You read a pamphlet from a mailbox that urges low cunning - Part the Second

Picking up where we left off...

There are a lot of worthy music blogs and musician blogs now. It's true that the jazz blogosphere still lags far behind the indie rock blogosphere, and we are even getting lapped by the classical music bloggers (how embarrassing is that?)  but things are beginning to pick up.

New Allied Operatives

Perhaps Kelly Fenton (Bottomless Cup) can whip us into shape. She is, after all, training for the Philly Marathon. She also likes superhero comics and writes really great music, much of it inspired by superhero comics. I met Kelly back at the recording sessions for Sky Blue. She started blogging shortly thereafter and I've really enjoyed her personable, engaging style. She's got posts about Americana and driving music and listening to Beethoven 9 for the first time, and even writes up the occasional jazz hit.

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I met drummer Vinson Valega (Consilience Productions) when we were on a panel together at IAJE last January. In addition to serving up a weekly MP3 (one of which happens to be a groovy organ trio version of the Wonder Woman TV theme), he often posts some good links.

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Trumpeter Kris Tiner (formerly of Stop The Play And Watch The Audidence) is getting all serious on us. Whatta revoltin' development. You can continue to read Kris over at his no-fun new blog, The Soul and the System -- but if what you are really looking for from your blogging jazz musicians are posts about Elvis, you will have to look elsewhere from now on.

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As always, I recommend getting an RSS reader to help you keep track of your favorite blogs. If you are on a Mac, I recommend Vienna. If you are on Windows, I recommend a Mac.

Comments

[Kris Tiner]

1.

No fun? That's it, Argue, next time I see you, it's clobberin' time...

[DJA]

2.

Well, Tiner, maybe you should write every post in your newly Frenchified "I have 'ad it with the frioviltés, I am a very serious artiste with a very serious blogue" in The Thing's voice... you know, like HULK'S DIARY THAT IS ON THE INTERNET, but with more discussions of musical meta-aesthetics.

[Kris Tiner]

3.

Frenchified? C'mon, Darcy - you're not such a bad writer yourself...

[DJA]

4.

I keed, I keed -- it is merely friendly ribbing, I assure you.

Though perhaps it is true that I am kidding just the teeniest, tiniest bit on the square. But that is only because I really don't think the problem with jazz musicians is that we fail to take ourselves sufficiently seriously. And also, perhaps because I never found myself reading Stop The Play... and thinking, "You know, I really wish Kris would try to be more profound."

It's your blog, obviously, and I totally understand and respect your desire to focus on stuff that is more rewarding and meaningful to you. There is surely nothing in this world more annoying than someone else telling you what they think you ought to be writing on your blog. But since we're having a friendly chat here, I will say, for what it's worth, that blogs that give a more complete picture of the author's interests -- both "serious" and "frivolous" -- are more fun (for me) to read. And seriously, I learned just as much about where you are coming from as a musician by reading your so-called "tangents" (Elvis, Shooby Taylor, the dashed-off roadblogging) as I did from your more explicitly philosophical posts.

I just liked the blog the way it was, is all. I like digressions, I like ephemera, I like knowing about people's nonmusical interests. That shit's important, too. But fuck it, you aren't writing for me, you're writing for you, so fercrissakes, kindly ignore my friendly jests and go forward.

I say this with 100% sincerity and 0% snark: write what makes you happy. I will read it all, gladly.

[D0nnaTr0y]

5.

I'm sorry to interrupt this "friendly chat;" just wanted to say thanks for the shout out!

And for the record, I agree- I love reading about the interests and tangents behind musicians. It can be a nice fresh breath in this uber-intense musical world. Though I do think the key to a good blog, or good music for that matter, is to write what feels right and important to you, the author. Anything else is flimsy and superficial.

[Kris Tiner]

6.

I'm just trying to NOT suck, man...

I may have overstated my aims a bit with that moving on post, or maybe where I'm at right now on TSATS is a bit more meta-serious than where I was at recently with STPAWTA, but nevertheless I do agree with you - there is certainly a time and place for ephemera (and if you ask me, Durkin is the master of it - and his blog is a hell of a lot of fun - but that's how his music works, too - it's fun, it's eclectic, and the tangents and digressions work just like his compositional process). The issue for me is not how to be more profound, but how to bring the blog more in line with themes that I'm exploring in music, and exploring those in a more focused way. That's exactly what I was doing with Shooby, f'rinstance, so you'll certainly see more of that kind of thing.

What I've been most frustrated with is the tossing off of a quick witticism or half-assed tourblog because I feel like I have to - that "hey, I just played a gig with this guy last night, it was fun, here's a picture of us" post gets sort of old after awhile. What else can we do?

This is actually something I'd like to see more discussion about - how far can blogging potentially be in (and bring others into) a dialogue with the actual music, be an integral part of it, rather than just a record or scrapbook of it...

[DJA]

7.

Hey Kris,

Well, okay then. As long as you haven't divorced yourself from The Human Horn. In the tradition of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, I hope that in The Sould and the System, you will continue to write seriously about the absurd, and absurdly about the serious.

[tig]

8.

Kris, I think TSATS is fantastic.
The serious, for me anyway, can also be playful (which is why I love reading Theory), and, to paraphrase Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, I would like to see more musicians being self-conscious.
…But, hey, I would say that wouldn’t I? After all, I even love the word ‘improvisative’.)

S, tig