Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

New Health Rock

Nate Chinen (NYT) brings some much-needed mainstream attention to the plights of Andrew D'Angelo and Dennis Irwin, both of whom are fighting virulent cancers, neither of whom has medical insurance. It's a good piece, but it raises some issues that could benefit from a wider view -- especially in an election year where both Democratic candidates are promising major health care reform. [John McCain, for his part, promises more of the same. As a US Senator, his health care coverage is just fine, so what's the problem?]

The article is pinned on the idea of community support -- when jazz musicians get sick, the jazz scene steps up with benefit shows and the like:

When the focus turns toward the health of jazz musicians, the discussion assumes a different, less abstract character: solicitous and supportive. Most people who play jazz for a living are accustomed to self-reliance. When that system fails, they lean on one another.

“Since I’ve been on the scene, there have been benefits for musicians that were in need, unfortunately, because so many of us are,” the guitarist John Scofield said in the rear stairwell of the Village Vanguard on Monday night. Along with the tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he was playing a benefit for the bassist Dennis Irwin, who has recently been struggling with a spinal tumor.

Benefit shows are great, of course, and I know both Andrew and Dennis have been floored by the tremendous outpouring of love and support in their time of need. [A reminder that the first benefit show for Andrew is tomorrow (Friday) night at the Union St. Tea Lounge -- I will be there, and I hope you will be too.] But let's get real -- treatment for brain tumors and spinal tumors is crushingly expensive. The costs run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and could easily push past the half-million mark. The people showing up for the benefit shows at Small's and the Tea Lounge and kicking in whatever they can are primarily other jazz musicians. You know, the people who can't afford health insurance in the first place. This is not a viable solution.

We also see, lurking in the wings, the old right-wing trope that people who "choose" to live without health insurance are "irresponsible," and therefore if they are faced with crippling medical bills, they deserve what they get. Chinen acknowledges the sentiment and tries to defuse it:

It may seem negligent that so many jazz musicians lack basic health-care coverage, but monthly fees through an organization like the Freelancers Union easily run to several hundred dollars, and these days many gigs in New York literally involve a tip jar.

Jazz musicians living in New York -- even relatively well-known jazz musicians like Andrew D'Angelo and Dennis Irwin -- have trouble enough paying the damn rent every month. If you have a full-time day job and are lucky enough to get decent coverage through work, your employer shoulders much of the cost of health insurance -- but as a freelancing musician, it's all on you.

Chinen mentions the Freelancer's Union, which is an organization that sells health insurance to the self-employed -- but in order to even be eligible, you need to show them proof of either 20 paid hours each week over the previous eight weeks, or $10,000 worth of income over the past six months. If you're working mostly cash gigs, this documentation can be difficult or impossible to come by. Even if you are eligible to join, the least expensive plan with the highest deductible still costs $239.64 every month. And if you have a couple of lean months and can't afford the premium, you lose your coverage.

Still, Chris Speed blames himself:

“A lot of my friends, myself included, don’t have insurance, which seems really idiotic, especially now,” he said.

But this is absurd. Chris Speed doesn't have heath insurance because he can't afford to have health insurance. Not having a reliable extra $240 of disposable income kicking around every month is not a moral failing or a stupid mistake, it's simple a fact of life for the overwhelming majority of NYC jazz musicians.

What is idiotic is the American system of for-profit private health insurance, which costs far more and covers far fewer people than any other system in the developed world. It forces poor working musicians into an impossible situation, and then lays a guilt trip on us for "choosing" to be the victims of a broken and exploitative system. As jazz musicians in America, we gamble with our lives, placing a sucker's bet every month: health insurance or rent, health insurance or food, health insurance or buying an instrument, heath insurance or renting a rehearsal space, health insurance or making a record, health insurance or hiring a publicist to promote your record, health insurance or going on tour, etc. Not to mention that even those who do mange to obtain heath insurance often still end up bankrupted by medial bills. (And of course, then there's the Bankruptcy Bill.)

And then if the unthinkable happens -- if you are diagnosed with a brain tumor, or a spinal tumor -- the system says, "Too bad for you, but it's your fault for not having gotten a real job. If you cared about your health, you wouldn't have become a musician in the first place. But, hey, don't despair, I'm sure your fellow musicians can raise a few hundred bucks for you at benefit show. That'll really put a dent in those six-figure medical bills."

Ezra Klein, the blogosphere's best health care wonk, has a piece in the American Prospect: Why 2009 Is the Year for Universal Health Care. Let's fucking hope so.

Headline news had me so abused

This headline is wretched even by New York Post Post standards.

[Via Phil.]

Amanda has a conflicted but clear-eyed post about Ike's passing -- as she says, it is curious that someone who was "just one of many, many, many men of genius in history who was also a violent, wife-beating nightmare of a person — will be one of the few remembered more for the evil in him than the beauty." Unlike his contemporary, James Brown, Ike's musical legacy became completely obscured by his penchant for domestic violence. Rather than being remembered as the father of rock and roll, he effectively became Wife Beater Number One. No doubt this has mostly to do with the fact that the person he was beating on all those years wasn't some anonymous woman with no public presence of her own -- she was his musical partner, a star in her own right long before she left him. But Tina's best and most lasting work remains the sides she cut with her husband, a great musician and awful human being. It's not like the former excuses the latter, obviously. But it shouldn't erase it, either.

UPDATE: Jon Pareles obit (NYT).

Just when I thought that I was out they PULL! ME! BACK! IN!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

Via Zuzu.

Some bright morning when this life is over

Corey Kilgannon has an amazing piece in the NYT about the jailed bassist Tarik Shah and his brother Antoine Dowdell, who's been picking up pointers in jazz theory from his sibling during visiting hours:

While a public drama has played out in headlines and courtroom hearings over the terrorism charges, a private one between the two brothers has been occurring every other week in a special isolated visiting area of the jail. There they enter a booth and sit separated by a wire security screen, their conversation monitored by correction officers, and Mr. Dowdell takes a tutorial from his brother during which the two discuss jazz theory and sing passages to each other.

“We know the guards can hear us scatting and singing away, and they probably think we’re both crazy, or talking in code or something,” said Mr. Dowdell, 49, who uses his brother’s left-behind collection of sheet music and handwritten practice exercises to help teach himself.

He says his brother’s inspiration and instruction from prison has helped him make huge strides as a jazz pianist who now gets paying gigs around the city, including a regular weekend engagement at the Caravan of Dreams restaurant in the East Village.

“All my life I studied the piano, but I was never able to play what was in my heart,” Mr. Dowdell said. “I could never make the piano cry, maybe because I couldn’t get in touch with the blues. But seeing what’s happening to my brother — his music and his life unfairly taken away — I feel an urgency now to play his music for people. It’s like they took the jazz musician from my family and I have to fill that void.”

In jail Mr. Shah has no access to an instrument or radio, but he has begun to write exercises, chord progressions and even compositions for his brother.

Tarik Shah was arrested as a suspect in the global war on terror in May 2005. He has been held in solitary confinement since then. His long-delayed trial is finally set to begin April 23. David Adler has written extensively -- and controversially -- about Shah's case for his blog (links to Shah-related posts here) and for Jazz Times. (See also the subsequent letters exchange.)

Look what the cat dragged in

Really? Don't you have enough on your hands trying to uncover the identity of Anna Nicole Smith's baby daddy?

Any obsession to blather over by blog

Jazz blogdonia, and specifically, the new jazz '70-'90 wiki, behearer.com, gets some love from the NYT's Nate Chinen.

In case you missed it the first time around, here is my contribution to the original discussion.

One album I now realize I unaccountably left off that list: Julius Hemphill's Coon Bid'ness (reissued as Reflections). Worth it for "The Hard Blues" alone -- that's a tune in need of a restraining order.

Body Meta

Oh, look -- this week's Time Out NY hosts a round of every New Yorker's favorite sport: inside baseball. They asked these guys ("artists and industry leaders") to rate and comment the local criterati (including TONY's own) on a six-point scale, over five categories: knowledge, style, taste, accessibility, influence.

The comments and numerical ratings are anonymous, but the obvious party game is to try to pair the panelist with the invective. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to who said, of (otherwise top-rated) New Yorker critic Alex Ross, “Writes well, can’t hear, knows little”? Or of NYT pop critic Kelefa Sanneh, “His agenda is to raise crap to the level of art—he tends to write glowingly about some of the worst American music”? My favorite comment is whoever called Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni “the George Bush of restaurant reviewers: He’s a little man in a big job who got lucky but has never acknowledged the need to learn on this big job.” (If you don't get the reference, click here.)

One annoyance -- in an otherwise fun piece, the unnamed TONY editor(s) responsible for the intro can't resist taking the obvious cheap shot at bloggers:

At least they’re pros, unlike the thousands of armchair analyzers equipped with nothing more than opinions and a blog.

I can't resist noting that the top-rated pop critic and the top-rated classical critic, plus one of the two runners-up, all appear to have something in common...

But when I read your cover story

Lindsay makes her big dead-tree debut with an investigative piece on the cover of this week's New York Press.

She moves like she don't care

Maria Schneider in the NYT:

Much of Maria Schneider’s large- ensemble jazz of the last six years has been nearly a figurative description of long-flow movement, particularly dancing or flying. And even when that’s not what it’s really about — as it is in her piece “Hang Gliding” or the various dances represented in her suite “Three Romances” — that’s still, in a sense, what it’s really about.

[...]

She put on “Concierto de Aranjuez,” from “Sketches of Spain,” one of Evans’s collaborations with Miles Davis. It starts with castanets and harp; then soft orchestral lines move in for the theme, before Davis enters, a minute into the piece. “Check this out,” she said.

Davis enters with a soft flourish, and the orchestra goes into a kind of slow motion. “You know how Armani knows how to dress a woman up and make her look just incredible?” she asked. “Gil knew how to dress a soloist and make that soloist so beautiful, you know? So there’s all this fluttering — this movement, the tuba’s playing these melodies, there’s all these things going on — and when Miles enters, everything stops.” As if stirring to life again, more lines form after a minute, with curious crisscrossing momentum; it sounds improvised, but it was all was precisely composed.

Ms. Schneider once conducted the piece from a transcription; then she did it again after Evans’s original scores were found. She was amazed by the difference. “I saw everything in them, and that’s when I realized: It’s like a watch, where every little gear attaches to something else. The music and the soloist are an inseparable entity.”

[...]

“Sometimes I feel like, in the world of jazz, people think that more chromaticism all the time is going to make their music hipper,” she said disappointedly. “It’s like, no. Music is a time-oriented art. So it’s how you play a person’s attention through time.

“I mean, here and there you’ll capture an experience in jazz that just makes you go ....” She opened her eyes wide and gasped. “But to me it happens less and less, and I think that’s because musicians think they have to keep playing more and more.

Via JC.

The Road

I missed this last week -- Marc Swed reviews Rzewksi in Pomona:

Half an hour later, this small man, hair mussed, walked onto the stage of Bridges Hall, the jewel-box small theater at Pomona College three blocks away. No more than 40 people were in the audience.

[…]

Rzweski's appearance at Pomona, for which admission was free, came with little advance word and no publicity. That might seem an outrage, given that Rzewski (whose name is pronounced Schev-ski), a 68-year-old American expatriate who has long lived in Brussels, doesn't come to the West Coast often, although his music is often played by the EAR Unit. He was finishing up a tour of small colleges, many in the Midwest, where he was probably just as ignored as in Pomona. But somehow the circumstances of the appearance seemed apt for an outsider artist with strong political convictions.

Less a Beethoven, perhaps, than a latter-day leftist Liszt, Rzewski is also our anti-Liszt. He refuses to play the celebrity or music industry game. He operates as a hit-and-run artist, usually gone before you know what hit you.

Rzewski is devoted to social change, to the struggle of the people against oppressive government, and often he takes off from a popular political melody, as in "The People United." But although he may look like an anarchist of old, his music is a deep and meaningful meditation on freedom and structure.

He is an inspired improviser while, at the same time, a control freak. And his middle way, where both approaches are in dialogue, is a brilliant manipulation of forces that can pull apart not just modern music but society. Oh, and he also gets some of the most thrilling sonorities from the piano I have ever heard.

[…]

But why hasn't an enterprising soloist and orchestra tried out the extravagant new cadenza in a performance of Beethoven's popular Fourth Concerto? Why isn't the seven-disc Nonesuch set of Rzewski playing his music that came out four years ago more widely appreciated for being one of the landmark recordings of American music? Why wasn't he engaged to play at a major Los Angeles venue on this tour?

If not a non sequitur, Rzewski's anonymity Sunday was, at the very least, weird.

The production is progressive but the reason is retro. The chords are cold-blooded murder, I named it "neo-necro"

Starbucks hops on the zombie bandwagon.

I wouldn't call it schizophrenia, but I'll be at least two people today

Seriously, WTF???

But in a larger sense, Gnarls Barkley is really just one person, and that person is Burton.

[...]

What's atypical about Gnarls Barkley is that the star is Burton, even though he's barely visible onstage.

That's right -- the person who wrote all the lyrics and melodies, contributed all the lead vocals, came up with the record's unifying concept, fronts the band, and has been, you know, an actual star for over ten years is not in fact the real star of Gnarls Barkley, which is best described as an auteuristic Danger Mouse solo project.

I direct you once again to Mr. Jay Smooth.

Number 2 with a bullet

An Atrios reader notes that the second top-selling album on iTunes today is the "audiobook" of Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner -- ahead of (and admittedly, one-fifth the price of) new albums by The Raconteurs, Ashley Parker Angel, Gnarls Barkley, Snow Patrol, Hoobastank, and Paul Simon.

I can't wait to see how funnyman Richard Cohen's upcoming standup record fares.

UPDATE (Sunday 21 May): It's now number one.

Crouch on Hicks

A nice tribute, though I do wish Crouch would resist the temptation to insert his boilerplate rant about "the dehumanizing vulgarity of hip-hop" in every single obituary he writes.

Lapdogs at the trough

This is linked all over the liberal blogosphere, but in case you haven't seen it elsewhere, Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner is essential viewing, both for Colbert's sharp, very funny routine, and the utterly stone-faced reaction from the members of the press corps. What, exactly, did they expect when they invited him?

It's amazing how few journalists get what the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are all about. They seem to be under the impression that these shows are a "satirical" take on the news, something like SNL's Weekend Update. When it eventually dawns on them that Stewart and Colbert are actually throwing barbs at them -- and especially, their incestuous relationship with the DC elite -- they become extremely uncomfortable, as you can see in the video.

Transcript.

Great moments in headline writing

Anaconda survives fire that guts Santa Ana music store

Big Media Me

In this week's Time Out New York.

Also, NYT blurb here.

Hearsay Monday

Sondre Lerche in New York Magazine. Good to know the Junos aren't the only national music awards that suck:

Sondre Lerche (SAHN-druh LAIR-kay) is honest when asked about his Best New Artist Norwegian Grammy win. “I’m still bummed out I didn’t get Pop Album of the Year,” he admits. Who won? “You wouldn’t know him. He doesn’t have an international career.”

[via larghearted boy]

---

The Flaming Lips talk shop:

Not all acts affiliated with Warner Music Group labels have been as lucky as the Flaming Lips. Coyne watched Wilco's well-publicised fight with Reprise over 2001's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," which eventually was released on WMG's Nonesuch, and admits to worrying about being dropped.

After all, Wilco had a more consistent sales history, and the Flaming Lips had just released the four-disc "Zaireeka." That album was an experiment in which all four CDs were designed to be played at the same time. (Band manager Scott Booker says "Zaireeka" did not count towards the band's contract.)

"We have a firm understanding of what the company is trying to do and what we're trying to do and where we all meet," Coyne says. "When we made 'Zaireeka,' which is a very difficult record for a company to try and market, we didn't hand it to Warner Bros. and say, 'F*** you, we're making art.'"

[via Coolfer]

---

Radiohead in NME -- the band promises "terrifying" new album.

[via Stereogum]

Double feature, soft and harder

I didn't move fast enough to get tickets to the (long sold-out) New Pornographers+Belle and Sebastian gigs in NY tonight and tomorrow, but jds has a review of their Montreal hit from a few nights ago. He also brings us the very good news that their March 6 gig in D.C. will be webcast (and later, downloadable... [EDIT: maybe not?] [EDIT 2: Mais oui! Le MP3!]) thanks to NPR's excellent and surprisingly non-NPR-ish live concert series.

I love this quote from Pornographers architect A.C. Newman:

"Various unintentional influences have crept into our work, some of which were quickly removed: The Moody Blues, Tubeway Army, Wings, always Wings, never The Beatles, Eno of course, you can't play ebow (a bow for electric guitars) without sounding like Eno, Modern English, middle period post-Gabriel Genesis, The Stranglers, 10CC. We're still trying to find a way to insert some dub/white reggae in the mix, just as an intellectual exercise, to see if we can do it without being dropped from the label. I know it sounds awful but it will all work out."

jds also writes:

I assume they get a fair amount of radio play up there, given the whole 30% native artist rule for Canadian radio and federal grants for music videos, etc.

I'd have thought that too. What with the wave of unshitty Canadian bands breaking in the past few years, I was actually looking forward to listening to Vancouver rock radio when I was home for the holidays. I mean, they would have to be serving up a steady stream of New Pornographers / Neko Case / Destroyer / Broken Social Scene & co, right?

Turns out, not so much. Apparently, Vancouver's favorite hometown band is still, um... Nickelback.

Worst. Junkmail. Ever.

Amongst the dead-tree spam I received today was a flier from Sprint promoting their new "Power Vision Network," which allows you to watch TV on your phone.

Guess what image they chose for the flier's cover?

Yes, that's Fox News hack Shepard Smith. (N.B. this is the online version of the flier -- the Fox News badge is even more prominent in the print version.)

Do Sprint really want to brand themselves as the official cell phone of authoritarian cultists (to use  Glenn Greenwald's phrase)?

Village Voice Pazz & Jop

I know, I'm almost a week late on this, but the 2005 Pazz & Jop results are in. As always, the real fun is checking out the individual ballots:

Nate Chinen
Phil Freeman
Sasha Frere-Jones
Jim Macnie
Milo Miles
Bill Milkowski
Ben Ratliff
Alex Ross
Steve Smith
Greg Tate
K. Leander Williams

more...

Garden Ruin

Okay, I know I promised to stop reading Pitchfork, but I had a relapse. Surely I can remain untainted so long as I confine myself to their news section and don't delve into the actual reviews? Or mabye I can spin this as a public service -- "Darcy reads Pitchfork so you don't have to." Yeah, that's the ticket...

Anyway, the Hipster News Network brings word of the new Calexico record. Lots of interesting stuff there, but this bit from the final paragraph caught my eye:

"I really want to tour with Broken Social Scene," Burns said. "I love the fact that there's this kind of element of chaos where neither the band nor the audience knows exactly what's going to happen."

Due respect to Sam Beam, but that -- that is a double-bill I could get excited about.

[Also, this one -- surely Neko's planning a tour with Burns, Convertino & co?]

A Brief History of Cookie Monster Metal

At OpinionJournal, of all places.

But while the vocals in early death metal are low, raspy and aggressive, not unlike the vocals by, say, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, that extreme degree of Cookieness is missing.

To be a true Cookie Monster vocal, said Mr. Conner, who signed some of the subgenre's biggest bands, including Sepultura and Fear Factory, "it's got to be really, really guttural. It should sound like they're gargling glass."

Via jwz.

UPDATE: Via this jwz commenter: Cookie Mongoloid.

 

Grammy Action

I just got word that the Director's Cuts segment on this Sunday's Weekend Edition will feature a look at the "more obscure" (their words) nominees for this year's Grammy awards, including John Hollenbeck's A Blessing.

Keeners can tune in Sunday morning on your local NPR affliate. Slackers can catch the audio archive  here sometime after the segement has aired.

Specimen Days

Via Kyle Gann, I see the NYT finally does right by Meredith Monk:

Ms. Monk herself has taken voice lessons for more than 20 years with Jeannette LoVetri, who, Ms. Monk said, has given her "a strong technical basis." Ms. Monk is as interested as any singer in promoting vocal health; she wants to be able to go on singing for as long as possible. She isn't about to shred her voice. But she does want to push the envelope.

"Sometimes in the classical tradition there's a small parameter of what's possible," Ms. Monk said, adding that teachers can "transmit fear to people: 'If you do this, you'll ruin your voice.' Of course, you don't do an extended technique 19 times. You just do it once."

But Ms. Monk's aesthetic does run against conventional wisdom in that she is not interested in who can make the most beautiful sound. She is looking for other qualities. "The best singers aren't always the best performers," she said. For some of the singers at the workshop, even those with extensive backgrounds in contemporary music, this concept took a lot of getting used to.

Of course, my favorite interpreter of Ms. Monk's music (other than the composer herself) is Theo Bleckmann.

Slouching towards hackery

Wow, you can always count on Stanley Crouch to say something appropriate and insightful, can't you?

This past Saturday Richard Pryor left this life and bequeathed to our culture as much darkness as he did the light his extraordinary talent made possible.

When we look at the remarkable descent this culture has made into smut, contempt, vulgarity and the pornagraphic, those of us who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid marked "all's well," will have to address the fact that it was the combination of confusion and comic genius that made Pryor a much more negative influence than a positive one.

It's literally impossible for me to imagine the magnitude of self-deception required for an alleged jazz critic and historian to have written those words, but Crouch seems hell-bent on securing his reputation as the Michael Medved of jazz and letters.

Steve Gilliard has some choice words for the "hanging judge":

Crouch wants to pretend if black people were nice, white people would respect them. Richard Pryor knew better.

All Pryor did was tell the truth about black life. What he also did, and what unnerves Crouch, who hides behind a silly argument over language, is that he exploited the fear whites had of blacks and blacks had of whites. Bill Cosby isn't even in the same room as Pryor, Salieri to Mozart, and Cosby knows it. Pryor's career exploded as America confronted race, sex and drugs.

But the sad fact is that Crouch is obsessed with the way white America sees black, as if these social ills didn't exist, they wouldn't have any excuse for racism.

Then again, as far as I know, the late Mr. Pryor never make a habit of hitting people who piss him off -- tragically missing a valuable opportunity to become a positive influence, like Stanley Crouch.

Conduit for Sale!

I assume everyone saw this NYT article today:

The Cross-Pollinators: Jazz Meets Indie-Rock

By NATE CHINEN
Published: November 30, 2005

When the saxophonist James Carter takes the stage at the Iridium Jazz Club tonight for a five-night run, he will be flanked by several other musicians with ties to Jazz at Lincoln Center. But as on "Gold Sounds," a recent album, they will reach past jazz's standard repertory to the songs of Pavement, the influential 1990's indie-rock band.

James Carter and three other musicians have released an album of Pavement covers. Never mind that Mr. Carter and his colleagues had barely heard of Pavement before making the record.

[sigh]

I will have more to say about the article later.