates actual musicians from dabblers is an addiction to the practice (practice) of music.

[CJ Shearn]

lol I joined the BNBB as a teenager, but that's b/c I was into jazz from the start.

[B. Clugston]

He's just a kid. It's better than uploading videos of tired power chords to youtube.

[CJ Shearn]

That's true, but as a kid I had a huge respect for the hard bop and bop tradition, my parents played that stuff growing up and I loved it. Maybe this kid heard straight ahead that really sucked, who knows. He's not old enough to have been around when all the young lion stuff was crammed down our throats.

[JSngry]

Maybe this kid heard straight ahead that really sucked, who knows. He's not old enough to have been around when all the young lion stuff was crammed down our throats.

He's young enough to have lived through the aftermath, which might explain any number of things...

[CJ Shearn]

Maybe this kid heard straight ahead that really sucked, who knows. He's not old enough to have been around when all the young lion stuff was crammed down our throats.

He's young enough to have lived through the aftermath, which might explain any number of things...

Very possible.