Mail Avalanche.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed but I'll get over it. One way to do that is to begin overdue acknowledgments which may convey the overwhelm array as well.
 
Mr. Berland at Ayler Records sent me two discs from France and some bit champ must be underway about one of them as analytics has a higher use keyword for something I've never mentioned anywhere here, in part because I didn't  know it existed before it showed up in the mailbox.

But yes, for the 28 of you who are wondering, Snus has showed up and Mr. Barno opens with a blowtorch approach to open bell trumpet. He could bubble paint off of walls with it and later reaches for a mute for something completely different. 

It will take a while to better fathom the bass work from Mr. Grip and I was planning on a survey of the terrain I have of Didier Lasserre, which includes a disc he made with good old Zinman and the other Ayler disc, Free Unfold Trio, Ballades. This involves pianist Jobic Le Masson and Zinman collaborator, Benjamin Duboc as bassist.

I also have the Simons series, a Stanley Zappa care package that keeps on giving of Citizens Orchestra, a trio with bass and percussion, and a clarinet trio with Mr. Mateen and Mr. Lavelle. Then I have the Lavelle box set, a marvel in its own right.

Mr. Kelsey has provided me with his disc Not Cool and his book, "Murder the Dead...", which I chowed shortly after wresting it from the mailbox. It is quite a marvel on many levels and it is the first time anyone has sent me a book. It gets its own post before long.

Most of these things are ostensibly home made. It really amounts to vivid evidence of the complete breakdown of the obtaining channels for circulating work. 

Instead of artist to label to distributor to retailer to me or writer to editor/publisher to distributor to retailer to me, it's just between the creator and me. The supply chain is banished. But the end product, the artifact, suffers not at all with the elimination of the problematic links generally applied to unseemly mediation and double dip wealth confiscation.

There is no significant difference in sound quality between the Citizens Orchestra disc Stanley burned for me and A Love Supreme beyond differences one might ascribe to a studio project and a live one and David Lee, the resident recording engineer at the Outpost, does an excellent job of blurring those differences.

Then we have the inbox overload. Good Old Zinman has given me enough back ground material on Lasserre and Duboc to fill its own book, a number of other regulars are in daily touch and then there's the gig and pr spam. I'm always tickled to be in my friend's gig e mail lists just to get a sense of how they are doing and what they are up to but this medium isn't particularly great for time dated and place specific items so it is rare for me to post them.

And once in a while an actual interesting stranger with an actual clue sends me a notice about something that suggests they actually read my spew. But lately it's been just Jazz Inc boiler plate for the very stuff I make fun of as if I'll somehow crow about another banal outing at Lincoln Center or actually travel the miles from Boston to go there. So if I get a sense it is reflexive pr spam without much of a sense of the spew stream, into the spam box you go.

And then, finally, I got around to checking up on all the intrepid souls who actually blog link to me. You all are true heroes and a few heroines if not gluttons for punishment. I have a fly tyer from Canada who also plays guitar and someone in Indonesia hoping to interest his community in Jazz. Each of you is a story in your own right. And then there's Ms. Horton.

Mr. Shipp sent me a link to her piece about him in Jazzhouse and I concluded after a few glances that she has a capacity to create a sense of place in her articles that has distant commonalities with the way the august historian, Barbara Tuchman created a sense of time and place in her epics. 

Lyn Horton from Connection Series.

Web 2.0 Writing and Content Craft.

I have learned so much over the past year and feel unusually lucky. It really began with my former office neighbor, 'Triple Double' who built on the happy fluke I had to install Google Analytics, (mainly for the childish reason that it looked neat and had more detail than a site meter).

I'm a demon for research and the whole suite of Google platforms and applications is like something I was born for. It is so basically epochal that it suggests an entire new way of writing and making content that has flatly made it nearly impossible for me to care one bit if I ever publish a book or end up in printed paper. I am utterly spoiled.

To this end I offer up what I learned, my lore, to the broader community.

Search Driven Selection. "White Spots".

There are many situations where I wonder about some remembered thing about Jazz and go look it up in a search. If there is very little there, we have what "Triple Double" calls  "a white spot". It is a region of the search world where nothing much is known and if you make an article about it, you own that search until something better comes along. For example, I looked Roland Wiggins up not long ago. He was a student of Henry Cowell and Vincent Persechetti in the early 50's as Cecil Taylor was up at NEC.

Roland taught out in the Connecticut Valley for years and was John Coltrane's theory coach for a time in the early 60s. He is a friend to Archie Shepp and Yusef Lateef among many and I sat in on a few of his classes as Archie's substitute and guest in the 70's. His is quite a story and I still remember elements of his lectures which incorporate aspects of systems theory in making sense of musical forms.

So now I know this will be a cool story when I get around to following up. I did a similar search based story on Camelot Jazz after spotting a reference to it on liner notes from the George Russell release "The Outer View". And after posting it, I got an immediate set of comments from a scholar who actually knew a lot more about it than me. That was great.

So if you have a story idea, do a search first and if nothing much comes up, you have a 'white spot' and a good piece will contribute to organic search growth.

Deft Use of Analytics and Related Tools.

 I stumbled on Analytics almost by accident and decided to add it to my account portfolio for the hell of it and then installed it when I decided I was ready for some kind of site meter function. I was blown away by the data trove and use it all the time. I do a piece on the singer/composer Selen Gulun in Istanbul and all of a sudden I get a small spike in readers from Turkey.

The strangest use of Analytics was the 'Hines' problem. I was among the first to determine who was who and the smoking gun, so to speak, was a cluster of data points from New Jersey where Hines IP originates and this happened several weeks before I ever saw any data from Germany where Mr. Leicht lives. This in turn was valuable to all the large sites that Hines plastered with spam as they could do their own forensics and know what to look for and where to look.

It also made me micro famous in Germany, a place that wasn't paying much attention to my drivel before then. At one point, the "Ballad of Bruno and Rab" was a chart topper and was read by hundreds if not thousands. God it was so stupid. Here I am trying to write a crackpot jazz blog and I do a dumb eyeglaze story on a stupid psycho spammer and it ends up driving my German traffic up by a factor of a hundred. It is still the third or fourth largest source of my readership.

I'm still discovering value in Analytics and probably will for the duration as it is a gift that keeps on giving, every morning.

Three Dimensional Text.

The main reason I can't summon much of any enthusiasm for writing a book, though it was a fond hope for much of my adult life, is I cant text link to anything. I've been nibbling at a piece for weeks that I think will be really fun for people on Freedom themes. It will include the original Rollins version of The Freedom Suite along with the David S. Ware version and a second pairing of the Roach/Lincoln Freedom Now release with the Freesong Suite by Fay Victor.

I've gathered a ton of links, you tubes and all manner of fun stuff and I'll be able to include people from the community as well so it will have layers. In many ways, a central aspect of blogger design is, at the end of the day, about compiling and aggregation. A piece design brings disparate elements from the whole web2 world and applies them to some unifying subject point. I can explode aspects of the life of Sonny Rollins in a simple ten word sentence and am experimenting with just that now. I have another one in mind probing relationships between James Reese Europe, Darius Milhaud and Dave Brubeck.

One good example of the potential is the Kyoko Kitamura profile where I went nuts following down every reference in her reply so the piece is like a 3 dimensional walk through her life as her words float over it.

You can't do this stuff with print on a piece of paper or even text in a Kindle..yet. If they get around to making e books that are always online, then I'll be ready for it.

Enhanced Utility.

This is an old chestnut concept I've had for a while. In essence, the template structure is loaded with content links on the left side and I've been paying attention to key word architecture to build another layer. My data tells me that most readers tend to just read the post drivel and either recoil in horror, sneer in disgust, chuckle, guffaw or dig it.

But some, like my friend Stu, really dig through the links. They are a standing resource for everyone to do what they will with and they are also a statement about my sense of community and affiliation. You can find radio stations and gig spots if you are a musician or fan. You can find scholarly things and things that are useful for the business aspects of web world. They are an ongoing chore and shift over time.

Design Element Inter-mesh.

Google gives me a vast world to play with. I'm still a bit dumb about sizing you tubes and prefer to just hot link them as they are like surprises in the text. I could get a pixel ruler and figure it out but it is a low priority as moving visuals can be an overload. But I aim to discover the right mix of elements for each piece and it isn't something one encounters at this level when preparing a conventional text or article.

This is, to me, the core aspect of the specific capabilities that sleep in this grand suite of options web 2 has brought us.

Role of Shelf Life.

If you've worked through all the aspects above and made something of lasting value, then people look it up for an absurdly long time after it is posted. I have a piece in another blog I did on enhanced meatloaf making and people still look that thing up. I imagine households across the land finding their way to meatloaf as a vivacious culinary concept rather than a rote plebeian thing. When I tossed that sucker out, I had no idea anyone would give a shit two years later.

My music descriptions of peoples recordings are becoming odd benchmarks in some cases and quite a few have fairly good page ranking. Who knew? What this tells me is that the conventions of reviewing are wearing thin and to shift to description while moving away from the regurgitation of insider jargon and references to other musicians in the typical boiler plate pieces one sees. They are the most demanding thing I do, for me, and I am a lazy bastard.

I'm not about to write about something I don't care for just to play culture cop. I can do that with a few veiled references in an easy breezy snarky opinion piece and these are oddly popular as people do love controversy. I don't try to stoke it, I just think what I think and am mildly amazed that anyone bothers to follow it. But those pieces have short shelf life and I periodically toss a bunch when I've decided they are stale. I don't think my every scribble is the holy writ.

Another aspect of shelf life is that some pieces are dynamic and grow for a while because I'm always adding links and other things sometimes months later when I notice a piece keeps on going. It works like leaves gradually emerging in spring to fill the piece out. 

Cohering Community.

At the end of the day, to me, the real success story is how a genuine community has cohered here. I am a big fan of John McKnight, a kind of philosopher of community, and I am flatly in awe of the array of people in all corners of the idiom who have showed up over time and still participate, even the ones I have annoyed. You have all made it a funny counter hub that's really about a hopeful future and transition away from the huge things that are being undone by their hugeness. I owe you.

Ad Placement Aspects.

I've been thinking about monetizing issues since last summer and don't really expect much, if anything, from it. I didn't want random Ad Sense stuff so when Google made a partnership with Amazon, I found my answer. I was on the phone with Good Old Zinman today and he thought the way I'm doing it is a hoot. 

It isn't a mere ad thumb, it becomes another element of the piece. That's the trick. I don't want to sell anything but much of the content is about things, books and music, made by those I have as subjects and I want their work to circulate. At this point, the Amazon/Google partnership is mainly an added valuable data point in the Amazon Associate reports I get. I seem to be getting lots of impression traffic.

When you add the Analytics data and periodic checks of Yahoo Site Explorer to see how the back link growth is doing, you basically have a very useful suite to guide your content planning. Generally, the new web2 ethic is that ads should be helpful, context specific and demure. 

The morons in major newspaper sites who pummel you with stupid pop ups and other shrill intrusive gimmicks seem oblivious to how they really just piss you off and cause many to set up browser filters to get rid of the crap.Whaddaya want, they're desperate. I do this for free and for fun. 

Questions welcome. 

Update: Wow, I just saw a piece in the Financial Times about the impending demise of EMI, now owned by some idiot in a holding company that isn't publicly traded. I'd link but FT are weasels about that stuff, dumb stodgy Brits who don't get that backlinks are critical free publicity. Bye bye Blue Note. 

Today on Earth.

Joe Morris.
Today on Earth.
Aum Fidelity AUM058
Joe Morris. Guitar.
Jim Hobbs. Alto Saxophone.
Timo Shanko. Bass.
Luther Gray. Drums.

Did you ever find yourself so moved by some bit of music that you were nearly afraid to write about it? You find yourself nearly overwhelmed by the trains of association chugging out of the yard and a stampede at the watering hole of memory. It is a quandary but I've found it is a valuable transcendence of catharsis to work through it.

This was recorded last June and has late spring wafting through it further enhanced by all the greening of cover art.

1. Backbone:

The understated opening melody figure could almost be an instrumental RnB theme for a 21st century situation comedy about the ordeals of furniture movers in the way the Barney Miller theme worked for a sitcom about cops, but that bit of whimsy soon burns off like a summer morning mist as the figure gets a  real work out akin to hauling book packs and china boxes up several flights of ratty apartment steps.

As someone who has probably heard Joe's guitar arc hundreds of times live and recorded across a span of several decades I can hear the easing of youths weight and the long lonely haul to make something grand in an often irritating and thankless milieu, it is this ease that speaks to me. And it makes a sense of place for the ensemble and brings everyone else along in real time. Thus he not only walks point for several generations now as a role model but also brings his immediate working colleagues readily to places they might not have otherwise been.

2. Animal:

Lullaby lull of a dawn walk May trail as neotropical flocks of warblers sift through underbrush and Tanager takes to the canopy of an old swamp maple. Walk thoughts take wistful turns and a jaunty romanticism unimpinged. The bass has a floating lope circling the singing and the dramatic rises Jim so enjoys as the others make quiet space for it. Mr. Morris enters his corner of quiet hushed to not disturb the Tanager for a solo that may as well be his life story brought to the instant. The piece has thoughtful written all over it. It's the sorta thing I'd have played at my wedding if I were the marryin' kind. 

3. Today On Earth:

Brisk and bracing unison tightness of an alto/guitar alloy breaking out to interweave counterpoint of  string clusters contrasting horn textures with a drumosphere of click stream dipping into tub flow. Several tempo's obtain from deliberations of cluster chords placed just so, to horn at a trot and drum bass flow headlong. Joe joins the stream and runs ahead of it to meet moments of Shanko flutter swooping around his fretway before hitting a more detailed saunter. Mr. Gray honors his fondness for Art Blakey without making a reenactment of it making it abundantly clear that such a thing can be done.

4. Observer:

Slower tempo Sufi spin nocturne in some 21st century upgrade of old Arabesque conventions like Night In Tunisia or Dance of the Infidels with touches of Bali morning. The tom cymbal canter gives way to Shanko muezzin string singing in a low end ululating around the bass range before moments of stillness's indicate pending Hobbs testimonials in trio with a comparable focus on singing. Mr. Morris makes a second trio interlude of it with very supple legato melody darts surprising this way and that punctuated by tone bends in a stimulating asymmetry.

5. Embarrassment of Riches:

Boingy bouncy antiphony theme opens the sonic box. Before you know it Jim and Joe are tossing fractiles of the boing back and forth til Joe breaks out to the current state of his art and signature capacities in their prime in a go for broke flight. The boing bounce with Mr. Hobbs resumes briefly as a cue for a Hobbs counterpart of this pointedness abetted by crisp Morris clusters and everyone having at it strenuously. Mr Gray applies the concept of this bounciness close to the kit core and a sudden stop on a dime follows the theme return.

6. Ashes:

In the Timo bow opening with a rising yet quiet Gray cymbal simmer we have an eventide nocturne of shared sonic lore and low glow cast shadows of night laying lightly on  lands. Amid the hush the ashes catch some turpines and the fire rises and gives a last roar to the shadows sudden leap marked by Hobbs shiver ring and keening with thickly textured tone splits giving way to subsiding and last glows.

7. Imaginary:

Traveling music march of the moments runs at a rush hour pace of percolations. An excursion piece of runway take offs, hurtled subways and all those works that summon the life pace of a time going back to old big band train tunes or  bebop plane tunes. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear the ghost voice of Jackie Gleason at nights end saying "A little travelin' music Sammy".

GONSALVES!!!...(Matt Lavelle)

When someone asked Duke Ellington what he thought of the avant garde,.he replied..

"For the avant garde,.I have Paul Gonsalves.."

HAH!

Always looking for clues to the what's REALLY up in jazz,.I struck gold when I read this.I even wrote to DOWNBEAT pressing my case that Paul be elected to their Hall of Fame.They said no, but printed my letter,.which "fixed" the letter they printed that I wrote when I was 16 in 1986 claiming that Maynard Ferguson's NON high note playing was the greatest of them all.In search of moving further and further away from my heroes,.(I really agree with Matthew Shipp on how twisted we are in Jazz with our worship jones),.I'm gonna reveal full disclosure on my true favorite musician,..PAUL.(and keep on gravitating towards my own SUN.)When your coming up,.one way to go against the grain is to really get into the music of somebody on a different instrument,.although I never thought about it like that then.

I do believe I am the number 2 greatest living fan of Paul on Earth,..trumped only by a doctor in England who created a Paul Gonsalves website.(I'm NOT making a Paul myspace page,.that's a little kooky.)My man in England sent me cd-r copies of every record Paul did outside of Ellington,.and were talking almost TWENTY.I've paid people to transcribe solos of his,.not to learn or memorize,.but to put on my wall as ART.I've gone to record auctions and thrown down BIDS to get original copies of his 3 records on Impulse,.and also had a a guest DJ set on WBGO once to do a seminar on just why Paul is so BAD,.getting them to add more Paul to their play lists.(I did this on WKCR once to getting a phone call from a listener who said,.."Thanks man,.I never knew".) My relationship with WBGO went SOUTH when DJ and drummer Kenny Washington made me a deal:"If you write a letter to the program director telling him why BGO is WHACK,.then I'll play the Paul Gonsalves solos with Dizzy's big band,.(which I looked for for years).I wrote the letter,.pissing them off,.but was able to record those Paul/Dizzy tracks off the radio on to cassette.To top it all off,.I was even getting tight with MICHAEL JAMES,..Duke's nephew,.when we met at Tower Records.I made a copy of every record Paul ever did and called up Mike so I could give them to him,.and we planned a listening party,.where we would invite Tenor players,.(We were both friends with Harold Ashby),.when suddenly Mike passed on...(right around the time My friend HILTON RUIZ was murdered in New Orleans,.post Katrina,.really fucking me up.)

So what is it bout' Paul?,.(called "Mex",.in the band with Duke,.even though he was Portugeese.).((I'll never forget this argument I had with a great jazz singer named Eugene,when I living in the Jersey city YMCA,and he saw my poster of Paul on the wall,.about whether Paul was black)).Well,..for me,.Paul has always been the road map through Jazz so I never got stuck like those Lincoln center Ghouls.I CAME UP in swing by spending several years in a band with SIR HILDRED HUMPHRIES,.as my first real musical relationship,.and based on that,.I could have turned into one of those "revivalist" guys,.trying to play swing era music my whole life even though I WASN'T ALIVE THEN.Hildred always said that he thought Coltrane "was the greatest of us",.putting both of them in the same house,.and with a green light like that,.I didn't run from what I always heard from Paul Gonsalves,..FREEDOM.

In DUKE's band....His MAIN soloist....playing ideas that defy straight time and harmony,.REALLY well.Paul Gonsalves created a completely original sound language,.and then spoke it right at the heart of Duke Ellington's sound world for YEARS.Yes,.he dropped Ben Webster on Duke to get the job,.but he quickly moved on.Don't forget that before Duke,.Paul was BASIE's main tenor man for 4 years,.and spent a year with DIZ,..with TRANE on ALTO.According to Michael James,.Paul said he took Trane aside when they where with Dizzy and said,.."Man,..Tenor is your path,.go with the Tenor"..Paul was also playing SHEETS OF SOUND then,.before Trane,.with Trane right there.Paul would also play the first true extended solo in jazz history,.the famous NEWPORT concert,.where he almost caused a RIOT,.and RE-IGNITED Duke's career.Then there's the fact that HILDRED was with BASIE for a few years,(Basie got him a gold plated tenor to get him to stay on the road).All this stuff is coming together.Oh yeah,..that record I have with ARCHIE SHEPP SITTING IN WITH DUKE.(Cat Anderson's response on trumpet is beyond.catagory.)

FLASHBACK!!.

IT'S A PUBLIC DEBATE AT JALC IN THE EARLY 90'S.

***WYNTON MARSALIS VS JAMES LINCOLN COLLIER.***

The source of the debate,..Collier's book on Duke has challenged Wynton's views,.and they have decided to settle up in a PUBLIC DEBATE.I'm in the Front row sitting with Stanley Crouch and Albert Murray,.(this is a true story).I'm an unknown trumpet player living in the Jersey city YMCA,.so broke I'm eating at homeless shelters and shit.I'm not there to join in on this public BASHING of Collier,.(man,.the WHOLE house was against him),.I'm there to DEFEND PAUL,.because in his book,.Collier dismissed him.During the public exchanges during the debate,.I kept raising my hand but being denied a chance to speak,.and I was getting tight.Albert Murray stopped the whole thing,.and told the moderator,."let this young man speak!,."

So I challenged Collier on dismissing Paul,.and he responded,.."I'm sorry,.but he's just not as creative as a COLEMAN HAWKINS or PRES..."WHAT?",..Wynton stepped in and said that Collier couldn't hear what Paul was doing and stressed that that was an opinion.I blanked out after that.(Did they carry me from the room?)..The last thing I remember was Jimmy Knepper schooling the whole room on something.I guess if you roll with MINGUS like that,.people need to stop and listen..

But that was then..

I kept listening to Paul,..(whom David Murray cites as a key influence as well).Anybody reading and wants to go deeper,.track down any version of Ellington playing a tune called UP JUMP..."And now,..ladies and gentleman,.Paul Gonsalves practices Tenor saxophonic calisthenics in UP JUMP."..What follow's is a blazing fast,.totally augmented vehicle for Paul to basically play as fast and hard as he possibly can the entire piece,.ending in a solo cadenza,.where his DNA is laid bare before the whole world.Imagine,.as a musician,.playing in front of thousands of people,.standing down front of Duke Ellington's band,.and it's all bout' you.Not just you,.but your ultimate music,.your supreme chops,..SOLO.YOU GOT THIS.Duke was Paul's biggest fan then and even did an entire record to feature him,.which never happened to any other Ellingtonian.Duke also revealed his DARK side,.and why the DEVIL card in the tarot lines up with his birthday,.(along with the LOVERS),.by having Paul play UP JUMP when he was BOMBED..telling the audience afterwords with some delight,."Paul Gonsalves!,..Drunk again!."

For many writers and musicians,.it was Paul's ability to get high,..(he was charter member of a group inside the band called the "Air Force"),.that they think of and remember.I choose to take the Gary Giddins perspective in his great book on BIRD,..that Paul's life and music are a TRIUMPH over the ADVERSITY of Drugs,booze,.and in Paul's case,..even ACID..(Which according to Jaee Logan,.is what took Giuseppe out)

Any other folks out there want to go deeper still,.check out Paul's Riverside album,."Getting Together"..a NO Duke vibe..Let's see,..Well get Jimmy Cobb and Wynton Kelly from MILES,.and Nat Adderley and Sam Jones from CANNONBALL,.and then feature PAUL.(12/20/1960,.my fathers birthday)This is the only record I ever got SIGNED,.(by Jimmy and Nat),.and with good reason:It proves my case that Paul is one of the Tenor Masters.I'm not going to go all tech like Steve Coleman did with Bird,.I just need to Hear what went down,.not so much as see it.

IN closing,.my sermon ends today with a recollection of my prized possession.A video tape of Duke giving a lecture at the University of Wisconsin,.about a year before both he and Paul would leave this world,.within days of each other.After about 45 minutes of Duke speaking and answering questions,.he seems slightly surprised that Paul has joined him on stage."Ladies and Gentleman,..this is Paul Gonsalves"..Paul seems to be in another world,and waves off the microphone,.as they agree to play the ballad feature,.Happy Reunion"..

What follows is what many people playing free today are searching for:Those moments when the music comes together in a way that transcends the structure or the key,.and the music and we become ourselves.You need to play with a musical family to get there.No different than Paul's solo on "Praise God and dance",.from Duke's Live Second Sacred Concert,.which I believe proves that the avant garde and swing schools are really the same thing,.and that Jazz might be the biggest dysfunctional family of all time.

One day we'll get that Happy.Reunion.

.....

Goundhog Day and the Grammy Tell.

Mr. Albertson got a jump on this one so I merely pile a bit more on. Jazz evidently has now plummeted in status as a nomination category, in some obscurity limbo with Sound Effects and Spoken Word recordings.

The industry has abandoned any pretense at trying to make a case for its prestige as 'America's Music'. Maybe the suits are pissed by the outcome of Marsalification and the failure of the Jazz Inc version of Groundhog Day, (the movie).

Having spent the better part of a few years endlessly regurgitating variations of Lovano/Krall puff pieces without much to show for it, the sinking industry has moved on with a kind of survivor mentality salvaging what it can of a situation that will only worsen.

The RIAA threw in the towel on both the ridiculous copy control contraptions and the shabby pursuit of down loaders recently and I get the sense they were thrilled to at least have a good preposterous celebrity potlatch with crazy clothes.

Normally, the jazz nominations get a mention in the ensuing press reports. I don't own a tv and wouldn't watch a celebrity pimp fest even if I did. I pulled the officlal site up and scrolled down to the nominees and winner. May it please Kelsey antagonists to know that a Hollenbeck confection was on the menu but was passed over for some forgettable meat and potatoes thing.

The disappearance from the big picture radar screen was the tell. Classical is in the dumper too, but it has vast subsidy advantages and a more pervasive presence at the community level where even my shitty little suburban home town has a Civic Symphony. Ms Simons actually performed with it in her role as Have Cello, Will Travel and alluded to it's general ghastliness.

This is probably the point where it hits bottom as an 'Industry' and the Apple Cart probably doesn't have much pull left, having brought things to this pass. Good. It is all getting sclerotic and spent with many clinging to a sinking dogma ship or faint hopes that a second wind will get it back on course. 

It looks to be overcast in Punxsutawney,  so Phil may indicate an early spring.

Apple Cart Examinations.

 

I have been getting a stream of reports tracking the reception of 4D and it has been a fascinating data flow. By and large, the descriptions and effort to convey the work well mainly come from the periphery and the lazier stuff issues from the Apple Cart.

Web2 may well be blurring the margins of the 'center/margin' configuration that has long held sway in the old media world. New York simply matters less so the insular world where Jazz Inc roosts is readily amenable to bypass and in the placeless web, a lattice of hubs dot it all where congenial niches may form free of industry mediation.

At the end of the day, the emerging paradigm is an organic sorting based on content appeal with reducing weight applied to the gravitas of source. Content makers sink or swim in the marketplace of ideas based on whatever connections they make with a constituency. This has to be galling for the Apple Cart as it starts to look fairly decrepit when the gravitas wheels fall off. "Sorry Apple Cart, the guy in Connecticut is a better read and Mr. Ramsey ever shines in Yakima"...

And the Jazz Inc industry continues to sink. The Vivendi trial finally concluded and was what I expected, a bunch of clueless dingbats leveraged some huge thing with lots of pump monkey action to con investors into believing this ridiculous inept Frankenstein actually had a chance. And this is just a facet of many forces combining, global recession, technical inflection points laying waste to the hide bound and clumsy and simple demographic changes in how leisure dollars are spent as in music versus video games.

Any one of these factors could be problematic but the combination is like a carpet bombing. My many friends and colleagues are essentially immune to it all because they don't need the bloated scale of operations to thrive. If anything, global recession is starting to make overseas promoters reexamine the merits of blowing 70 grand on Herbie or Keith even as the decentralization is replacing a handful of Wein-ish mega gigs with a dense and elaborate circuit that also sorts itself by constituency interests.

It is keeping my friends busy and improving their bargaining power. The ambitious denizens of the Apple Cart who yet hold hope that their ship won't sink are beginning to get uneasy and a funny duel of assertions is shaping up. On the one hand, there is my little world going about being itself without much thought to getting over at bloat level, (a modest home and hearth will do), and on the other are all those who still line up to buy music inc lottery scratch tickets.

I am sympathetic, all the careful attentions to echo chamber apple cart trends and careful climbing of imagined ladders must be very stressful and does cut into time better spent at imagination immersion. The horror that the focus might elude them to favor the happy go lucky risky sorts is giving rise to shrill agons about elitism that hold hands with the ploys of Palin and Beck.

And yet, it is comparatively easy to apply the counter accusation fly swatter of careerism, particularly in a world increasingly disdainful, if not angry at things corporate. At the end of the day it is a useless quarrel and the career anxious might just make peace with their aims, go entertain and stop trying to pilfer added cachet in some sugar plum dream of something for nothing. Go knock em dead and make some money and have the grace to just ignore us elitists.

Oh and RIP Ed Beach.

 

The Meaning Behind Music,..for Haiti (Matt Lavelle)

Intro:

I just performed with a 10 member ensemble at the Stone and asked 2 singers,.Lola Danza and Andrea Wolper,to sing my own melodies based on my sound language discovered through going through Harmelodics with OC.Somebody asked me afterword what I was going for,.and I said,."William Parker meets Ornette",..although I hadn't thought about it that way,.that's right where I was.Being in Williams big band really had more impact than I thought,his influence,.and evolutionary big band concept,.was all over my concert.Who you spend time with musically effects you.Sabir Mateen is another huge influence on me.Ras Moshe and Catherine Sikora as well.(I know,."Get a tenor already")When veterans talk,.I listen.Charles Gayle has been breaking it down lately,.and it's been profound.Still,..I turn 40 this year,.so my time as a young guy,.new jack,.well,.ITS A WRAP.Singers of all kinds are a major influence on me,.and William has gone there with them extensively.I've gone on record that Elis Regina is my Queen,.and Nina Simone,.my Godmother.There's many singers getting more and more open these days,singers who have their own sounds.It's looking good over there.(Not enough male singers who are open though,.where you guys at?)

Part 1

William Parker has a song in his Library that I had the honor of playing called:Poem for June Jordan,..and through this great song,.the true meaning behind music is revealed,.to me at least.It's a simple,lyrical melody that transcends music theory into the realms of speaking on the universal truths that unite us all.Leena Conquest was the singer.I resonate with this more than just about anything.

Here's the Lyrics:

Oh how I dreamed...
That I could have known you then...
For the first time...
It is the sky...
Of blessed dawn..
I shall not mourn...
I hear the song...

And if the words...
They don't ever come to you...
I give my life...
For all you are...
Is all the good...
That will exist...
For all of time...

Everybody connects to music and feels something inside that relates to their own inner struggle with themselves on there mission to be who they are,..everybody resonates with music that IS them,..or who their trying to be.John Coltrane was trying to be a better person,.that's was his music was all about,..destroying the barrier between us and god,.us and our TRUE selves.This song reveals praise for the strength of another persons art with the power to help someone start,stay on,or finish their task here on earth.

Then the song connects all of us to each other and even the earth,.by demonstrating that every morning you wake up and see the sun is a blessing,.for you exist,.and have another chance to get better at it.Life IS a gift.I hear the song,..I hear the SKY.The true meaning of music reveals that the human being cant give up,.and in the end of countless,countless,years of struggle,..after centuries of war,pain,and strife,..that we will overcome ourselves to become who we really are.In this way We are ALL connected,..to HAITI..

Williams song is the only time Ive actually felt HOPE in a piece of music,.and Hope is what they need in HAITI right now.

Part 2

Haiti

It shouldn't take total devastation to get the whole World to focus on a country and it's people.Haiti was struggling before this,.what is called,.a natural,.disaster.Strange how Hurricanes get named,.but Tidal Waves and Earthquakes do not.

Bear witness to the power of the Earth and Bear witness to the power of the human spirit as the people of Haiti battle for their very lives.

Many people SING at this time.Can you Hear it?

If your a human being your a part of what's happening in Haiti now.

Standing TOGETHER and doing whatever we can TRANSCENDS

race...,culture...,religion...,gender...,class...drama,...and MONEY.

We can ALL come together through music..

Coda:

I really believe musicians can release the energy behind earthquakes if we play together with our heart's focused in the right place.I believe that if enough Art is created,.it will counter act the need for the world to shift like this.There's just not enough music and art being made with the right intention.(I wrote 2 blogs about this called "How to tune the world",.parts 1 and 2)

Music like Poem for June Jordan,.and the people behind it can lead the way.

all the way.

all.the.way.

all...the...way...

HOME

.....

Harmonious Convergence.

I'm still floored by an accolade bestowed upon me by the majestic Mr. Albertson. Given I'm just one of thousands who mess around with blogs and dozens, at least, who use them to root for their version of the idiom, this is something to try to live up to.

I get the sense we are seeing a divergence widened by web2 between those who must ratify the outcomes of music industry decisions, usually as some kind of job, and the rest of us who are not so encumbered.

And the unencumbered are a diverse bunch, grand emeritus elders like Mr. Albertson and Mr. Ramsey, scholars, astute African American culture philosophers, musician writers, feisty brawlers and crackpots like me.

But we are converging rather well on the point of raising the quality of discourse by adding to it while the beleaguered go-fers of jazz inc are stuck with subtracting from it by hewing to the mandate to aditorialize and boost.

I sometimes have a sense a schism happened in Charlie Parker's band that played itself out over the decades. Max Roach followed his inner compass and used his gifts to root for his broader community and call attention to its problems and hopes.

Miles Davis followed the crowd and several fads over a long time and focused on his art. The results were perfectly laudable on the whole but there was still that diminution that can come from self aggrandizement, a paradoxical outcome.

Miles wasn't one to upset the Apple Cart, as a rule, though he was deft at manipulating it. Max and many of his colleagues preferred to kick it over and suffered for their cheek.

Much of this could be attributed to changes in the broader culture in the post world war two years as socialization and group think.. a kind of radar, displaced actual merit and an individual compass. Much of this is described as early as 1950 by David Riesman in a work called 'The Lonely Crowd'. He saw it coming.

Riesman attributed it to population shifts. America was getting fat and happy and people lived longer. There are more old people than young people and we make a fetish of youth.

In hell holes where few live past 45, there is more importance placed on the elders, the keepers of lore and learning. And universal public education, really a gift, became a chore and it increasingly became hip to be dim and shallow reaching a pinnacle in the boomer rise.When Mr. Albertson was young, learning was still held in high regard.There was a hunger for it.

I opened my Riesman to a random page yesterday and hit this: "In the United States as in other countries,.. (with aging populations),..this hunger has abated: indeed, it has been succeeded for many by a kind of satiety with serious print, coupled with insatiability for the amusements and agenda of popular culture"

Mr. Albertson and his generation go back to a time when it wasn't hip to be stupid and banal and that outlook is having a come back. The group think heyday has passed but its adherents still cling and drag discourse down by turning it into a recurring sales pitch for things in decline by forces beyond easy control.

And those who want depth are finding it easier to converge and bypass the barking and tail wagging thanks to the transformations of web2. For the group think world, it will only get worse.

These majestic elders are our living bridges to a grander time. They engaged in astonishing things when young whether hitting a the beach at Tarawa or Omaha or helping an aging Louis Armstrong negotiate show biz complexities. And for many these adventures became the focal points of their lives.

Mr. Alberstons memoirs about the music industry of the day are gems that read like the Fortune Magazine business articles of James Agee or the histories of Cornelius Ryan and William Manchester. And they had E. B. White as a pole star instead of Hunter S. Thompson.

The Kelley Effect.

Justin Desmangles is at the leading edge of quality discourse and his interview with Mr. Kelley is but one example.

I must make another confession. In addition to my lost enthusiasm for live music, I also haven't read much of anything in book form since I left Seattle 3 or so years ago. I've been absorbed in web2.

When I do read an actual book it is very rarely about jazz. I am an omnivorous auto didact and have many interests. One reason I rarely read much about jazz is because I've noticed the aftermath of the 'Burns Effect' has been a lot of crappy books.

Consider John Coltrane. A veritable fleet of Coltrane tomes have been launched over the past 10 years but to my mind the only one worthy of note came from Lewis Porter and it got lost in an avalanche of fluff typified by the coffee table oeuvre of Ashley Khan.

For those of you unfamiliar with my Burns effect contraption, it turns on a sales spike of Historic or 'dead' jazz that followed the horrific Burns PBS documentary for several years until everyone who wanted to had loaded up on sonic history. After that jazz sales in general began to tank as evinced from RIAA sales data.

The jazz re enactment scene generally associated with the Marsalist faction has now descended into trivialization. The brothers M get a few fame moments at broadcast NO Saints football games and such. By pushing the idiom into the realm of corporate brand symbology, they managed to drain it of impact or immediacy.

It is as if we are back to the 60s when jazz had an odd ubiquity as a staple sound on TV with echoes of mangled Tadd Dameron arrangement methods reborn as the theme to the Dick Van Dyke show.

It has more to do with trivialized ubiquity of a piece with the Hannah Montana cookies that sit in a cardboard display next to the register in the 7/11 next door.

But actual living Jazz is having an interesting comeback from what I now call the "Kelley" effect due to Mr. Kelley's striking treatment of Thelonious Monk. I saw it last night in the gallery in the form of Steve Lantner at the gallery upright.

He did a solo night as his usual crew is scattered. Mr. Morris is somewhere in a shuttle between Spain and Berlin with Barre Phillips and Luther Gray is taking time off although he did become part of the audience.

He mentioned the book in an aside during the evening and proceeded to share how it impacted him in a stunning run of pianistic and ensemble style integrations that complement Mr. Shipp's work to a "T".

Steve likes to use bigger time frames and has variation on method in comparison with Mr. Shipps focus on array of methods. For example, Mr. Lantner works in American Song Book elements as sub themes that rise above the sonic terrain like ghostly ruins, sometimes several in the run of one piece. "We're in the Money", (a propos given we are in Great Depression Lite), suddenly rises several minutes after another unrelated fragment of another ancient chestnut.

It was striking and fun. The Vandermarks were in the front row soaking it in, marveling really with the Simons's sitting next to them. It was a pleasant and fun audience. All in all it looks like a reversal of the Burns impact as the model dies from overkill and abject trivialization.

And it is coming from the ground of engaged artists up rather than the Marsalist 'top down form of marketing manipulations and gimmicks. The recent crop of fluff pianists pushed by the NYC Jazz Inc Media is likely to wither a bit if they can't rise to this occasion.

This, in turn, gave me insight into their plight. I realized that there isn't just one 'beltway' of conventional wisdom punditry one finds in shallow political assessments from DC, there are any number of the things. Here in Boston we have a similar self deluded media one could call the 'Charlesway' that led to faulty understanding of the electorate in the recent Brown Senate win.

And in New York, in the Jazz Inc media world we have the "Apple Cart", which many careerist artists strive to keep on an even keel as the regime of mediocrity works for them.

Goddamned Shipp has to go and upset this apple cart to the point of revealing how crappy the contents are..a lot of rotten, mealy apples with a few sound ones not yet gone mushy by the rot made gasses.

We have been pounded by crappy self serving narratives since the Marsalist rise and the threadbare run is getting too shabby, glib and facile to embrace. We have an overrun of fussy metrosexuals and old baby boomer reprobates who seem to adhere to the low standards of marketing boiler plate as if their participation in jazz discourse were merely a form of moonlighting from cubicle jobs that entail selling Kiwi Flavored Wine Coolers or Pumpkin Doritos.

And the best part is that this is a return of an outstanding and insightful African American narrative returning from the margins to the center to focus on the living growing corner of the idiom.

Another aspect I am delighted to see and avid to support is the rise of actual musicians such as my colleague here, Mr. Lavelle or my friend, Mr. Kelsey into the domain of scribblers where thay have a clear edge merely from the authenticity of their participation.

There isn't much of a body of writing by actual musicians, in proportion to garden variety scribblers, across the span of the idiom's existence. While there is a wealth of direct oral history accounts and interviews with musicians, they haven't, as a rule, picked up the pen very often.

Another interesting sign is how I get more readers from Mr. Kelsey's site than anywhere as it seems his traffic is on the rise even as others are in decline.

Live or Recorded?

The majestic Junko Simons gave me a three disc compilation lovingly prepared by her husband, Thomas. It is totally home made and all the more valuable for it.

It covers highlights from her Green Umbrella series here at the Outpost. I sat through a number of these performances and David Lee, the recording engineer, did a superb job.

The room has a gorgeous sound so the quality is as good as it gets. Here's the thing. I'm kind of a hermit and not always the biggest fan of live music, especially music at this level.

I guess, to hatch a crappy metaphor, live is as much social thing where recorded is private. It's like going to church. Recorded music is like reading the bible in your parlor.

I'm not notably anti social but I burned out on live shows after being a producer and booking agent for the things. I still have minor dread memories from the time I had to stand on stage in front of a few thousand people to hand Ornette Coleman a check.

But more than that, music at this level, live is so loaded with nuance and yet, so ephemeral that a lot is lost and I will never pretend to be able to offer more than the most fleeting description of a concert.

But I sit here in the cubbyhole that houses me and listen to a disc of the same thing I remember seeing live and I savor so many of these elusive nuances, the triumphal way Junko bows a beautiful little ostinato figure, the urgent way Jim Hobbs leans into a segment and all the subtleties Laurence Cook brought to the moment.

And it is in these moments without visual and social distractions where the sounds move me to my core.. it is my religion. And so it goes for all the work that comes my way from friends and strangers.

In other news, the site is now monetized. I'm not going to clutter it with ad sense stuff but Google and Amazon have a brilliant partnership going, I have an Amazon account and it is painless to run. I don't care about the money. What I like is how I can now connect every post to the source impetus and maybe, just maybe, it will help those who gave me a reason to write whatever make some money.

Plus I suspect the data will be worth it and will be shared.

All of you in the artists community who are regulars here will be the particular focus so over the next week or so, I'll be going nuts loading your work on every post where you are featured as most posts are designed for long shelf life and I have good page ranking. Most of my traffic is generated by search engines and that is what I aim for, backlinks are just a happy coincidence even if they are appreciated.