Murphy's Law

 

 1959 was a watershed year for jazz music (arguably the greatest single year for jazz in all history–which is saying a lot). Here’s a taste: Miles Davis Kind of Blue, John Coltrane Giant Steps, Charles Mingus Ah Um. That is like the holy trinity of jazz music; all from the same year. But in the not-so-silent shadows a young, relatively unknown alto saxophonist was poised to cause a stir that still reverberates today: Ornette Coleman’s provocatively titled The Shape of Jazz to Come. 

Kind of Blue is correctly celebrated for establishing modal music, and a genuine evolution from bop and post-bop; Giant Steps is the apotheosis of the “sheets of sound” that John Coltrane had been practicing and perfecting for a decade; Ah Um is an encyclopedic history of jazz music, covering everyone and everything from Jelly Roll Morton to Duke Ellington. And each of those albums were immediately embraced, and remain recognized as genuine milestones today. But The Shape of Jazz to Come was incendiary and complicated: it inspired as much resistance as it did inspiration. Some folks (Mingus included) bristled that it was all so much sound and fury, signifying…little. But what Coleman (along with trumpet player Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins — representing as solid a quartet as any that have made music, ever) achieved was, arguably, the most significant advancement since Charlie Parker hit the scene.

Of course, Parker was also misunderstood and dismissed when his frenetic, almost incomprehensibly advanced alto saxophone assault began to cause scales to drop from audiences’ eyes — if not their ears. Like any genuine iconoclasts of the avant garde, Parker and Coleman were not being new for newness sake; they had to fully grasp and master the idiom before they could transcend it. Tellingly, what was revolutionary and almost confrontational, then, seems rather tame and entirely sensible, now. Of course, it didn’t take 50 years for Coleman to resonate: he not only found his audience, John Coltrane –the all-time heavyweight champion– embraced his compatriot. He endorsed, and, crucially, he imitated. The Book of Revelation that Coltrane’s mid-’60s Impulse recordings comprise did, in many respects, grow directly out of the opening salvo fired by Coleman in ’59.

Flash forward ten years. Miles Davis was once again at the vanguard, nonchalantly picking up the baton dropped when free-jazz avatars Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane had their comet-like lives come crashing, way prematurely, to earth. By ’69, Miles had “plugged in”, augmented his quintet and went about the inconsequential task of changing music (again). To say that his endeavors were met with similar resistance as those of Coleman a decade before is putting it mildly. Indeed, while Ornette was eventually recognized, even lionized (witness his most-deserved 2007 Pulitzer for the masterful Sound Grammar ), the work Miles did in the late ’60s and early ’70s was met with a combination of incredulity, indifference and outright hostility (it also was warmly embraced by people with the ears to hear it). Much more on this era and the culmination of his experimentations which resulted in Bitches Brew, very shortly (stay tuned).

Suffice it to say, Miles led the charge that led to, depending upon one’s point of view, a radical expansion of jazz music’s possibilities or its lamentable bastardization. Certainly the (inevitable, unfortunate) proliferation of watered down fusion which resulted in the artistic stillbirth known as Smooth Jazz has little (if anything) to do with the shock heard ’round the world that Miles sounded off circa 1970.

What happened next is, again depending on one’s perspective, the languid death march of America’s music or a continuation of an art that seamlessly integrates virtually every noise and culture from around the globe. A certain, and predictable, cadre of critics submerged their heads in the sand and bitched about better days. The awake and aware folks who make and receive these offerings celebrate an ever-evolving music that resists boundaries and is capable of communication transcending language and explanation. At its best it is an ideal synergy of expression and integrity.

Anyone who knows anything understands that some of the best jazz music ever was created in the ’70s (no, really) and a great deal of amazing music was made in the ’80s (seriously). But in the ’90s and into the ’00s we’ve seen jazz music consistently –and successfully– embrace other forms of music (rock, rap, electronica, etc.) and end up somewhere that remains jazz, yet something else altogether. There are myriad examples, of course, but this small sampler of five selections might be illustrative, and enlightening. The uninitiated may be surprised, even astonished, at how alive and accessible this “other” music really is.

One could (and should) say more about artists such as Lester Bowie, Jamie Saft, Marco Benevento, The Bad Plus, Critters Buggin, Garage a Trois and Mostly Other People Do The Killing, all of whom have incorporated our (increasingly) info-overload existence into their sound. Slack-jawed and stale-souled haters may demur at even calling this Jazz, or course. And of course the last laugh is on them because most of these musicians would care less than a little what you call it. They understand that the shape of jazz that came is always turning into what we’ll be listening to tomorrow.

1. DJ Spooky (with William Parker, Joe McPhee and Guillermo E. Brown), “ibid, desmarches, ibid” (from Optometry):

2. Material, “Black Light” (from Hallucination Engine):

3. Matthew Shipp, “Cohesion” (from Equilibrium):

4. John Zorn, “Giù La Testa (Duck You Sucker!)” (from The Big Gundown):

5. Medeski, Martin and Wood (with DJ Logic), “Start-Stop” (from Combustication):

Over at PopMatters Will Layman has a great piece on pianist Jason Moran. Highly recommended.

It also includes a wonderful video where Moran talks about his relationship with the music (and inescapable aesthetic influence) of Thelonious Monk. I could listen to that for a lot longer than the few minutes caught on tape (but that’s how I roll); I could definitely listen/watch Moran and his band tackle Thelonious for many blissful hours. For now, this will have to suffice.

Props to Layman for calling well-warranted attention to this amazing (and young!) master, and props to Moran for being himself.

Bonus footage of “Thelonious”:

Okay.

Gibson (the fine folks who bring us some of our best guitars) has recently announced their selections of what they deem the Top 50 Guitar Albums ever.

Now, as someone who writes about music (and who has offered up a few lists of my own), I am acutely aware that one person’s list is another person’s purgatory. Put simply, when it comes to matters of taste and ranking (a particularly combustible combination), there is no pleasing everyone. In fact, there is no pleasing anyone, since the list makers themselves are invariably disappointed or frustrated. When you are talking about the best of the best, it is like boiling the Pacific Ocean to get a handful of salt.

So it is in the spirit of augmenting and not critiquing (though there are many items on their list I find objectionable) that I offer up an alternative Top 10 with some (very) honorable mentions. To avoid redundancy, my list will not duplicate any of the ones already selected by Gibson. Fortunately, there are more than enough to go ’round, and despite some genuine head-scratchers (there are many items on their list I find offensive, aesthetically speaking), it’s silly to quibble too much with a list that features most (but certainly not all) of the usual suspects.

Let’s review their Top 10:

10. AC/DC: Back in Black, 9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland, 8. Cream: Disraeli Gears, 7. The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East, 6. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin II, 5. Guns N’ Roses: Appetite for Destruction, 4. Derek and the Dominoes: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, 3. Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin IV, 2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced, 1. Van Halen, Van Halen.

Nothing really outrageous there, I reckon. I would say The Who should be in any list before AC/DC and having Eric “God” Clapton in there twice is a bit much (particularly at the expense of Tony Iommi). I’ll just wryly suggest that putting Van Halen (a worthy Top 10 entry for sure) before Hendrix is equal parts laughable and ludicrous. And if you do –and you should– have Hendrix in there, put all three of his albums in there, because a case could be made that they go 1-2-3.

There are many predictable (and inappropriate) selections rounding out the other 40 selections, such as Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Really? Those guys who could barely play their instruments made one of the 50 best (#15, in fact) guitar albums of all time? Give me a personal break and slip a safety pin through it. Another AC/DC (Highway To Hell) but nothing by Rush? Of course. Oasis but no Living Colour? Oh. Et cetera.

So I won’t spend more time bitching about the unconscionable omission of albums like (insert anything by Black Sabbath) or (insert anything by Rush circa 1970-something) or Aqualung, The Queen is Dead, Selling England by the Pound, Morrison Hotel, (insert virtually anything by Frank Zappa), Superfly, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Time’s Up, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Rubber Factory, Let It Bleed, Animals, The Royal Scam, The Woods, (insert anything by Sonic Youth), and one or two (dozen) others.

Here is my alternate Top 10, with respect to their mostly unassailable final selections.

10. Yes, The Yes Album

Let’s start out with Yes since, other than Rush, this band gets the least love from the so-called critical establishment. Nevermind the fact that (like Rush) their musicians, pound for pound and instrument for instrument, are as capable and talented as any that have ever played. Steve Howe is the thinking man’s guitar hero.  His solos are like algebra equations, but full of emotion. His mastery of the instrument colors almost every second of every song, and his ability to create texture, nuance (check out the extended midle section of “Yours Is No Disgrace”) and bombast (check out the blistering work on “Perpetual Change”) is, on these proceedings, unparalleled.

9. Kiss: Alive

Before the sex, drugs, alcohol and the gravity of expectations vs. ability set in, Kiss was lean, hungry, unappreciated and angry. They also wore make-up. But circa 1975, the hardest touring band in show biz was firing on every conceivable cylinder. Their overproduced, somewhat half-baked studio work did not adequately represent what outstanding musicians they all were (no, seriously), but their genius decision to put out a live album (before they were big) and make it a double album was what put them over. And it still sounds incredible; easily one of the best live albums of the era. The star of these proceedings is Ace Frehley, who was always better than he sounded. He is a rock god on this outing, and he never really sounded better than this. Every single song features a solo that is logical, concise and utterly original (check out his restrained but authoritative work at the 1:50 minute mark here). All those candy-ass hair bands in the ’80s weren’t even trying to emulate this because they knew it was impossible.

8. Bad Brains, I Against I

No Bad Brains, no Living Colour.

Maybe not literally (and that is not said to deny that the amazing Vernon Reid would –or could– have ever been denied), but if you want to talk about stepping stones, Bad Brains are the Viking ship that launched a thousand mosh pits. Side one of this sucker, their masterpiece, is one of the most pure and potent distillations of unclassifiable genius in all rock. It’s all in there: rock, rap, reggae, hardcore, metal and yourself. And it’s all good.

7. Pretenders, Pretenders

Prediction: if James Honeyman-Scott (and his partner in crime, bassist Pete Farndon) had not overdosed, The Pretenders would have owned the ’80s. As it happens, “all” they did was make three perfect albums, one right after the other. While assessing their first two records (back in 2006 when they were reissued), this is what I had to say about the guitar playing: James Honeyman Scott—whose guitar playing throughout announces the advent of a major talent—uncorks a solo that somehow manages to soar while remaining subdued, transporting emotion without the flash, substance without the shtick. Virtually every note he plays defines his less-is-more style, which is not an exercise in minimalism so much as the confident restraint of an artist who could speak for minutes but conveys it his own way in seconds. Importantly, his contributions are the very opposite of the much-maligned self-indulgence of the mid-’70s prog rock the punks so scornfully (and gleefully) piled on, but also a million miles away from the sterile sheen and hair band histrionics that dominated the scene after he checked out. Need more evidence? Three words: “Tattooed Love Boys”. Of all the mini masterpieces that make up the album, this short blast of bliss might be its zenith: no other group at any other time could ever make a song that sounds like this (the music, the words, the vocals, the vibe. To listen again is cause to celebrate and mourn the senseless loss of Honeyman Scott: even if we are fortunate that he essentially distilled a career’s worth of talent into two classic albums, it’s simply a shame to ruminate on how much more he had to offer.

6. King Crimson, Red

The progenitors of math rock on their last album of the ’70s. Red is the Rosetta Stone that every pointy-headed prog rock band worships at the altar of (even if they don’t realize it, because the bands they do worship once worshipped here). The title track is a yin yang of intellect and adrenaline, underscored with a very scientific, discernibly English sensibility. It is the closest thing rock guitar ever got to its own version of “Giant Steps”. Robert Fripp has never been boring or unoriginal and he outdoes himself here. Finally, few songs in rock history have the emotional import and uncanny feeling Fripp conjures in the album’s final song, “Starless”.

5. Santana: Caravanserai

Abraxas gets most of the recognition, even though Santana III is better. Yet not enough people name-check Caravanserai, which is a shame since it’s not only Santana’s best album, it’s one of the great documents of a great decade. If you’ve heard their big hits on the radio (and who hasn’t?) it’s familiar yet also elusive. There is an unforced exotic vibe the band taps into, and from the first cricket chirps to the last frantic arpeggios, the listener is definitely in another place altogether. The playing throughout is so obviously in the service of a singular and uncompromised vision, it still sounds primitive and from the future all at the same time (something the band itself acknowledges, literally, in the title of one of the more indescribable pieces). No serious fan of rock music should be without this album and that it didn’t make the cut for Gibson’s list is indefensible.

4. The Who: Quadrophenia

Sure, the Gibson crew got Live at Leeds and Who’s Next, but Quadrophenia is, in no particular order, The Who’s best album, one of the five best albums of the ’70s and an all-time guitar-playing tour de force. This is it. Townshend was never this energized or inspired again, and it all came together in a double LP that is not as immediately accessible or endearing as Tommy, but once you get it, it gets inside you –and it never leaves. From extended workouts like “The Rock” (which sounds a bit like an updated and plugged in version of Tommy’s “Underture), to slash and burn mini epics like “Bell Boy”  to pre-punk (and post-Mod) anthems like “5:15″ (check out PT’s lacerating but always-in-control frenzy toward the song’s coda).

I wrote at length about The Who last year and here is what I had to say regarding Quadrophenia:

The genius of Quadrophenia (an album that manages to get name-checked by all the big names and seems universally admired but still not quite revered as much as it richly deserves) is yet to be fully detailed, at least for my liking. Less flashy than the “rock opera” Tommy and less accessible than the FM-friendly Who’s Next, it is, nonetheless, significantly more impressive (and important) than both of those excellent albums. Everything The Who did, in the studio and onstage, up until 1969 set the stage for Tommy: it was the consummation of Townshend’s obsessions and experimentations; a decade-closing magnum opus that managed to simultaneously celebrate the death and rebirth of the Hippie Dream (see the movie and ponder this, this and especially this). Everything Townshend did, in his entire life, up until 1973 set the stage for Quadrophenia. It’s all in there: the pre-teen angst, the teenage agonies and the post-teen despondency. Politicians and parents are gleefully skewered, prigs and clock punchers are mercilessly unmasked, and those who consider themselves less fortunate than everyone else (this, at times, is all of us) are serenaded with equal measures of empathy and exasperation.

And the songs? It’s like being in a shooting gallery, where Townshend picks off hypocrisy after misdeed after miniature tragedy all with a winking self deprecation; this after all is a young misfit’s story, so the bathos and pathos is milked, and articulated, in ways that convey the earth-shattering urgency and comical banality that are part and parcel to the typical coming of age cri de coeur. And the band, certainly no slouch on its previous few efforts, is in top form throughout. Being a double album (quite possibly the best one, and that is opined knowing that Electric Ladyland, Physical Grafitti and London Calling are also on the dance card), it’s difficult to imagine a better song to open side three than the immortal 5:15. Unlike most double albums that tend to drag a bit toward the end, this one gets better as it goes along, and none of the songs feel forced. Some of the songs on Tommy seem shoehorned to fit the storyline but that’s never an issue with Quadrophenia; Townshend had a unified vision and the songs tell a cogent and affecting tale. As great as Who’s Next really is, you can have “Baba O’Riley”, “Bargain” and “Behind Blue Eyes”; give me “Cut My Hair”, “Sea and Sand” and “Bell Boy”. And then there is the song Pete Townshend was born to write (and no, it was not “My Generation”, although only he could have written that one, and all the other great ones), “The Punk and the Godfather”.

3. Led Zeppelin: Presence

This is not a guitar album; this is guitar. Aside from Hendrix and Iommi, you could fill the rest of the list with Led Zeppelin albums and call it a day. Ridiculous though it may seem to some (many?), beloved and lionized as the Mighty Zep is, they actually don’t get enough attention for what unbelievable songwriters and musicians they were. Not too many people would argue –at least with any credibility– that Plant is one of the great rock vocalists and Bonzo is on the short list of rock drummers and John Paul Jones is the unsung hero and jack of all trades for this outfit. But Jimmy Page, aside from unimpeachable Golden God status, seems most known for his “Stairway To Heaven” solo and the work he did between ’69 and ’72. The blues-drenched debut and the next three albums helped define post-Beatles rock music and they need little elaboration. But let’s have some love for the last four albums. Houses of the Holy gets sufficient respect, sort of, but Physical Graffiti (#48 on Gibson’s list) should be acknowledged as what it is: one of the ten best albums of the ’70s. Some people give it up for the last hurrah, the (very) underrated In Through the Out Door (mostly because of  the radio-friendly hits “Fool in the Rain” and “All My Love”, even though Page does some of his finest playing on “In The Evening” and “I’m Gonna Crawl”). But what about the dark horse, the heroin needle in the haystack, Presence?

If Led Zeppelin II is the Story of Creation and Led Zeppelin IV is The Resurrection (and Physical Graffiti is Ecclesiastes), Presence is The Book of Revelation.

One thing most everyone can agree on: Presence is the most obscure, misunderstood and maligned album, even if it represents the most perfect balance of studio proficiency and unpolished bluster (anyone not in the know of its origins, but interested, start here). This is the effort that sees Page’s multi-tracked majesty playing hide and seek with some of the more raw and visceral playing of his career.

It comes crashing out of the gate with what may well be Page’s crowning achievement: ten minutes of electric guitar pyrotechnics and peregrinations called “Achilles Last Stand”. The vision (to imagine all these sounds) and the dexterity (to actually pull it off) is staggering and it features the solo: the impatient may proceed directly to the 3.43 mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFRFtnTd620

It concludes with the laconic “Tea For One”, the slowest and saddest blues Page ever pulled off. In between, there is intensity (the anti-cocaine “For Your Life”), depravity (the “borrowed” blues lament “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”), playful Elvis parody (“Candy Store Rock”) and a spicy tribute to the Big Easy (“Royal Orleans”). What it adds up to is as intimate a glimpse as we mortals would ever get at Zeppelin at their most vulnerable and naked (emotionally and musically). Page’s playing is, as always, a see-saw of acumen and urgency, but he was never this insistent or soulful before or after.

 

2. Black Sabbath: Vol. 4

Simply put, this is an electric guitar rock symphony. This is the wall of sound (or for hardcore Sabbath fans, I should say “The Wall of Sleep of Sound”), plugged in and performed by one man: Tony Iommi. It got different (for them, for us) but it never got any better than this.

I’ve had more than a little to say about Sabbath, so I’ll let anyone interested in reading (or revisiting) go here and here. The best thing you can do is just listen to the magic, which is very black and very brilliant.

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Axis: Bold As Love

 Not in Gibson’s Top 10? Okay.

Not in Gibson’s Top 50? Oh.

Look, any of Hendrix’s three “proper” studio releases could fairly be claimed as number one (Are You Experienced because it came first; Electric Ladyland because it was better –and it was a double album) but one might end up quite contentedly in the middle and claim that Axis: Bold As Love is the guitar album of all guitar albums. The best? Who knows. The most important? Who cares. The most satisfying? Who could argue?

Here is what I said earlier this year, while discussing Hendrix’s legacy:

Axis: Bold As Love did not have as many instantly accessible singles, but in spite (or because) of that, the second album is unquestionably a major step forward in several regards. This is the disc to slip into any discussion regarding Hendrix’s indisputable, but underappreciated compositional acumen. The guitar is consistently front and center (while Redding and especially Mitchell remain impeccable, as always, in the pocket), but the emphasis on Jimi’s vocals turns purposeful attention on some of the best lyrics he ever penned. While Are You Experienced remains the sonic boom that cleared away all competition, even the best moments on that effort could never in a thousand years have anticipated songs like “Little Wing”, “Castles Made of Sand”, “One Rainy Wish” and “Bold As Love”. (Even an ostensibly throwaway tune like “She’s So Fine” is instructive: Jimi’s lightning leads and delectable falsetto choruses shine, but then there’s Mitch Fucking Mitchell. Only one drummer in rock was this fast and furious circa 1967 and his name was Keith Moon.)

The songs on Axis: Bold As Love, for the most part, are concise and unencumbered (the clarity of sound on these remasters more than justifies their acquisition), and this is in no small part due to producer (and then manager) Chas Chandler, who brought a strictly-business professionalism to the proceedings all through ’67. He explains his old school M.O. on the companion DVD: “If a band can’t get it in two or three takes they shouldn’t be in the studio.” How can you not love this guy? And watching Eddie Kramer at the console, isolating guitar tracks and vocals while recalling how the songs came together is a treat true Hendrix fans will lap up like voodoo soup.

There is also an air of adventure and daring that augments the sometimes disorienting edge of the debut. Hendrix is clearly pushing himself, each day coming up with new ideas and electrified with the air of possibility. That vision is convincingly and definitively realized, and we can only lament the comparatively primitive technology that prevented alternate takes from surviving the sessions. Imagine, for instance, where “Little Wing” continued to go after the tapes fade out. If there is one particular moment on any of these tracks that best illuminates Hendrix’s insatiable creativity and unerring instincts, it comes toward the end of the incendiary “If 6 Was 9”. After declaring, in one of the all-time great rock and roll F-offs (“I’m gonna’ wave my freak flag high!”), a sort of whinnying, high-pitched noise slips into the maelstrom. Kramer explains that there happened to be a recorder lying around the studio, and Hendrix simply picked it up and started wailing. Kramer then applied the appropriate effects and echo, and the rest is history. In the final analysis, there is no way to improve upon practically any part of Axis: Bold As Love: this is as good as music is capable of being.

The Mingus Big Band is bigger than most big bands because they play the music of Charles Mingus. Of the many words one could use to describe Mingus, (and one has to use many words to adequately describe Mingus) it is big: he was physically imposing and he had feelings, opinions, and musical genius that no ordinary person could possibly contain, much less hope to convey. Most of all, he made big music. His knowledge of and passion for all types of expression is evident in practically every note he wrote over the course of four astonishingly productive decades. The catalog of his recordings is, in many regards, still being fully absorbed and understood. His output was so vast and encompassing it is impossible to summarize or easily encapsulate the scope of his achievement and influence. Suffice it to say, the shadow he cast continues to creep into any conversation about jazz music in the 20th century.

Thanks to the Mingus Big Band, we have the opportunity to keep much of that music alive and screaming in the hear-and-now, while the band’s contemporary interpretations of Mingus’s compositions allows the songs to breathe, mutate and swing their way into a new millennium. Overseen by Charles’s widow Sue Mingus, the band has been performing in New York City since 1991. Almost 20 years later, the Mingus Big Band has staked its claim as an American cultural institution—an extension of Mingus’s repertoire but very much its own entity. This, of course, is a tribute band that does not sound like a typical tribute band. On one hand, they do not play any “safe” covers, which speaks well of their collective abilities; on the other hand, they are playing Mingus compositions, which are so fully realized they effectively self-police misinterpretation. The only way you can mess up a Mingus tune is by having unprepared or unqualified musicians attempting to play it, and that is assuredly not an issue with this band, which comprises some of the finer players on the scene. 

 Beginning in 2008, the band commenced its association with Jazz Standard (coincidentally named “Best Jazz Club 2008” by New York Magazine). On New Year’s Eve of that year, the band was filmed during their performance and that concert is now available on the new release Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard. Aside from the historic import (the show was broadcast nationwide on NPR) and the festive occasion, this was a special show for another reason. Anticipating the transition into 2009, all of the songs performed are compositions Mingus recorded 50 years prior. 1959 was a special year for jazz music and a crucial one for Charles Mingus. He released his masterpiece, Mingus Ah Um, as well as Mingus Dynasty and recorded Blues And Roots (which was not released that year).

It is remarkable, despite the band’s track record and longevity, how seamlessly they navigate the pieces from ’59—some of which were written for much smaller bands. For the Mingus Dynasty sessions Mingus assembled one of the larger groups he’d worked with to that point; it was not until the next decade that he had consistent opportunities to employ more musicians—albeit not as often as he would have liked. Indeed, one of the more impressive aspects of Mingus’s realization as a composer and leader is how he was able to thrive with whatever he had at a particular point in time. Listening to selections from 1957’s The Clown affords the opportunity to savor—and marvel at—the sounds he was able to conjure out of five musicians (including himself). A barnburner like “Haitian Fight Song” or a swinging tone poem like “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” are, in addition to being bona fide jazz masterworks, case studies of a dedicated artist translating the magic he hears in his mind. There is, then, a sort of reverse alchemy unfolding when the Mingus Big Band performs: if their namesake made big music with minimal resources, this band is obliged to convey the raucous feeling of the originals while integrating some of the instruments the composer might have incorporated, given the chance.

Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard is an almost flawless slice of some of Mingus’s finest work. Anyone familiar (including the faithful and besotted) with the original material should be dutifully impressed with the way they are rendered; for a newcomer who has not had a chance to dive into the tidal wave of all-things-Mingus, this is an excellent gateway. For obvious reasons, the selections from Mingus Dynasty seem most suited for a big band (again, those sessions featured seven or ten players on each track). “Gunslinging Birds”, “New Now Know How” and the show-closing “Song With Orange” (which features a scorching piano solo by David Kikoski) all swing like nobody’s business and the band manages to sound intense and ebullient (one suspects Mingus would approve). Trumpet virtuoso Randy Brecker, who played with Charles in the ‘70s, is typically delightful, and the addition of drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts kicks things up a notch. The band dives into the rootsy blues by way of The Big Easy on a dirge-like deconstruction of “Cryin’ Blues” (arranged by bassist Boris Kozlov, who is in particularly fine form throughout and should always be front-runner as band MVP considering the boots he is obliged to fill): it is impossible (for this writer anyway) to consider anything an improvement on any Mingus original, but this rendition brims with playful fervor that truly does Mingus proud.

The high points include a trio of songs that even a stellar band must cover with care. “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” is generally regarded as one of the sublime jazz ballads; this rendition includes the vocals Joni Mitchell wrote for her own Mingus tribute (Mingus, from 1979), sung tastefully by Ku-Umba Frank Lacy. “Bird Calls” would frankly overwhelm almost any working band—there is so much going on and the pace is so breakneck throughout it would be easy to imagine even capable musicians tripping all over each other trying to recreate the heat lightning in a box that Mingus & Co. laid down in ’59. Finally, the immaculate “Self-Portrait In Three Colors”, originally a study in expressive restraint, is sped up ever so slightly and manages to actually swing while capturing the full emotional impact of the original.

Speaking with Sue Mingus is like conversing with jazz: she is enervated and completely in the moment, yet also a living conduit to history, a voice of experience and authority. One approaches an opportunity like this with a combination of excitement and attentiveness. She is legendary not only because of her close association with Charles Mingus, but also for the passionate advocacy with which she guards her husband’s legacy. She achieved underground hero status amongst jazz fans when stories spread about her habit of entering record stores all over the world and waltzing out with unpurchased copies of Mingus bootlegs. If confronted she encouraged the shopkeepers to call the cops; they never did, quite aware they had no legal ground to stand on. The title of Sue’s (award-winning) memoir Tonight At Noon references one of her husband’s compositions, and the image it conjures is a miraculous anomaly (or an anomalous miracle). It also invokes the nocturnal hours intrinsic to a working musician’s existence. Of course it is also more than a little autobiographical: Mingus was a contrarian as well as a contradiction, notoriously demanding of those in his employ (particularly those poor piano players), yet protective and loyal (especially to Eric Dolphy and Dannie Richmond—two of his artistic and spiritual soul mates). He could be intimidating and imposing when he had to be, and occasionally when he did not intend to be. He was arguably the only player in history capable of making an upright bass look modest. Most of all he was sensitive and cerebral, and he is easily one of the most important musicians America has produced.

Asked to talk about the band she directs and its new release she is unequivocal. “Charles would be pleased to see these pieces being played fifty years later,” she says. “Obviously the vitality and freshness is not lost. Of course these are great musicians and they are keeping the spirit [of the music] alive.” Sue is understandably reluctant to pick a favorite amongst the Mingus Big Band’s recordings, but she concurs that this latest effort does justice to the originals while stretching out and expanding songs that are so familiar and beloved. “A lot of the band’s success and the positive reception to the music has to do with the passage of time,” she suggests. “Peoples’ ears are growing up to the music; the big band caught on right away … it was the right time to have this band performing this music.”

There is inexorably a bittersweet element to this band’s existence, which is the unavoidable absence of its namesake. There is also the substantial irony that Mingus—despite having larger bands at his disposal in the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s—seldom had the ways or means to work with the fuller ensembles he often desired. “Charles would love to have played with bigger bands,” Sue confirms. “Economically it just didn’t make sense; it just wasn’t feasible. But he definitely would have loved a working 14-piece band!”

If there is an aspect of injustice here, it does seem to be a natural progression for Mingus’s works, being performed on a weekly basis by a dream band he never had the chance to handpick. Sue can’t say enough good things about the Mingus Mondays program at Jazz Standard, though she is quick to convey her appreciation for past venues. “We were at Fez [under Time Café in New York City] for 13 years. Every Thursday night—it was like home for us. Unfortunately they closed the music aspect and revamped the restaurant.” After performing at various locations, in late 2008 the band initiated its ongoing residence at Jazz Standard. “This is the closest we’ve been to the feeling of Fez. We love it here and the audience is always receptive. We enjoy having the opportunity to showcase the three different bands.” Sue is referring here to the other two collectives, Mingus Dynasty—a seven-piece band—that tends to be on the road in between gigs and The Mingus Orchestra—a 10-piece band—which features more exotic instruments such as bassoon, harp and clarinet. On any given Monday you can catch one of these outfits in action. “Mingus wrote over 300 compositions, so there is plenty of material to work with and there is always something for everyone.”

Speaking of those compositions, it is indeed refreshing, if overdue, to see Mingus’s name increasingly mentioned when the alpha dogs of jazz are discussed. These days one usually hears “Miles, Monk and Mingus” along with “Coltrane, Bird and Dizzy.” Having lived with Mingus from 1964 until his death in 1979, Sue has watched the slow but steady trajectory of his reception into the pantheon, all these years later. “It’s definitely happening,” she affirms. “People pay more attention and Mingus is entering the mainstream.” Asked to elaborate, she suggests that to a certain extent this acknowledgment was inevitable. “The music is so personal and because of its openness it attracts musicians. People love to play this music, and its tentacles are reaching out. We see it being used more regularly in film and TV and advertisements.” Sue suspects some of the initial challenges in getting Mingus the recognition he deserved was a matter of preconceptions. “People thought the music was unapproachable. Mingus was larger than life and some folks figured his music was too complex or difficult. Now we see kids playing this music!” There is indeed an annual high school competition (directed by Sue) and a quick visit to YouTube illustrates the diversity in age and ethnicity of people performing Mingus’s music.

Sue recalls the performance of Mingus’s posthumous masterwork Epitaph (the title Mingus sardonically chose, certain it would never get performed in his lifetime) in 1989 as a major turning point. The concert, conducted by Gunther Schuller and performed ten years after Mingus’s death, was successful and a double-CD was later issued. “It was difficult going at first,” Sue admits. “But after a few years it was astonishing how easy it seemed.” Everything clicked and the various tribute bands began taking their shows on the road. Over time Mingus gradually began to be fully appreciated as a composer as much as a masterful bass player, and every day more people are getting hit in their souls.

When the topic turns to two recent releases, (Charles Mingus: Music Written for Monterey, 1965 and Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy, Cornell 1964) the question must be asked whether or not any additional footage remains in the vaults. Tantalizingly, the answer is affirmative. “There is hours of piano music, actually,” Sue confirms. “Mingus spent most of his time on the piano; that is where he worked out his ideas and how he composed. He used to say that the music was waiting for him on the keys.” Presciently, and thankfully, Sue got in the habit of tape recording the pieces he would improvise and as a result she has “tons of tapes” to work with. Anyone who has heard the somewhat overlooked Mingus Plays Piano understands that these are not just enlightening works in progress; they are fully-formed monologues that function—in addition to being remarkable music—as irrefutable evidence of Mingus’s compositional genius. Sue relates the story of Alvin Ailey choreographing some of the piano sketches for a 60-piece orchestra, and the musicians could not (and initially did not) believe it was all improvised music.

Mingus used to refer to his “workshop” and he would assemble various musicians to flesh out the songs prior to performance or recording. In similar fashion the Mingus Big Band workshops existing Mingus material, but also collaborates to rearrange familiar works. In terms of what we might expect next from the Mingus Big Band, Sue mentions that bassist Boris Kozlov has been hard at work arranging “Meditations for Moses” (from Mingus Plays Piano). While we wait to see how they tackle that, Sue reiterates that the band will almost certainly revisit and rearrange other outlines from Mingus’s piano recordings. Perhaps most exciting, Sue lets it slip that she is working on another book. We can only imagine how many anecdotes and insights we’ve yet to hear, but considering how productive and passionate Mingus was in his music and his life, there is a lot to look forward to. Charles Mingus accomplished many remarkable things; we know now—more than ever—that one of his best decisions was marrying the woman who lived with him and loved him. She still does.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/128374-sue-mingus-and-the-mingus-big-band-letting-our-children-hear-music/

Arthur Lee died almost exactly four years ago (August 3, 2006). I not only am keen to remember –and celebrate– his life and work, I also appreciate the fact that the piece I wrote (below) to commemorate Lee was the first work I published for PopMatters, a relationship that has been incredibly positive and invigorating ever since. For anyone interested (hardcore fans or the unitiated looking to learn more) I wrote a more detailed appraisal of the band, and that piece can be found here. A few key snippets, directly below:

One is tempted to suggest, if sardonically, that now is the time for a reappraisal of Love. But that is unlikely. It’s never been time for Love, then or now, and this one-two punch of bad timing and bad luck tends to encapsulate the band’s maddening legacy. Love could never quite get over, and this certainly contributes to the enigmatic air that hangs over their history.

To a certain extent Lee’s defiant nature is understandable, or at least explicable. When you are that naturally talented, it has to be more than a little challenging to jump through the necessary hoops in order to connect the dots of pop star accessibility. Many years later, Lee acknowledges, and regrets, his self-defeating intransigence. To Holzman’s credit, he flew Lee out to New York City, but the singer was the opposite of Woody Allen in Annie Hall: he was allergic to the big apple and only felt comfortable in L.A. Lee begins to sound like rock music’s Jake LaMotta: he understood the game, but because he saw through it, or felt above it, or was willfully sabotaging himself or—most of all—he simply couldn’t be bothered, he never seized the gold ring that was gleaming right in front of his face.

Lee left his mark, and he knew it; and before he died, he had a decent opportunity to witness the collective appreciation. That he was able to tour the world in his last years is just, that he was taken before he could add to his legacy is regrettable. That old fans and, hopefully, legions of new listeners will continue to discover his work is exactly as it should be.

August 3, 2006.

It’s equal parts ironic and appropriate that Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, two avatars of what we recall—mostly with fondness—as the Summer of Love, have gone on to that great gig in the sky within a month of each other this summer. Of course, any discussion of 1967 must begin and end with the Beatles: As has been well documented, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band moved the avant-garde to the mainstream at a time when our culture was perhaps most open to receiving it. All of a sudden, albums could—and quickly did—become statements, and rock music was elevated to the status of art seemingly overnight. So while Sgt. Pepper is the alpha and omega, it is as significant for the possibilities it created for others as for its own sake.

But as is always the case, the most interesting and enduring creations occur in the margins. Pink Floyd, darlings of the burgeoning London underground, arrived at Abbey Road studios in early 1967 and began recording their debut Piper at the Gates of Dawn at the same time the Fab Four were assembling the sonic puzzle pieces of Sgt. Pepper. Both masterpieces arrived in time to describe and define the Summer of Love, or at least its distinctly British component. Across the pond, another debut helped capture the sounds of that time: The Doors were to Los Angeles what Pink Floyd was to London, a lean and hungry band that had taken the time to cultivate a cult following and had a breakthrough single (“See Emily Play” and “Light My Fire” respectively) that shot them into the stratosphere. But the band that Jim Morrison hoped to emulate was the then heavyweight champion of the L.A. scene: Love, led by Arthur Lee, who was also a mentor to a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix.

For a variety of reasons, some typical, some inexplicable, Love seemed to implode just as their ship was set to sail, and they never quite fulfilled their limitless and possibly unparalleled potential. While other bands made history during the Summer of Love, Love was busy living through incendiary months, and on the album that resulted, Forever Changes, Lee documented in real time and in living color the Daily Planet of the hippie scene, or at least its underbelly—which is perhaps the same thing. In other words, the album stands as the most accurate American version of the era, post Monterey and Haight-Ashbury.

Forever Changes failed to connect, though, and the band disintegrated shortly after its completion, with Lee soldiering on in increasing obscurity, his moment come and gone. How then, has his magnum opus, so insufficiently received, managed to inspire such loyalty and enchantment over the decades among its admirers? For starters, it is worthy of repeated listens; it deepens and intensifies well after you’ve made the initial connection. (Quick, when is the last time you listened to Sgt. Pepper all the way through? How deep do “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” or “Lovely Rita Meter Maid” seem?) Although none of the songs on Forever Changes crept onto the paisley playground of its time, it is impossible to quibble with the confident brilliance of miniature gems like “Andmoreagain” or “The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This”, which showcase Lee’s immutable gift: his voice, which had an almost extraordinary sensitivity and authority.

Sound like a contradiction? That’s the genius of Arthur Lee, plainly put. For all his quirks and contradictions, Lee was a taskmaster in the studio. Listen to the demo version of “The Good Humor Man” and compare the sparse acoustic take with what the song would become with understated brass and strings, and the longing in Lee’s delivery. If you don’t get it, Forever Changes will never speak to you.

But it’s not enough (nor should it be) to merely gesture toward an art work’s ineffable qualities. What makes Forever Changes indelible is first and foremost its unmistakable honesty. The Los Angeles streets that broiled with heat and inspiration brought intimations of a severity largely absent from the rose-colored commentary that emerged from San Francisco. The songs on Forever Changes have a soul and sly élan that most of Love’s contemporaries were incapable of conjuring. Lee described what he saw with deceptively simple, disarmingly straightforward lyrics that always evoked the feelings of an outsider. Lee, a black man, recognized what Chris Rock would later articulate, that no matter how many people profess to admire and envy you, few, if any, white folks would choose to trade places with you. This keeps the distance between what should be and what is foremost in one’s mind; no amount of applause or plaudits or utopian hippie thinking can compensate for that disparity.

But the sad staying power of his somber vision is unassailable. The music on Forever Changes is by no means morose, though the merciful scarcity of saccharine free-love fantasia augments its staying power. Part of the album’s perverse charm lies in its contradictions. For instance, its most assured and ebullient songs are belied by Lee’s lyrics. On this album, Lee—like Barrett on Piper—displays an uncanny facility for concision, capturing a larger truth somehow by not quite saying it. Lee’s audacity, at 22, in employing non sequiturs creates an unfiltered vision, revealing a lack of cynicism and trust in his abilities as well as those of his listeners. “And I’m wrapped in my armor / But my things are material./ And I’m lost in confusions / ‘Cause my things are material ” The lines may not make immediate sense, but Forever Changes is a treatise from the trenches, capturing the dodgy promise that anything is possible. The Summer of Love, after all, was the American Dream redux, replacing all that boring humility, hard work and redemption of the Horatio Alger story with a strategically ingested tab of acid.

Lee not only captured what he saw on the street, he anticipated the darkness around the corner, so it’s understandable that the more starry-eyed in his audience weren’t trying to pick up what he was putting down. Though Forever Changes doesn’t conform to the nostalgic picture of Summer of Love as drug-fuelled ecstasy without consequences, Lee managed to relate the less sexy banality of the morning after before most hippies even knew what was about to hit them. You never know when you might awaken from your reverie with snot caked against your pants, as Lee sardonically sings about in “Live & Let Live”. Lee depicts the big high and the lesser lows—or what the more pragmatic among us might call actual life. And it is this gray middle ground between compromise and revolution that provides Forever Changes its appeal. If it’s hot or you’re hungry or you have the rest of your life to sort out, then a concert or a hit record or the sudden insight to see through the charade may not be enough to get you safely to the other side. “All you need is love / love is all you need.” Okay. “The news today will be the movies for tomorrow”? Ouch.

Stop and think about that, from Love’s “A House Is Not a Motel.” That could well be the most succinct—not to mention prophetic—articulation of the so-called counterculture, circa 1967. Youth protest at Vietnam any made-for-TV melodrama or sentimental movie soundtrack sprung from the money-making minds of Madison Avenue. It’s pretty safe to conclude that the times aren’t a changin’. “And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game: / Do you like the part you’re playing?” This question, from the optimistically named “You Set the Scene,” is directed at the listener as much as the artist, and Lee’s answers, which end the album, reveal he had no intention of turning his back on the promised land, even as it splintered into a billion bad trips. The full orchestral freak out that concludes the album and ushers it into immortality has a classic literary flourish, bringing full circle the motifs introduced with the innovative trumpet stylings that accompany the opening track, “Alone Again Or”.

“The Red Telephone,” which ends side one, is the album’s centerpiece; its brooding, apocalyptic imagery captures that three-month moment of 1967, while remaining possibly more applicable to the here and now: “They’re locking them up today; they’re throwing away the key, / I wonder who it’ll be tomorrow, you or me?” Those creepy chanted lines were prophetic, not only when you consider that Lee, who lived to be neither wealthy nor white, ended up imprisoned in the mid 1990s as a result of his own recklessness as well as California’s controversial third-strike laws. The lyrics anticipate the aftermath awaiting Timothy Leary’s disciples, those that ingested and distributed the chemical vehicles to Valhalla, who would end up pulling harder time than our white-collar charlatans face for fleecing employees and the country out of millions of dollars. The lines are also a commentary on Americans acting un-American, looking back to the internments of Japanese citizens and forecasting the so-called enemy combatants rotting behind bars without formal charges or legal counsel. I read the news today, oh boy. As Lee sings in the same song, “Sometimes I deal with numbers, / And if you want to count me: Count me out.”

If Arthur Lee had been savvy enough to pull the businesslike burn out or the fortuitous fade away or—cleverest career move of all—die in some spectacular fashion in, say, early ‘68, it would be safe to bet that Forever Changes could have become a central part of the collective consciousness. That is the only rite of passage we ask of our best artists: Die so we can wake up and get around to appreciating what you accomplished. It’s what we talk about when we talk about the lack of love and the fact that forever never changes. Hopefully, Arthur and his very American dream now have that chance, for all the right reasons.

If Mikey Dread (Michael Campbell) had never decided to pick up the microphone and sing, his status would be secure in reggae history. His groundbreaking weekly show on Jamaican radio, the ingeniously entitled Dread at the Controls not only made him a celebrity, but it brought Jamaican music to the masses, making hometown heroes out of otherwise obscure acts. Notably, many music fans have heard Mikey Dread even if they own zero reggae albums. As the ‘70’s came to a close, two things were difficult to deny: reggae’s golden era was over, and The Clash were, as many people acknowledged, the only band that mattered. Of course, The Clash’s kitchen-sink approach (which reached its apotheosis—for better or worse and still a ceaseless debate amongst fans—on their fourth album Sandinista!) included the embrace of reggae, first evidenced in their cover of Junior Murvin’s classic “Police and Thieves” from their first album. It made all the sense in the world for Mikey Dread to enter their world, which he did when he became the opening act on their tour. Shortly after, they hit the studio and collaborated on the single “Bankrobber”. Mikey Dread’s fingerprints (and vocals) were all over the aforementioned Sandinista and at this point, it’s fair to conclude that his street-cred, both in reggae and rock circles, was beyond reproof.

With this experience, and bubbling with confidence, he returned to the studio to work on Beyond World War III. All of the albums in this series have featured vocal trios, and one duo, who represent the highest level of harmonizing skills. Finally, here is a record that features one singer—but not one voice. Mikey Dread, the dub master, multi-tracks himself to create a constant chorus that manages to sound fresh and clean. Unlike the glorious murkiness of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s productions, Dread’s sound is crystalline and unencumbered. Each sound from every instrument, each word (sung, chanted, spoken) is precise and perfect. And that voice! Regrettably, Mikey Dread rarely gets mentioned in discussions of great reggae singers, at least in part because he’s appropriately celebrated for his production skills. Allow me to make a case that his name should enter that conversation, with the most convincing testimonial being Beyond World War III.

This is one of the true lost classics. No, that’s not accurate. It’s more accurate to remember that it was never considered a classic in the first place, so it’s not a matter of it being lost so much as never having been found. And that is unacceptable. Words won’t be minced here: this is an outright masterpiece, as close to sublime in its way as any of the other albums discussed so far. Importantly, like the other albums, this one can, and should, easily appeal to casual fans of reggae music. Indeed, like the others, this one truly is recommended to anyone who listens to music, period.

The style here is heavy dub, with Dread (who, again, already had plenty of experience perfecting mash-ups of reggae hits) applying his considerable production acumen to his own songs. The mood is mostly upbeat, at times festive (“Break Down The Walls”) and at times jovial (“The Jumping Master” which features Dread giving approbatory shout-outs to his bandmates and his young apprentice, Scientist, and even name-dropping original “jumping master” Spiderman). The ebullient “Rocker’s Delight” dates back to the Sandinista! sessions, and the spoken word title track anticipates the concerns about nuclear confrontation that dominated the next decade. The most arresting, and timeless track is “Mental Slavery”, which catalogs some of the societal inhumanity that was about to fester in the ‘80s—and beyond:

How can we survive in times like these
When prices rise and wages freeze?

Mikey was around to see things get worse, and the more things remain the same, the more compelling his message becomes. He left us, way too soon, in 2008. His legacy is not in dispute, but his legend is still underappreciated. Beyond World War III is his greatest gift, and it’s one that keeps giving.

The cardinal rule for any serious appraisal of art involves a necessity to separate all discussion of the artist from the artifact. Mostly this is essential because so many unsavory characters have managed to create amazing art despite—or because of—their self absorption and nastiness. Monomania is sometimes obligatory, as we have seen from masters ranging from Tolstoy to Miles Davis. In short, it seldom sheds meaningful insight on a famous (or infamous) work to stand either on a pedestal or in the trenches, attempting to offer up easy (or difficult) analysis.

The list of artists known as assholes—or worse—to their friends or enemies is not short, but it’s a mistaken assumption that only difficult people create works that last. On the other hand, the list of genuinely decent human beings who have managed to make meaningful art is short but sweet: John Coltrane, Curtis Mayfield and Eric Dolphy come immediately to mind. However, hagiography rarely augments an individual’s oeuvre; in fact, it usually besmirches it. The only thing excessive praise and inappropriate criticism share is that they almost always say more about the commentator than the art being commented upon. The proponents of either extreme usually betray religious leanings that render their insights instantly dated and ultimately irrelevant (postmodern literary criticism and political correctness have been the more popular—and culpable—cults of the critical arena in recent decades).

And yet. All of that being said, sometimes it is impossible to ignore the life and the way(s) it influenced an artist’s development. With one group in particular, it is not only impossible, but negligent to make no mention of their exceptional trajectory from obscure and impoverished kids to adored legends of reggae music. Make no mistake, Israel Vibration’s debut, The Same Song is an indispensable classic, and would be loved—and discussed—if no biographical information on the artists was available. Nevertheless, the blissful sense of wonderment these songs provide accrue additional layers of meaning, and import, when the lives and circumstances of the young men who created them are considered. Long story shortened: Jamaica endured a polio epidemic in the latter years of the 1950s. Three of the boys disabled by the disease, Lascelle Bulgin, Albert Craig and Cecil Spence, met at a rehabilitation facility in Kingston. They bonded over the love of music and a dedication to Rastafarianism (legend has it that once they grew out their dreadlocks they were summarily evicted from the Mona Heights Centre).

Eventually they formed a vocal trio and, calling themselves Israel Vibration, began singing for change on various street corners throughout the city of Kingston. They were rescued from performing (and living) on the streets by the Twelve Tribes of Israel, who helped fund the recording of their first album. After more than five years of struggling, sharing and singing, their vision, and sound, was fully formed when they entered the studio. The results, quite simply, are staggering. The title track is, like the Mighty Diamonds’ “Right Time”, an opening salvo that also serves as a powerful—and empowering—statement of purpose: young men who had faced little other than hardship and discrimination, wise beyond their years, crafting an open letter of acceptance, unity and inevitability.

They tackle similar issues as the other landmark albums already discussed (this being roots reggae, the themes and sounds are not dissimilar), but where the Mighty Diamonds and Culture confront injustice and preach peace with, respectively, heavy doses of soul-influence and celebratory abandon, Israel Vibration balance the two styles with their own unique groove. On the more upbeat songs, like “Why Worry” and especially the ebullient “Walk the Streets of Glory”, the voices are appropriately buoyant; on the more topical, defiant songs, like “Weep & Mourn” and “Ball of Fire”, the pace—and the voices—are languid, even solemn. This manages to be powerfully elegant (or elegantly powerful) music, and it’s in part due to the unforced, easily-invoked vulnerability in these voices, but mostly it involves the very notion of underdogs speaking out for the underdog—without pity and with the gentle perseverance of faith. These last two songs describe the plights of the have-nots and the pitiful apathy of the powerful on par with the best efforts of Bob Marley and Burning Spear. And yet, even when the subject matter is deadly serious, there is a ceaseless air of celebration and joy that makes all the sense in the world: the people making this music are, when all was said and done, happily aware of how lucky they were simply to be alive.

Kind of like two trees falling in the forest, right?

Well, for anyone (and I mean “one”) who may wonder what it sounds like when two jazz fans fight, here is the ugly, unvarnished tale of the tape (to be cont’d?).

Brief back story: in June I took the opportunity to express my (not particularly controversial) opinion that Miles Davis’s second great quintet was the best band of musicians to ever assemble in one group, here (the piece also appeared at PopMatters). Here is some of what I wrote:

Those men, individually, are some of the most important and brilliant musicians of the last century. Together? Forget about it. This quintet (Davis’s second famous fivesome) was an unstoppable force and they made some of the greatest albums. In jazz music? In any music.

And then, after discussing the merits of the individual players, lamented that Wayne Shorter still seems to get short shrift when all-time greats are mentioned:

Wayne Shorter is, for my money, possibly the most underrated genius in any genre of music. To be sure, he gets plenty of props within jazz circles and the people who know really know. And in his wise, humble way, he is probably cool with that. But his name does not come up quickly enough, or often enough in discussions of the true masters. And aside from his considerable proficiency on the horn(s), he is also among the most distinctive and consistently satisfying composers. And while Miles, who was without peer in assembling talent, had the vision and deservedly gets the lion’s share of the credit (he was the lion, after all), a good chunk of the material on those second quintet sessions was written by Shorter. And here’s where it gets unbelievable: all through the mid-to-late ’60s –at the same time they were in The Quintet– he (as well as Hancock) was dropping epic masterpieces on the Blue Note label (think Maiden Voyage, Speak Like A Child, JuJu, Speak No Evil –for starters).

So then, about a week later, I went ahead and sang the praises of Wayne Shorter in greater detail, here (a piece that also appeared at PopMatters). This is how I concluded the piece:

Wayne Shorter, on the other hand, is like imported dark chocolate. Or fresh Kona coffee beans. Or a 2004 Brunello (or a 1964 Brunello for that matter). Or whatever type of car people who appreciate cars get excited about. You get the picture. Wayne Shorter is, in other words, the authentic item that aficionados savor, but whom virtually anyone with unpolluted ears can immediately appreciate. We odd and admittedly obsessed folks who really love jazz have no agenda. Really. (I’m not talking about the aesthetic prigs who have nothing good to say about anything other than the music they endorse; that is a certain type of poseur who has always been amongst us, whether the topic is music, literature, movies or wine or food or coffee or, especially these days, beer, et cetera.) All we care about is disabusing opinionated but clueless blowhards of the notion that jazz is (insert cliche here: to include “old-fashioned dance music”, “boring”, “musical masturbation”, “shrieking”, “easy listening” (!!!), “overwhelming”, et cetera) what it is or, put another way, what it is so manifestly not.

Life is too short to try and pick up something you simply can’t appreciate. But if you’re willing to give it a shot you just might be surprised. So consider this five song sampler from Wayne Shorter a win/win: if you don’t like this, you don’t like jazz; if you do like it, welcome to the rest of your life.

I’ll confess I did not think anything I offered up was particularly debatable or objectionable. But when it comes to the so-called jazz intellegentia, all bets are off. Sure enough, a very hip(ster) reader of PopMatters felt obliged to chime in and (I have to hope unintentionally) misinterpret both the literal words and –more egregiously– the entire spirit of where I was coming from and why I was writing.

His letter, which prompted a response in kind, are below.

Him:

I am sorry, but I find your article very stupid.

I am a jazzman, I love jazz and I can’t live without it, but when I see sentences like, if you don’t like this, then you don’t like jazz, I can say anything but “stupid”.

First, you can love basie or billy without loving modern jazz. Jazz rythm is the most important thingin my life but it can’t be different for other people.

Twice, I know hundreds of people who like jazz and lots of them don’t like Wayne that much and it doesn’t mean they don’t like modern jazz. Moreover they may be much more advanced in their tastes than you, when it comes to real jazz ( they love Cecil taylor, the last thing of Coltrane and so on…)

You can give your opinion and as you say you are here for that, but don’t do what you are fight against. Let people have their own tastes and enlarge their tastes, not the contrary.

Best,

Serge

Me:

Serge,

Appreciate the thoughts and while I’m disappointed you found the piece “very stupid” I’m glad it provided you with the opportunity to vindicate the honor of those *really* misunderstood and sophisticated jazz aficionados (presumably for whom Wayne Shorter is simply too conventional).

Unfortunately, and more than a little ironically, your protestation kind of misses the purpose of my rather tongue-in-cheek point. Which is: the proposition that if a person, who has never taken the time (for understandable and legitimate reasons) to check out jazz does not find much to like in these rather accessible and representative post-bop recordings by Shorter, it’s unlikely that they will find much in the more free and “out” works of the last half-century (and for the record, I endorse Cecil Taylor, thank you very little, but find that there are two primary reasons I don’t recommend him first when talking to would-be jazz fans: one, however much I dig ‘Silent Tongues’, in my experience it’s not exactly an ideal aperitif for the uninitiated; two, dropping late period Coltrane (which I actually discuss in a recent appraisal of Trane’s career) or Cecil Taylor or Henry Threadgill as proof of my avant-garde bona fides would make me precisely the insufferable poseur I excoriate in this piece).

That said, I reckon there has to be at least one or maybe three people out there who ‘Speak No Evil’ would not speak to, but who would connect, at first listen, with Sun Ra’s ‘Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy’. Likewise, I am sure there are more than a handful of folks who just love pre-bop jazz but don’t care for anything after Coleman Hawkins; the problem is, they are all 130 years old.

The central impetus of this piece (and the previous entry on Eric Dolphy, and whatever subsequent ones I write) is to hopefully turn on a handful of open-minded listeners to some great music that—whether because of some insidious stereotypes that still exist about jazz, or because they encounter uber-hipsters who feel that John Zorn sold out after ‘Naked City’, or Albert Ayler sold out…by dying, which understandably confirms the worst clichés about how *real* jazz fans roll—they might find worthwhile. It is a humble endeavor that I imagine artists like Wayne Shorter might even appreciate—perish the thought!

Cheers,

Sean

For even unconvertable jazz haters, Mr. Shorter casts a long shadow –and you’ve probably heard him before, even if you don’t realize it.

Steely Dan’s “Aja” (featuring Wayne Shorter):

Portishead’s “Strangers” (which features two samples, particularly the DOPE one that opens the tune, from Weather Report’s “Elegant People”, composed by Wayne Shorter; that’s him on the sax…):

I needed this today: a little trip down memory lane is just what the doctor (or, chemist) ordered.

A couple of old school lessons from last millennium (both taken from the outstanding joint Cut Chemist Meets ShortKut: Live at the Future Primitive Sound Session).

Lesson One:

Lesson Two: