Secret Society

Disco Inferno

Was disco the last musical genre that absolutely everyone had to get in on? It wasn't just the likes of Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones and Wings-era Paul McCartney and the Grateful Dead and Kiss… a surprising number of major jazz artists also made disco-inflected records. There's Ron Carter's 1976 Pastels, which opens with the glossy string-sweetened "Woolaphant." Also in '76, Dizzy Gillespie put out a record called Dizzy's Party — here's the title track. Sonny Rollins even put out a tune called, of all things, "Disco Monk" — it's from 1979's aptly titled Dont Ask. (Rembmer, Thelonious was still around at this point and consequently had no grave to spin in.) Almost all of the big bands had their disco moments, too — Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Thad & Mel — but nobody embraced disco with as much gusto as Maynard Ferguson. I still vividly remember the time when my teenage self first heard his disco version of the theme to Battlestar Galactica — I think my jaw still hurts from where it hit the floor.

The above tracks (and more) were all referenced in a recent Twitter discussion of jazz-disco crossovers — I'm grateful to Jacob Garchik, Dave Sumner, Mark Stryker, and everyone else who chimed in with their suggestions.

The discussion was instigated somewhat by the fact that Secret Society is going to be appearing this Saturday, August 25 at the Ecstatic Summer Festival, where we'll be joined onstage by the 17-piece neo-disco band, Escort. In addition to separate sets, we'll be bringing both bands together for a few tunes, including an original of mine called "Penumbra" (think late 70's Quincy Jones meets Guillermo Klein's rhythmic filter) and my arrangements of two influential disco-era tracks recorded by Donald Byrd, "Stepping Into Tomorrow" and "Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" — both of which will feature special guest soloist Tim Hagans.

This isn't a vein of music that we in Secret Society get to tap explicity very much, but that doesn't mean we don't love it or aren't deeply influenced by it. So let's take a minute to get a few things straight:

• DISCO IS AWESOME. Notwithstanding the ill-advised crossover attempts listed above, the decades-long knee-jerk "Disco Sucks" backlash is lazy and tired and needs to stop. Yes, there is bad disco. There is bad everything. But disco was the natural outgrowth of 70's funk and Philly soul, and there's no shortage of deeply grooving disco tracks that easily stand up today. For the skeptical, I recommend and endorse this Sound Opinions podcast on disco's early years. For the advanced class, y'all need to get Nile Rogers' amazing autobiography, which came out last year. GQ has an extended excerpt, and the story of Chic's first single, "Everybody Dance," is one of the best things you'll ever read.

• ESCORT ARE AWESOME. Disco was always more of a product of the recording studio than the live stage, partly due to the nature of late 70's nightclub culture but also due to the huge number of musicians required to make that music happen. Escort does it up right, wtih a full 17-piece band including multiple strings, horns, percussionists, guitarists, and backup singers. They groove hard, and their lead singer, Adeline Michele, is a force of nature: Exhibit A.

• TIM HAGANS IS AWESOME. I don't think this is a particularly controversial point, I just want to remind everyone that Tim Hagans is a bad motherfucker and we're incredibly excited to feature him with us on this show.

• DONALD BYRD'S 70's RECORDS ARE AWESOME. Seriously, these records are nothing like those embarassing jazz-disco cuts by other artists referenced above. Unlike most of his peers, Donald Byrd made the transition to electric groove-based jazz successfully, and a big part of that success was his longtime association with the Mizell Brothers.

Larry and Fonce Mizell met Donald Byrd while they were students at Howard, where Byrd was on faculty. Larry earned a degree in electrical engineering and worked on the Apollo Lunar Module. Fonce went out to LA where he was a founding member of The Corporation, the Motown songwriting and production crew responsible for most of the Jackson 5's hits, including "I Want You Back." Larry eventually went out west to join his brother and together they founded Sky High Productions. The Mizells contributed to Byrd's 1972 Ethiopian Nights, but their big breaktrhough was Black Byrd, which became the best-selling Blue Note record of all time.

Larry and Fonce Mizell continued to produce all of DB's 70's output for Blue Note, including Street Lady (1973), Stepping into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces (both 1975) and Caricatures (1976). When the Mizells and Byrd parted ways, things start to go a bit astray — 1978's Thank You… For F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life) has an unbeatable title and is still a fun listen ("Your Love Is My Ecstasy" almost made the cut for the August 25 show) but without the Mizells' guiding hand, the cheese factor ramps up precipitously.

The Mizell-era Donald Byrd records were reviled by jazz critics and by many of Byrd's peers, who branded him an apostate and a sellout for abandoning the acoustic hard bop style he helped define. But they are seriously beloved by DJs and soul and disco afficionados, and have been widely sampled by hiphop artists — if anything, Donald Byrd is probably held in higher esteem by them than he is by jazz fans. (When I first sat down to talk repetoire with Escort's co-founders, Dan Balis and Eugene Cho, they already knew all about these records.)

It's easy to hear why — the playing, writing, arranging, production, and recorded sound on these records is just brilliant, particularly on Stepping Into Tomorrow and Places and Spaces. The music is concise, soulful, and unpretentious, qualities a lot of other 1970's recordings by jazz artists could maybe have used a little more of. The rhythm section is anchored by the unstoppable team of bassist Chuck Rainey (one of the most-recorded bassits of all time, probably best-known for his playing on Aretha Franklin's Young, Gifted, and Black, plus all of Steely Dan's best records) and drummer Harvey Mason (Headhunters, Brecker Brothers).

The tunes are full of inventive details, like the incredibly hip descending minor 9th bassline in "Stepping Into Tomorrow," or how the chord progression in"Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" passes through the bII MA7 in the turnaround. And Donald Byrd himself is in fine form on all these records — and he doesn't just play, he also contributes lead vocals! So okay, no one's going mistake him for Donny Hathaway, but seriously, he acquits himself just fine.

The Red Bull Music Academy released this excellent video interview with the Mizells:

If you jump to about 1:19:10 you can check out a fascinating breakdown of the groove on "Think Twice," a song from Stepping Into Tomorrow. It starts with just Harvey's bass drum mic solo'd, and gradually brings in the hihat mic, snare mic, and overheads, and then finally bass, congas, rhythm guitars, and piano. More than a master class in rhythmic authority, this breakdown also lets you hear the players interact in real time. They're constantly embellishing around the basic rhythmic structure, trading fills, etc, all without stepping on each other or getting in the way of the groove. This is the best kind of rhythm section playing: it's selfless, unshowy, and relentlessly badass.

Want more? Here's a rare recording (never issued on CD, so far as I know*) of Donald Byrd & co. live at the Roxy, absolutely destroying on "(Fallin' Like) Dominoes":

Donald Byrd's 1970's records with the Mizells succeed because of the authentic and profound craft that went into their creation. They weren't carelessly tossed-off in a crass attempt to try to cash in on current trends, they were meticulously shaped by master muiscians at the very top of their game. They were made by artists who were engaged in a real conversation with contemporary muiscal culture, and even helped define it: "Change (Makes You Want To Hustle)" was a legitimate hit on the dancefloor. And the legacy and spirit of these groundbreaking recordings is alive and well — just look at the albums Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding released this year.

Some of you may still be thinking "Yes, but is it jazz?" To those people, I say, "Seriously? That is literally the least interesting qustion you could ask about this music."

-----

* UPDATE: In comments, Neil points out that the live version of "(Falling Like) Dominoes" is available on this compilation.

UPDATE 2: Relevant reading in the LA Times.

I could play the wild mutation

2012 DownBeat Critics' Poll — Rising Star: Big Band

I am fused just in case I blow out

So as a follow-up to our previous Jim McNeely listening session, Ethan Iverson and I got together again last week to listen to Jim's epic recording, East Coast Blow Out, in its entirety.

To begin, let me lay my cards on the table: this is one of the most mindblowingly great bigband albums ever recorded. Jim is very prolific, and has written a ton of outstanding music before and since -- some of which we talked about last time -- but East Coast Blow Out will always have a special place in my personal pantheon. As an album-length cohesive artistic statement for large jazz ensemble, I think it's up there with Ellington+Strayhorn’s Such Sweet Thunder, George Russell's New York New York, Bob Brookmeyer’s Make Me Smile, Kenny Wheeler’s Sweet Time Suite from Music for Large and Small Ensembles, and Maria Schneider’s Concert in the Garden. But unless you are an obsessive bigband junkie (and bless you if you are), you probably haven’t heard (or even heard of) East Coast Blow Out. Even John Scofield completists aren’t necessarily hip to this record, which features some of Sco’s most tantalizing work on disc.

It doesn’t help that the album is long out of print, has never been issued on iTunes or similar, and used copies of the CD tend to be rather pricey. But listen, people: Jim McNeely is badass and this is his masterpiece. You need to seek it out. (I’ve taken the liberty of uploading a few brief clips in this post so you can have a taste of what Ethan and I are talking about.)

Our conversation begins below the fold...

A Thousand Evenings Deep

Coming soon from Greenleaf Music -- I Tre Trombe present The World's Most Romantic Ballad Album of Trumpet Love Songs Ever -- a timeless collection of eternal melodies that linger in the heart forever, as performed by the latest sensational cylindrical brass supergroup, I Tre Trombe: Franco Ambrosetti, Dave Douglas, and Chris Botti:

 

Okay, I keed, I keed. See here for the real story of on-the-road chance meetings, reunions, et al.

CMJ Postscript (or, the Importance of Opening Bands)

So, uh, yeah, that was my week at CMJ -- a couple of very different Secret Society shows for very different audiences, with the off-days spent checking out as much live music as my schedule and my rapidly deteriorating meatbag would allow. All told, I had a grand old time and it would be fun to do this every year -- though I don't suppose anyone's about to hook me up with a lifetime pass.

Part of the excitement -- beyond the shallow but immensely satisfying pleasure of flashing my "Artist" badge and being waved through the door -- was that most of the time, I had no clue what I was going to hear. When I go out to a jazz show or a contemporary classical show, most of the time I have a pretty good idea what to expect -- even if I haven't heard those specific players or that specific composer before, I generally know their reputation and I'm rarely all that surprised by what I hear. This isn't necessarily a bad thing: if I'm going out to see someone, then 90% of the time I've at minimum listened to whatever tracks they offer online, or I've heard them play in other groups, and so on -- so if I'm making the effort to catch their show, it's because I have certain expectations, and I want the music to fulfill those expectations. Generally speaking, I am happy when it does and disappointed when it doesn't. But that also means there's not a whole lot of room for surprise.

Now, I hate to dredge up the interminably-discusssed "audience question," but I wonder if one of the fundamental problems with attracting young people to jazz and contemporary classical is that it's so damn hard to discover surprising new stuff in a live setting. I know this sounds counterintuitive -- isn't everything surprising to a neophyte listener? Isn't the problem too much surprise?

Well, no. I don't think my behavior is all that different from most other halfway curious concertgoers in their twenties and thirties, regardless of what kind of music they listen to. If a friend says, "Hey, let's go see Band X tonight, I think you'll like them" and I've never heard of Band X, then I'm going to Google them and listen to whatever tracks they have streaming on their home page or MySpace. So if Hypothetical Jazz Fan texts Hypothetical Non-Jazz Fan and says, "Hey, let's go see Brad Meldhau tonight, I think you'll like him," Non-Jazz Fan is probably going either (A) say no, or (B) go to Brad Meldau's website (Brad doesn't do MySpace) and check out the preview tracks available there. If they like what they hear, then they might agree to go to the show -- because now they have some expectations about what it is they'll be getting into. Like me, they'll probably be happy if Brad fulfills their expectations and disappointed if he doesn't. But if they heard the preview tracks, they won't be that surprised -- unless Brad decides this is the night he's going to break out the acoustic guitar and start actually singing "Wonderwall."

The difference with CMJ is that it wasn't remotely possible for me to check out all of the bands I was going to see on MySpace beforehand. But since I had an artist badge and could basically go to anything I wanted without having to pay a cover, it was easy to decide to go to shows because I liked the venue, or I liked the band name, or because it was someone I'd vaguely heard of but had no idea what they sounded like. All week I was constantly being surprised, which turned out to be really fun.

There's nothing really comparable to CMJ in the jazz or contemporary classical worlds -- IAJE was kind of like a stuffy, gated-community version of it (with performances in hotel ballrooms instead of clubs), and now even that is gone. The Bang on a Can Marathon has the right spirit, but even 27 hours on a single stage can't compare to five days and nights over dozens of venues, almost all of them devoted to unsigned or up-and-coming artists. 

But even outside the lack of substantial jazz/classical representation at the big festivals like CMJ, SXSW, PopMontreal, etc  (the NewAm/Cantaloupe CMJ showcase was great, but it was a tiny island in a big sea) there's the simple fact that jazz and classical shows virtually never include opening acts. This is how smaller artists make their reps in the indie world, by opening for (and often touring with) larger acts. It's good for musicians and labels, because it gives smaller bands access to a touring network, where they can grow their audience and hone their skills. It's also good for the audience, which gets to be surprised -- and sure, there are always the assholes that boo the openers before they even play a note, but most people want to like the opening acts, and are thrilled when they see a great set from a band they've never heard of. 

When you go see a rock show -- any rock show, doesn't matter whether it's a CMJ showcase, or a bloated stadium tour, or just your average night out -- you're going to hear bands you probably haven't heard of before you get to hear the headliner. Often those bands will surprise you. Why doesn't this happen in our own little corner? We've talked before about the benefits of cross-pollinating across genres, but even within the jazz world, why don't we see Gretchen Parlato on the road opening for Esperanza Spalding, or Marcus Strickland out with Dave Douglas, or Andrew D'Angelo out with Tim Berne? Instead, this only seems to happen within the headliner's band (e.g., when Marcus plays in Dave's groups). But what about, say, Aaron Parks's own quartet opening for Kurt Rosenwinkel's, or Donny McCaslin's band opening for Maria Schneider's -- not just as a one-off, but actually touring both groups together? You'd think the overlap in personnel would make those combinations irresistible.

These questions aren't hypotheticals -- I know the answer and so do you: "ze money, Lebowski." The record companies that might benefit from nurturing their younger artists by putting them out with their established talent are all cratering -- they barely even give advances anymore, the last thing any of them have money for is tour support. Name artists don't want to split a portion of their hard-won guarantees with some up-and-comer. Up-and-comers need to hold on to their day jobs or teaching gigs to survive, and can't take off on tour for months at a time. Even at home in New York , the fear is that everyone's draw is so small that any vaguely complimentary multiple-band bill won't pull in any additional listeners. Double- and triple-bill loving organizations like Search and Restore and the New Languages Festival are (bless 'em) swimming against the tide.

Everyone's behaving perfectly rationally, but collectively it's bad for the music.

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero
CMJ Day One
CMJ Day Two
CMJ Day Three
CMJ Day Four
CMJ Day Five

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part six (CMJ Day Five)

I spend closing night at CMJ in the cozy confines of Union Hall's basement. I can't really see shows there without thinking of time (over three years ago, now) when we somehow managed to squash Secret Society into that space. Good times. Anyway, Saturday was kind of an unofficial roots/folk-rock night there, which suited me fine.

 

La Strada were in mid-set when I arrived. As you can see, they've got kind of a postmodern Williamsburg troubadour vibe going on, with strings and accordion added to the usual guitar-bass-drums setup -- in fact their MySpace page talks about "the romance of old-world instrumentation through new world amplification." The songwriting, too, inclines more heavily towards the current indie scene, with only occasional Balkanisms or nods to pre-WWII Paris cabarets -- though I must admit, those explicitly retro, "lost-in-time" gestures were among the most interesting parts of the set.

 

On behalf on broke-ass bloggers like myself who must rely on lowly consumer point-and-shoots instead of DSLRs with serious glass, I'd like to thank Mia Riddle & Her Band for bringing their own string of lighting. (See how pretty Union Hall's tin ceiling looks?) Mia & co. have that windswept, folksy-but-with-mallet-percussion-and-a-Nord sound that's engendered comparisons to Neko Case and Cat Power. I don't know that her pipes are quite in that league, but she's a charismatic, engaging singer and her band plays really well together. Her blog is fun, too -- I love the double-sided "Nailed It - Hosed It" sign (surely this means her producer is Canadian).

 

The Loom was the band I came to see -- my friend Lis Rubard, who can often be found on Pulse projects, plays horn and trumpet in the group. They were surely one of the hardest-working bands at CMJ, playing six shows in four days, including the Brooklyn Vegan loft party on Friday night. This was the last of the six, and their final show before heading into the studio. Despite the presence of Lis's plaintive horn lines (this is a great sound, by the way -- more indie rock groups should use horn), The Loom was the most deliberately rustic-sounding of Saturday's bands. John Fanning's voice is gruff and plain in that pre-Dylan folk style, and makes for a dramatic contrast to Sydney Price's sweet, airy sound -- though like the Arcade Fire's Régine Chassagne, Sydney had her own personal floor tom, on which she launched a thunderous assault whenever she wasn't otherwise engaged.

 

Pete and J were not in the CMJ book, but I ran into Jill from Feministe who knows the dudes in this band. She convinced me to stay and I'm glad I did. The band delivers straight-up sixties Americana-drenched pop-rock: jangly guitars, good-time shuffle beats, sugar-sweet three-part vocal harmonies, and shamelessly direct hooks. Luckily, they do all this very well, with a hint of taking-the-piss playfulness that never crosses over into smug posturing.

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero
CMJ Day One
CMJ Day Two
CMJ Day Three
CMJ Day Four

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part five (CMJ Day Four)

My own personal CMJ companion and erstwhile guide, Amanda Marcotte, had to fly back to Austin Friday AM, so for the last two days I was left to my own devices. I elected to revisit Le Poisson Rouge and the Bell House to see what the showcases there had to offer. (You know what they say about the lure of returning to the scene of the crime.)

 

I got to LPR in time to catch about half of the set by Staten Island's own Cymbals Eat Guitars. It's hard not to love a band named after a sonic phenomenon. They are a very young outfit that's been getting a fair bit of love this year from the indie blogs (and Pitchfork, natch) -- to the point where they're about to open for Wilco and the Flaming Lips on some European hits. Frontman Joseph D’Agostino sings in heartfelt yelp that doesn't really do a whole lot for me, and it sounds like the kids could use maybe a touch more road-seasoning yet, but their blend of sunny hooks and grungy lo-fi textures is very artfully done.

 

Speaking of road-seasoning, sweet Christmas has it done wonders for singer-songwriter Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. I first saw him a couple of years ago, opening for TV On The Radio at a very wet McCarren Pool Party. He was (endearingly) awkward in front of all those people; he clearly had a long way to go as a performer. Since then, he's released a critically-praised, confessional self-titled debut record, and his more ambitiously-produced followup, Summer of Fear, is just out. (FWIW, Time Out New York listed him as a "Musician to Watch in 2009" -- along with, uh, yrstruly.) 

MBAR gets the Dylan comparison a lot, on account of his quirky, conversational phrasing and slightly nasally voice, but what really drives the point home is his band (which I am almost positive are not the same players I heard at McCarren), who all sound like they have committed every frame of The Last Waltz to memory. 

In particular, MBAR's drummer is by far the best drummer I heard at CMJ -- even doing a simple backwards groove with hihat on 1 & 3, bass drum on 2 & 4, and a basic eighth pattern on maracas, he grooved like mad. Meanwhile, Miles has transformed himself from a shy, gawkish, introverted singer-songwriter into a full-bore showman -- I mean, check this shit out:

 

(Note the socks.) This all might seem just a little bit much if MBAR wasn't so disarmingly sincere and unaffected -- and the songs still feel intimate and personal, too, just painted on a bigger, brighter canvas. Plus, he was clearly having a fucking great time up there -- and how could you not, with such a killing band?

 

That was it for the LPR lineup, so I decamped to the Bell House for the Polyvinyl showcase. When I got there, James Husband & co. were on stage, clearly not having a good time. The leader's appeal for silence from the talkative, mostly indifferent crowd (who were there to hear the headlining band, Japandroids) did not have the desired effect. According to Wikipedia, this hit was their second ever gig as a band (the first was earlier in the day) and boy did it show. It seemed like there were probably some good songs in there, but when the rhythm section isn't hooking up, nothing else really matters.

 

Headlights did not have that problem. I'd never heard of the Champaign, Illinois-based group before, but they were the revelation of CMJ for me. The four of them share an authentically deep pocket and they listen to each other really well (which is a much, much rarer quality than you'd think). The first thing that strikes you are the gorgeous, ethereal vocal harmonies -- Erin Fein and Tristan Wraight's voices are surreally well-matched. And the songs are full of clean, jangly guitar lines and Franco-pop synth, with the occasional foray into noise and distortion. But even when all that is done impeccably well, I get bored really quick if the groove isn't happening. What made Headlights work for me was the great rhythm playing all around, (including Erin's tambourine playing -- always nice to see someone defy the usual but not-entriely unfair stereotypes about what happens when a singer picks up the tambourine).

I had a nice chat with Tristan after the show -- he kindly allowed me to buy him a Maker's and listened patiently while I gushed about his set. He also told me a great anecdote: as the band was loading up the vehicle from another CMJ set earlier in the day, they were approached on the street by a stooped and grizzled gentleman who buttonholed Tristan. Here was their conversation (approximately, as far as I remember): 

"Guitar player, huh? What amp do you like?" 

"Uh, Fender Twin, usually." 

"That's a good amp."

"So you're obviously a player yourself. What's your name?"

"Jim Hall."

At this point, Headlights bassist Nick Sanborn interjects:

"Wait. You mean Sonny Rollins' The Bridge Jim Hall?"

"That's me."

"You have got to be shitting me!"

Apparently a very enjoyable 20-minute conversation ensued.

 

Japandroids are a two-piece guitar-and-drums outfit from my hometown, Vancouver. They are loud and heartfelt and enthusiastically sloppy and their choruses are half-shouted on-the-nose lyrics like "We used to dream, now we worry about dying."  It's crunchy, loose pop-punk, and the eighteen-year olds in the crowd went absolutely apeshit for it. I'm told at one point there was crowd-surfing, which I did not see because I left after three songs. My problem is this -- when you have a two-piece band, I think it's pretty important that at least one of you actually be able to sing and/or play an instrument at some minimally competent level. Two is good. One is sufficient (the White Stripes being the obvious Exhibit A here). Zero is problematic.

I definitely respect their balls-to-the-wall commitment, and it sincerely pains me to slag my hometown boys. I recognize I'm pretty much alone here, and I'm not proud of the curmudgeonly instincts this band brings out in me, but seriously. There's a fine line between a gritty, messy, primitive beat and an actual mess, but these guys are so far out on the wrong side of that, I cannot even begin to relate.

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero
CMJ Day One
CMJ Day Two
CMJ Day Three

MORE:

CMJ Day Five

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part four (CMJ Day Three)

 

On Thursday afternoon, I was out at Queens College, running through some of my music with the student bigband. This was fun but also unbelievably draining, and by the time I got home and dropped off the music folders, it was already getting kinda late -- but it was also Amanda's last night in town, so I quickly refueled and headed back out to meet her at Ace of Clubs for the French/Brazilia showcase. We both got there too late to catch any of the French groups, but the Brazilian rockers Sweet Fanny Adams and The River Raid were both endearing, if not precisely what you'd expect when you learn a band is from Brazil. If there was a hint of CSS or Os Mutantes in Sweet Fanny Adams's slack pop-punk or in The River Raid's cheeky over-the-top swagger, it seemed buried pretty deep. Obviously, not everyone is obliged to fly the flag for the music of their native land, even when it's as rich and as deep as Brazil's -- but on a gut level, even though I enjoyed both bands, it's impossible not to feel that something is somehow amiss when you hear Brazilian musicians play in a rhythmically inflexible style.

 

According to the official schedule, that should have been it for the night, but as we were walking out, we spotted a girl holding an accordion. We learned she belonged to Kagero, a self-described "Japanese Gypsy Rock" band. Their flier has a quote which compares them to "'Fiddler on the Roof' starring 'Panic at the Disco,'" which honestly did not inspire confidence... but then the acoustic guitarist jumped up on a table and began strumming, and the other members of the group -- on violin, bass, and strap-on marching-band style drums -- circulated through the audience with an all-acoustic prelude. It worked -- we stayed.

 

Unfortunately, once Kagero took the stage and began playing, technical gremlins began multiplying. The leader's acoustic guitar wasn't coming through in the PA, and the band and sound tech squabbled over what (and who) was to blame. Guitars and DIs were swapped out, to no avail. It was looking increasingly unlikely that the show could be salvaged, but finally the leader made the obvious call -- "Fuck it -- we'll play acoustic." He brought the vocal mic into the middle of the room, and the band came down from the stage to play a truly cathartic set of clap-and-stomp-along Gypsy party music in the middle of the crowd (which at this point was, like, a dozen people). But the energy of the moment touched off a crazy dance party amongst the Brazilians, who also began dismantling the on-stage drum kit, bringing the toms into the audience so they could join in the madness.

And that's when Kagero started busting out some traditional Brazilian songs...

 

 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero
CMJ Day One
CMJ Day Two

MORE:

CMJ Day Four
CMJ Day Five

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part three (CMJ Day Two)

Wednesday night was Secret Society's actual CMJ showcase night, a co-production between our label, New Amsterdam Records, and Cantaloupe Music, which is of course part of the Bang on a Can empire. The evening began with a lovely piece of solo piano music (Wed) by last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, David Lang, played with heartfelt grace by Ning Yu. Our New Amsterdam compatriots NOW Ensemble followed, with a mix of NOW staples like Judd Greenstein's Sing Along and some new works, including pretty sweet pieces by John Altieri (Not Yet) and Joshua Penman (The Whisper Gallery). The group was coming off a mini-tour, having played shows in DC and Baltimore on previous nights, and sounded very strong -- as tight as I've ever heard heard them, in fact.

The multi-talented Matthew Welch followed with Julia Wolfe's Lad, a piece for nine bagpipes -- or, in this version, eight prerecorded bagpipes and a lone live piper. It's a long slow burn full of densely microtonal glisses, and just at the point where we reach total sonic saturation, a keening folklike melody finally rises through the murk. The piece clearly divided the audience (partly due to sheer volume -- it was loud) but I absolutely loved it. It was kind of a punkrock move, even.

Interspersed between all of these performances were clips from (untitled), Jonathan Parker's new romantic comedy about a beautiful and fashionable Chelsea gallery owner (Marley Shelton) who falls for a nebbishy, self-obsessed new music composer (Adam Goldberg) -- David Lang contributed the music. The film opened in NY this weekend, to mixed reviews. I am torn: on the one hand, I am congenitally allergic to romantic comedies; on the other, David Lang has offered to "personally buy a cup of coffee for anyone who can identify every single real-life musician who appears on screen."

As for our set, it was recorded by WQXR's Q2 and should be streaming there before too long, so if you missed it, you'll be able to judge for yourself (watch this space). Again, a massive shout-out to sound engineers Justin Balch and LPR's own Matthew Duane. Also: these CMJ showcases always involve a frantic dash to get set up and get playing as quickly as possible after the previous group finishes, and the LPR crew did a frankly astonishing job of getting the stage reconfigured for myself and my 18 co-conspirators in what is surely record time.

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero
CMJ Day One

MORE:

CMJ Day Three
CMJ Day Four
CMJ Day Five

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part two (CMJ Day One)

 

On Tuesday, for the first night of CMJ proper, I picked up my badge and put myself at the mercy of Amanda Marcotte, who was up visiting from Austin. Amanda is a veteran of countless SXSWs and is exactly the kind of hardcore concert companion you want for this kind of event. She suggested we start with the English band Angry Vs The Bear at Bowery Electric, but when we got there we learned their show had been cancelled. (Still no idea what happened.) 

Undaunted, Amanda suggested we head down to Santos Party House, which had bands going in the downstairs bar as well as the main upstairs space. The downstairs bands turned out to be a lot mor entertaining. We heard Dinowalrus, Harlem (who are actually from Austin), Flexions, Lovvers, and Unnatural Helpers. 

Unnatural Helpers made the best impression on us. Their drummer contributes the lead vocals -- normally this is a sonic nightmare, but in the tiny downstairs space the open vocal mic actually gave the cymbals a presence they'd been missing for the early bands. (It always makes me crazy when the guitars are louder than the drums. This is so deeply wrong I can't even begin to tell you.) Anyway, these guys rocked hard and definitely won over the smallish but appreciative crowd.

PREVIOUSLY:

CMJ Day Zero

MORE:

CMJ Day Two
CMJ Day Three
CMJ Day Four
CMJ Day Five

Now isn't this an excellent adventure - part one (CMJ Day Zero)

 

(Photo: Lindsay Beyerstein)

My week at this year's CMJ Music Marathon unofficially began a day early, with our bigband three-way Monday night at the Bell House -- this one of my favorite venues in town and a hotbed of CMJ activity later in the week. It's a pretty sweet room, as you can see from the photos, with totally unobstructed sightlines (no columns!) and a beautiful arched wooden ceiling that does wonders for the sound. 

Speaking of which, I've very grateful to the Bell House's Jeff Stultz and Infernal Machines engineer Paul Cox for doing such an amazing job on the live sound -- and of course to the Bjorkestra and the Industrial Jazz Group for making it a memorable night of postmodern bigband music.

In case anyone was wondering... I was utterly unprepared for the ambush Stefan Zeniuk's Baritone Army sprang just seconds after our last tune had finished -- more bari sax players than I could count bum-rushed the stage, honking and wailing as they ran through the crowd. Josh, of course, jumped down to join them, heeding the call of his people. It made for a surreal and inspired epilogue.

Deepest appreciation to Search and Restore for helping us get the word out, and to everyone who came down to hear us play. We love you all.

MORE:

CMJ Day One
CMJ Day Two
CMJ Day Three
CMJ Day Four
CMJ Day Five

So everybody buy my shit or I'ma come and kill you

Fan-financed recordings (ahem) are nothing new, but they are definitely taking off, and stories about them seem to be everywhere these days.

I am forced to admit that drummer Josh Freese (Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle, Devo) offers better premiums:

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)

-Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
-T-shirt**
-Come out on tour with me for a few days.
-I write, record and market a 5 song EP about you and your life story.
-Take home any of my drumsets (only one but you can pick which one)
-*Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR we play "quarters" and then hop on the Ouija board for a while.
-If you have a band, I'll join it for a month....play shows, record a CD together, have a swim party, etc.... or none of the above. We could also just sit in yer basement and jam old Van Halen.
OR
If you don't have a band I'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks....10 am to 5 pm) and then we take a limo down to Tijuana and I'll show you how it's done (what that means I can't legally get into here, right this minute). If you don't live in LA but are in the USA I will come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks.
-Take a Flying Trapeze lesson together in the San Fernando Valley and then Robin from NIN and his wife make us raw lasagna.

(No takers on that one yet -- act now, there's still time! -- but one teenage fan did spring for the $20,000 mini-golf package.)

My fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, precludes me from offering anything of tangible value in exchange for tax-deductible online contributions -- let alone offers to hook up contributors with illegal substances. But listen, if you want to pop a handful of Demerol and go hang at the Vanguard, have your people talk to my people.

(Rembmer, children, in the immortal words of James Brown: "If you use drugs... you better leave it alone." )

Don't it always seem to go

Back before IAJE's untimely demise (the real story of which has yet to be told and probably never will), their annual conference was kind of like the jazz version of SXSW. Except way smaller, geekier, and more insular. The "deal makers and gatekeepers" (such as they are in our little corner of the music world) were there, of course, creating an atmosphere thick with schmoozing and self-promotion. (I know I certainly contributed my share of that when we played the last-ever IAJE last year.) But despite all this, there was often a lot of great music to be heard -- it's just too bad that it was always confined to hotel ballrooms and reserved for IAJE passholders exclusively. It meant that jazz's biggest annual party had no engagement with the host city, no reach beyond the conference center walls.

The contrast to SXSW, which completely takes over Austin for a week and change, could not be more extreme. There's so much genuine excitement there -- huge numbers of people actually getting caught up in the thrill of discovering new music.

SXSW also garners a truly insane amount of coverage, from new media and old. I've been enjoying the experience vicariously through my buddy Amanda Marcotte's posts, which give an Austinite's perspective on the madness:

Day One: The Day Of The Bear, Panda And Otherwise
Day Two: You Need A Girl In Your Band
Day Three: Devolution Is Real
Day Four: Spring Break For The Cool Kids

Through Amanda, I discovered The Octopus Project and I'm really loving their stuff right now. Check out this video:

For a more exhaustive take, you could do worse than the All Songs Considered podcasts, which I've been listening to over the weekend:

SXSW Preview (Carrie Brownstein's first pick, from The Entrance Band, is killing).
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

UPDATE: Of course, not everything in SXSW-land is sunshine and power chords:

Some of you may have heard about this "secret" show that Metallica played at Stubb's Friday night. Or the Kanye West show Saturday night at the Levis/Fader Fort. Or the Playboy-sponsored Jane's Addiction show the night before. And, I'm sure many of you wished you could have been at one or more of them.

Well, I have a question for you: What the hell is your problem?

For all those who've forgotten, SXSW is supposed to be for unsigned bands, the place where fans and industry types go to discover new talent. Having a platinum-selling band like Metallica play a show in support of their new version of Guitar Hero isn't just a distraction, it's downright offensive.

Pete's not wrong, but that is yet another reminder how inadequate the IAJE Conference was -- the idea that there could be a large industry-oriented annual festival that was even ostensibly devoted to the discovery of unknown jazz artists seems pretty far out. To an optimist, the gap left by IAJE's implosion might look like an opportunity to build something better in its place. But I don't get the sense that there are a lot of optimists out there right now.

Gotta blame it on something

This cannot be real. And yet, the link goes to Politico, not The Onion. Can there be a single person in America who is not sick to death of hearing about "Joe the Plumber"? (Even as "Joe"  himself has apparently abandoned the man who made him America's most irritating celebrity.)

Seriously, who would possibly want to buy Joe the Plumber Sings Just For You?

(via Kris Tiner) 

Also:

I'm agile plus I'm worth your while

Jay speak. You listen.

Hey kids, boogie too, did ya?

And so this begat this webcomic from Hijinks Ensue.

The thing is, though -- you know how Stephen Colbert actually comes across as being much less of a cartoon figure than Papa Bear? On this, Idolator and I are agreed -- Universal CEO Doug Morris's original comments are impossible to top.

[Via Molly.]

-----

A gentle reminder that our fall fundraiser is in full swing. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation.

Without forty ounces of social skills

This deadpan faux interview in Wired is probably the best parody of a cigar-chomping old-school record executive I've ever seen. It hits all the essential notes -- curmudgeonliness, arrogance, transparently self-serving self-righteousness, withering contempt for the consumer, a habitual sense of entitlement built from years of easy profits, absolute short-term ruthlessness coupled with an almost quaintly naive technophobia, and utter like-I-give-a-fuck indifference to how he's coming across. This is a character who thinks the drinks at Starbucks cost a mere $2, and who asks, rhetorically, how much you'd be willing to pay for Coca-Cola if it came out of the tap in your kitchen, ignoring that Coca-Cola sells $800 million worth of tap water every year. Hell, at one point he even tries to pass off Morgan Freeman's Shmoo monologue from Lucky Number Slevin as his own bit -- repurposed as a parable of the fundamental wrongness of intellectual property theft. That is some seriously brilliant satirical writing.

A few more choice excerpts:

There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."

[...]

When I suggest to Morris that the labels gave Jobs license to create what was in effect an Apple Walkman that played only Apple cassettes, it's Caraeff who answers. "Looking back, the best thing we could have done would have been to mandate one format," he says. So why didn't that happen? Morris is happy to field this one. "It never crossed anyone's mind!" he exclaims. "We were just grateful that someone was selling online. The problem is, he became a gatekeeper. We make a lot of money from him, and suddenly you're wearing golden handcuffs. We would hate to give up that income."

[...]

Back in his dining room, Morris is incredulous. He's once again talking about how his job should simply be finding and breaking new acts.

This stereotype of the dinosaur-like record exec who hasn't noticed that the asteroid has already struck the earth was probably never exactly true in the first place, but in addition to being a fun read, this piece does make for a convenient shorthand sketch of everything the industry is now desperately trying to distance themselves from, by hiring people like Rick Rubin and...

... whoa, whoa, hold up. You're telling me that is a real interview with Doug Morris, who is, in fact, the CEO of Universal Music Group?

Currently?

[PS Howie Klein's response is also a must-read.]

-----

A gentle reminder that our fall fundraiser is in full swing. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation.

Capital punishment, she's last year's model

Because lord knows if there's one thing we need more of Downtown it's this.

(Also, isn't it cute when the NY Post pretends to be populist?)

Somebody turned around and shouted

Let me preface this by saying I am a fan of Sasha Frere-Jones -- he's an incredibly gifted, knowledgeable, and compelling writer. Also, I respect his willingness to get in there and mix it up on issues of racial identity and music. This shit is worth talking about, and avoiding the tough questions don't make them any less pertinent.

But what I don't get -- and I am certain I am not alone here -- is how, exactly, you write a 3,500-word New Yorker piece, plus a follow-up blog post and podcast interview, on the general topic of "Why does indie rock sound so goddamned white?" without once mentioning, even in passing, TV on the Radio.

Are they, like Eminem, an anomalous outlier -- the exception that proves the rule? Well okay, but... isn't it worth at least tangentially addressing the fact that the most critically acclaimed band in indie rock is 4/5ths black? I'm not trying to claim that this one group undermines SF-J's entire argument or anything lame like that, but... well, don't you think people might think this was kind of a curious omission?

Sasha's piece is well worth reading, and he makes a lot of solid points (especially w/r/t the scene's inexplicable love of insular mopiness and flat-out inept singing), but I honestly cannot fathom his reasons for dancing around this particular elephant.

UPDATE: Tim at Short Schrift has an excellent riposte. And there's a back-and-forth at the Voice.

International noise conspiracy

Via this expurgated excerpt from Alex Ross's new book, I have just learned of the greatest musical conspiracy theory of all time.

Cranky philosopher/critic Theodor Adorno, student of Schoenberg and champion of icy Germanic modernism, a man who had nothing but contempt for jazz and all other forms of popular music, is alleged to have have secretly written the Beatles's entire body of work... (wait, there's more... ) as part of a mass brainwashing experiment conducted by the Committee of 300 and the Illuminati.

Oh ho -- you think I'm kidding?

The phenomenon of the Beatles was not a spontaneous rebellion by youth against the old social system. Instead it was a carefully crafted plot to introduce by a conspiratorial body which could not be identified, a highly destructive and divisive element into a large population group targeted for change against its will. New words and new phrases--prepared by Tavistock(1)-- were introduced to America along with the Beatles. Words such as "rock" in relation to music sounds, "teenager," "cool," "discovered" and "pop music" were a lexicon of disguised code words signifying the acceptance of drugs and arrived with and accompanied the Beatles wherever they went, to be "discovered" by "teenagers." Incidentally, the word "teenagers" was never used until just before the Beatles arrived on the scene, courtesy of the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations.

As in the case of gang wars, nothing could or would have been accomplished without the cooperation of the media, especially the electronic media and, in particular, the scurrilous Ed Sullivan who had been coached by the conspirators as to the role he was to play. Nobody would have paid much attention to the motley crew from Liverpool and the 12-atonal system of "music" that was to follow had it not been for an overabundance of press exposure. The 12-atonal system consisted of heavy, repetitive sounds, taken from the music of the cult of Dionysus and the Baal priesthood by Adorno and given a "modern" flavor by this special friend of the Queen of England and hence the Committee of 300.

Tavistock and its Stanford Research Center created trigger words which then came into general usage around "rock music" and its fans. Trigger words created a distinct new break-away largely young population group which was persuaded by social engineering and conditioning to believe that the Beatles really were their favorite group. All trigger words devised in the context of "rock music" were designed for mass control of the new targeted group, the youth of America.

The Beatles did a perfect job, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that Tavistock and Stanford did a perfect job, the Beatles merely reacting like trained robots "with a little help from their friends"--code words for using drugs and making it "cool." The Beatles became a highly visible "new type"-- more Tavistock jargon--and as such it was not long before the group made new styles (fads in clothing, hairstyles and language usage) which upset the older generation, as was intended. This was part of the "fragmentation-maladaptation" process worked out by Willis Harmon and his team of social scientists and genetic engineering tinkerers and put into action.

[...]

Following the Beatles, who incidentally were put together by the Tavistock Institute, came other "Made in England" rock groups, who, like the Beatles, had Theo Adorno write their cult lyrics and compose all the "music." I hate to use these beautiful words in the context of "Beatlemania"; it reminds me of how wrongly the word "lover" is used when referring to the filthy interaction between two homosexuals writhing in pigswill. To call "rock" music, is an insult, likewise the language used in "rock lyrics."

You gotta love the gratuitous homophobia at the end, coming out of nowhere. It's the little touches like these that make for a truly museum-quality conspiracy.

[Source.]

PS You should probably buy Alex's book, you know.

To trade the fiddle for the drum

Apparently, there can be only one hiphop violinist.

At least, that's according to Miri Ben-Ari, who arranged and played the string parts on Kanye West's debut, and co-wrote "Jesus Walks" with Kanye and Rhymefest. She has also (A) trademarked the phrase "The Hip-Hop Violinist," (B) sicced her legal team on other violinists who play hiphop, and according to one of those violinists, Paul Dateh, (C) has gotten YouTube to remove something on the order of twenty videos (including his), because they included the trademark-infringing tag "hip hop violin."

Did I mention that many of the scrubbed videos were substantially more popular on YouTube than Ms. Ben-Ari's?

Via Jay Smooth, The Hip-Hop Videoblogger™.

Remember, kids, Secret Society is your only approved source for authentic Steampunk Big Band™ -- accept no substitutes.

UPDATE: Paul's video is up again, albeit with one slight alteration. If they yank it again, there's always "hip hop violino," and "hip hop Geige."

Shut up and dance

Well, it seems I inadvertently opened a can of worms with this post...

All of these accounts of Jarrett going SACPOP on some dude with a camera or a cough remind me of one of my favorite David Foster Wallace short stories, "Girl With Curious Hair," in which a sociopathic Young Republican and his punk friends behave very badly indeed during a Keith Jarrett concert in Irvine, CA in the early 1980's.

I've posted one excerpt before -- here's more:

Last night we arrived at our row of six seats in the Irvine Concert Hall and sat in our seats. My new friend Grope sat down far away from me next to Big, and Mr. Wonderful sat beside Big also. I sat between Cheese and Gimlet who sat at the end of our row of six seats. Far down on stage in the Irvine Concert Hall was a piano with a bench. The woman seated behind Gimlet tapped me on the padded shoulder of my new sportcoat and complained that Gimlet's hair was creating problems for her vision of the piano and bench on the stage. Gimlet told the woman to Fuck You, but good old Cheese was concerned at the situation and politely traded to Gimlet's outside seat so as to solve the vision problems of the woman, who was coughing at what Gimlet said. Cheese was a shrimp and he had very little hair to ascend from his head into the air so he was a good fellow to sit behind. Gimlet only has hair at the center of her round head, and it is very skillfully sculpted into the shape of a giant and erect male penis, otherwise she is bald like Cheese. The penis of her hair is very large and tumescent, however, and can introduce problems in low spaces or for those people behind her who wish to see what she can see.

[…]

Cheese leaned toward my body and made the assertion that the Negro Keith Jarrett was such a skillful and pleasurable musician because his jazz music performance was in reality improvisational, that Keith Jarrett was in reality composing his performance as he performed it. Gimlet began to cry because of this and because of the small girl's curious hair and I lent her one of my silk handkerchiefs which complements the color and design of several of my wardrobe ensembles.

[…]

At the Irvine Concert Hall last night Grope nursed his mid section and began to opine that Keith Jarrett was firing forms of electricity at him from the outer regions of his Negro afro, and he became a nervous Nellie. Gimlet no longer cried but did become even more fascinated with the blond and curled hair of the young child sitting with an older man in a very attractive sportcoat two rows of concert seats below our six seats. Gimlet stated that the girl's curious hair represented radioactive chemical waste product anti-immolation mojo and that if Gimlet could cut it off and place it in her vagina beneath the porch of her stepfather's house in Deming, New Mexico, she could be burned and burned and never feel pain or discomfort. She was crying and beating at fictitious flames, and subsequently tried to rise and run pell mell over concert seats down to the hair of the girl, but Mr. Wonderful held Gimlet back and offered her his assurances that he would attempt to get her some of the curious hair at an intermission, and placed something in Gimlet's mouth courtesy of Big.

Next to me at the end of our row of concert seats Cheese became very interested in me as a person and began to talk as we listened to Keith Jarrett improvise his performance right on the spot on his bench. Cheese stated that while it was evident that I was a swell individual he wondered how I had come to become friends with my punkrocker friends in Los Angeles, Big and Gimlet and Mr. Wonderful, since I did not look like them or have a distinctive punkrocker hairstyle, nor was I poor or disaffected or nihilistic. Cheese and I began to have a deep conversation that was very fascinating and compelling. We talked in depth while Mr. Wonderful restrained Gimlet and Big restrained the nervous Grope, quietly so as to be able to hear the very good melodies our outstanding Negro performer was putting forth at all times.

Forever in debt to your priceless advice

Marc Ribot's piece in All About Jazz, The Care and Feeding of a Musical Margin, is getting some well-deserved attention, especially for the way it exposes the limits of Doing It Yourself when it comes to working in the creative new music scene:

For complex reasons, market funding is no longer feasible. This idea feels shocking and strange, but historically speaking, it's our expectation that new music ever could be successfully funded through the market that's strange.

[...]

In truth, our belief that the market could fund new music was always as illusory; European touring, heavily state subsidized, has been the real economic motor of experimental jazz/new music for decades, the light at the end of the tunnel of months of scarce and/or poorly paid NYC gigs. The fact that access to Europe was easier and cheaper for NYC musicians than for their LA counterparts is an important factor in the historical productivity of the NYC new music scene as compared with the West Coast.

[...]

Another optimistic idea is that the music will actually benefit from a defunding in which its true believers, now purified of base financial motives, will be driven back to the catacombs and things will return to the much romanticized period of the mid '70s, when concerts took place in tiny spaces or even apartments. But the catacombs this time will not have open passageways to funding institutions like the '70s underground did or much possibility of major labels seeking out critically acclaimed avant gardists to boost label prestige.

[...]

Musician response so far has been doing benefits to subsidize failing venues or to start venues. Although ostensibly linked to a leftist/anarchist anti-corporate politics, “Do It Yourself” has also served quite well to foreclose discussion on state subsidy and fits quite comfortably with the free market/neo- liberalism which will, sometime soon, install some very corporate chain stores and condos where favorite venues once stood.

”Do It Yourself” is a lovely idea, one which leaves its believers with a comforting sense of control over their destiny. the only problem is that when the “It” is running a business capable of treating musicians fairly and the “Yourself” is the musicians themselves, it doesn't work, for the same reason that kibbutzes haven't globally replaced private farming, food co-ops haven't replaced supermarkets, housing co-ops haven't (as their original proponents theorized) provided massive havens of low income housing and workers co-ops haven't replaced private industry: Businesses need capital. People who work gigs for a living, by definition, don't have it.

Without capital, venues either eventually fall back on the old strategies of musician exploitation, abandon new music priorities, fail or all three. If those venues are 'artist run', the only difference is that we get to exploit ourselves. Hooray for progress.

Where real capital is provided, a musician friendly business, co-op/non-profit or not, can succeed. I've spent close to two months a year on tour in Europe since 1984, playing over 1,000 gigs. For years, I've asked presenters how their funding was structured. I was often surprised at the answers: even some of what I thought were private clubs were in fact administered by jazz or new music societies or co-operatives. The European gigs were almost always subsidized: usually by the city or state government completely donating the performance space itself. Were Tonic subsidized in this manner, the yearly subsidy would be equal to the amount raised through benefits: but they would have received it EVERY year of their existence.

This is real subsidy, coming from those with access to real capital: not peanuts from a bunch of musicians half of whom lack health coverage, pension or savings.

Read the whole thing.

The only reason I was able to travel to Cologne last October and collaborate with the CCJO is because the venue where we performed, Stadgarten, is funded in part by the city of Cologne. This funding gives them the ability -- and the responsibility -- to present music that the market won't.

Despite some encouraging signs that at least some in the private sector understand the basic issue here -- emerging artists are vital to the cultural heath of New York, and emerging artists need affordable spaces to live and to create art -- it would be foolish to expect a market solution to this market problem. New York badly needs places like Stadgarten -- city-supported venues that will ensure the survival of creative music in this town. Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Just because creative new music has historically thrived in this city doesn't mean it always will, and the trajectory we're on -- clubs closing left and right, rents and cost of living through the roof, no outside support -- leads straight off a cliff.

The capital in the music industry has traditionally been supplied by record companies, big and small, who were willing to make long-term investments in artist development and promotion (by fronting the money for tours, recordings, and/or promotion), with the confidence that at least some of those artists would eventually hit it big, at which point the record companies would reap the benefits of the enormously exploitative contracts artists were required to sign if they wanted to have a shot. It was capital-with-strings-attached -- and those strings were usually wrapped around the artist's neck -- but at least it was capital.

Now even that money is gone. What is left of the "jazz recording industry" exists primarily to supply Starbucks with product for in-house play and impulse buys -- check out this exchange from a recent interview with Ethan Iverson:

WW: The two main reasons I’ve seen you mention about why you left Columbia were the spyware issue and the label not really knowing what to do with the group at that point. Is it possible to break down by percentage how much each had to do with your decision?

EI: We asked to be off the label, but they would have dropped us anyway. The only instrumental artist they have right now is Chris Botti. So that’s just the way they’re going.

I'm also reminded of this NewMusicBox piece by Matthew Guerrieri (of Soho the Dog):

Laissez-faire types might insist that if labor costs are too high, it just means that performers are being paid too much, and either salaries should be lowered or ticket prices should be raised. Lowering pay, though, is pretty much a death knell for professional performance: musicians, actors, and dancers are skilled workers, and in order to make sure enough people stay in those careers, wages have to at least somewhat keep up with what skilled workers earn in other industries. (The fact that they hardly do is testament to the dedication of artists.) More importantly, performers have to be able to earn a living wage, and the cost of living is not going to be determined by how much artists take home, as they're in a significant minority; rather, the spending power of workers in more common industries will set the pace.

As for ticket prices, there's another complaint about Baumol and Bowen figuring into that. The most common riposte to the cost-disease has been to point to the rise of recordings and mass media—those technological advances, it's argued, have greatly increased productivity: one performance can now reach thousands more people than it did in the past, at no extra labor cost. But it's a mistake to so completely conflate the recording and performing arts industries; record companies don't perform, they buy a performance, which they then reproduce and sell for a profit. There's a one-time payment to the performers, and the possibility of royalties, but the ability to reproduce performances ad infinitum correspondingly increases market competition. (You're up against not just your local contemporaries, but everyone in world history who's ever gone into a studio.)

What's more, since the mass reproduction of recordings makes them relatively cheap (even free, in the case of advertising-supported media), their very availability drives down the price that audiences will pay for live concerts. And, oddly enough, as technological advances make recording cheaper, the cost-disease becomes more of a factor, not less. It's the difference between capital costs and labor costs: when the initial investment in recording equipment and space was prohibitively expensive, the difference between paying a four-piece rock group and an 80-piece orchestra was comparatively unimportant, but as the up-front payout goes down, the players' paychecks make up a higher percentage of the financial risk, and the cost-disease once again rears its ugly head. (This, incidentally, is why giving recordings away outright as a means of promoting live performance doesn't solve the conundrum; while it might be viable in a given situation, in the long run, it just puts your financial health back into the fickle hands of Baumol and Bowen.)

Strong words in the staffroom, the accusations fly

Remember that bit in that piece about the perils of rockstar blogging?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The singer in the Police jumps like a "petulant pansy," the drummer is making a "complete hash," and who knows what the guitarist is doing? Notes from a bitter critic? Actually, it's a disarmingly frank concert review from the aforementioned drummer of the newly reunited rock trio. A philosophical Stewart Copeland unleashed his vitriol in a posting on his Web site on Thursday, a day after the band played its second show in Vancouver, the Canadian city where it began its first world tour in more than 20 years on Monday. "This is unbelievably lame," Copeland wrote of Wednesday's show at the GM Place arena. "We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea."

AP story here, entire rant in all its glory (complete with curiously sympathetic fan reaction) here. UPDATE: Oh what the hell, might as well reproduce it in full here:

“Whenever you’re ready Mr. Copeland” says Charlie, the production manager, as two crew members hold aside the giant gong, creating just enough space for me to slither onto my percussion stage, which is still down in its pit. I leap on board but my foot catches something and I sprawl into the arena in a jumble as the little stage starts to rise into view. Never mind. The audience is screaming with anticipation as I collect myself in the dark and start to warm, up the gong with a few gentle taps. But I’m overdoing it. It’s resonating and reaching it’s crescendo before the stage has fully reached its position. Sort of like a premature ejaculation. There’s nothing for it so I take a big swing for the big hit. Problem is, I’m just fractionally too far away and the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib. Never mind. I stride manfully to my drums. Andy has started the opening guitar riff to MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE and the crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting and he’s not much help, his cue is me – and I’m lost. Never mind. “Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho. Well we are professionals so we soon get sorted, but the groove is eluding us. We crash through MESSAGE and then go strait into SYNCHRONICITY. But there is just something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never Mind. Next song is going to be great… But it isn’t. We get to the end of the first verse and I snap into the chorus groove – and Sting doesn’t. He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off kilter that Sting counts us in to begin the song again. This is ubeLIEVably lame. We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea. And so it goes, for song after song. All I can think about is how Dietmar is going to string us up. In rehearsal this afternoon we changed the keys of EVERY LITTLE THING and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE so needless to say Andy and Sting are now on-stage in front of twenty thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both tunes. Lost, lost, lost. I also changed my part for DON’T STAND and it’s actually working quite well but there is a dissonant noise coming from my two colleagues. In WALKING/FOOTSTEPS, I worked out a cool rhythm change for the rock-a-billy guitar solo, but now I make a complete hash of it – by playing it in the wrong part of the song. It’s not sounding so cool. It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we’re The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule. It’s only the second show (not counting the fan gig – 4,000 people doesn’t count as a gig in the Police scale of things). When we meet up back-stage for the first time after the set and before the encores, we fall into each other’s arms laughing hysterically. Above our heads, the crowd is making so much noise that we can’t talk. We just shake our heads ruefully and head back up the stairs to the stage. Funny thing is, we are enjoying ourselves anyway. Screw it, it’s only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it’s time to get out of Vancouver…

Ain't it bleak when you got so much nothin'

The headline rather understates the case:

Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services. Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. “Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,” Mr. Sinnreich said, “and then everything goes kaput.”

We all knew this was coming, that the CD was rapidly going the way of vinyl. And it's true that the major labels have done just about everything in their power to fuck up the transition to a viable 21st-century model of music-selling -- I got your Exhibit A right here -- but when the majors begin to phase out the CD, we have a problem.

And he's the one who likes all our pretty songs

Part One of Destination: Out's "We Love The Nineties" poll is out. As a bit of a followup to last year's infamous 1973-1990 extravaganza, Proprietors Chilly Jay Chill and Prof. Drew LeDrew have asked a number of critics, bloggers and musicians (including Gary Giddins, centrifuge, Matt Durutti, and yrs trly) to submit their list of Top 10 jazz albums for 1990-2000. The consensus favorite so far is Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio outing Constellations, which was not on my list but could easily have been. Instead, I went with Stargazer -- his Wayne Shorter tribute, and the first Dave Douglas record I ever bought -- and Convergence, the last and strongest record with his "string band" -- Mark Feldman on violin, Erik Friedlander on cello, Drew Gress on bass, and Michael Sarin on drums.

Of course, it's no surprise that Douglas is represented on everyone's list since he kept coming out with, like, a record a week during the nineties, each one with a different band, on a different label, with a different concept animating the music. And, with few exceptions, they were ridiculously killing -- that run of 15 Douglas-led sessions (counting New and Used) from 1994's Parallel Worlds through  1999's Songs For Wandering Souls looks even more impressive in retrospect.

And it makes me wonder... has the decline and fall of the label system made that kind of sustained creative output impossible? It costs a lot of money to make a record, especially a studio record with the kind of sound quality and production values that those Joe Ferla-engineered Douglas joints embodied. Now that there's no such thing as a recording budget anymore, artists are left to foot the entire bill themselves, and if there was an emerging jazz musician today going through a Douglas-like explosion of creativity and wanting to document it and release it, they would quickly find themselves at the mercy of MBNA's debt collectors. (That is, if they had not already gone broke just trying to keep their head above water in the New New York.)

But while studio recording costs have not fallen, and the burden of paying them has shifted almost entirely to the artist, and the continuing collapse of the CD sales market makes it incredibly difficult for anyone to ever break even on their record, the flip side is that if you go the digital route, the distribution costs have dropped to almost zero. It's become much more difficult to actually make a record, but much, much easier to release it, and release it quickly -- almost as soon as it's recorded.

Speaking of which, the audio from Saturday's Bowery Poetry Club hit will be up real soon. (Pat Donaher has a writeup.) As always, I'm incredibly happy just to have you listen. I still marvel that an unsigned, underground big band without a studio recording can have a frickin' international following (of sorts). But should you ever feel the urge to offer more... tangible support, I would like to once again humbly direct you to the

button. Your continued support is what keeps us going, in a starkly literal sense.

Ten years ago, no one would have known about Secret Society except the people who actually came to our gigs. Now, it's all there for anyone to download, and has allowed me to reach people I'd never imagined would hear my music. Whenever this path starts to feel like a long, hard slog that can only end in heartbreak, I try to remember that.

Thanks also to all for your patience during my recent break from blogdonia. Regular blogging will resume starting now-ish. It's good to be back.

I'm not angry, I'm not angry anymore

Last weekend, John Zorn and Cecil Taylor made their debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center, a concert self-consciously promoted as a daring double-bill for the notoriously conservative cultural institution. If I'd had the cash, this is the rare JALC hit I'd actually have liked to have caught, especially since it marks one of Masada's last performances as a band, and I still haven't heard Cecil's new group with Henry Grimes and Pheeroan AkLaff, which everyone says is his strongest trio in decades.

But since I couldn't make it, I read Ben Ratliff's writeup with interest. I think he did a good job of concisely encapsulating the essence of the two groups -- Masada as "logical, comic, athletic" and an "airtight system"; Cecil's music is "all in the movement," the "millions of choices that make a flowing gesture" -- sounds about right to me. It was also no surprise that the Jazz at Lincoln Center audience warmed immediately to Masada's hard-grooving, high-energy post-Ornette klez-jazz (everybody loves the beat), but remained somewhat mystified by Cecil's more abstracted pulse -- to the uninitiated, his music often sounds discontinuous and disconnected, and it can take some time immersed in his sound-world for the shape of things to reveal themselves.

[It's also, sadly, no surprise to learn that the house management at JALC's Rose Theater apparently tried to cut the concert short by bringing up the house lights before Cecil's set was done, presumably to try to save on overtime fees.]

But shortly after the article went live on the Times' site, I got an email from Secret Society co-conspirator James Hirschfeld, reacting angrily to the third paragraph in Ratliff's review, which reads:

But above all, the experimental composers and bandleaders whose work refers to, argues against and engages with different parts of jazz — the putative jazz avant-garde — just don’t need Jazz at Lincoln Center anymore. Their interests and audiences don’t extend there. They’ve built their own festivals, their own record companies. (Mr. Zorn has created his own Lower East Side club, the Stone, with music six nights a week.) The MacArthur Foundation has honored almost all the major figures of the jazz avant-garde with fellowships. Academic presses are pumping out books about their achievements. What’s the big deal, for them, about a gig at the Rose Theater?

On a casual reading, this didn't seem particularly objectionable to me -- I took it as a somewhat veiled way of saying that the financially struggling Jazz at Lincoln Center needs Zorn and Taylor more than they need JALC's seal of approval. Who needs the blessing of The House That Wynton Built when you've got Guggenheims and MacArthurs?

But James begged to differ:

In this paragraph, (in my reading) Ratliff is speaking generally about "the putative jazz avant-garde," not specifically Zorn and Taylor. I think that a comparison between the institution of J@LC to whatever institution exists for jazz avant-garde artists is a bit silly. The operating budget of J@LC is $31 million. And while the MacArthur Foundation has given 8 or 9 avant-garde jazz guys grants over the years (which is hardly "almost all the major figures"), there still just isn't a huge audience or much institutional support for this music, though there are some exceptions (like this concert).

Ratliff seems to say that the avant-garde doesn't need Lincoln Center since we have our clubs and festivals and our record companies and our grants. But there is NOTHING on the scale of Lincoln Center. Can you really compare the Stone to Allen Hall? There is a chance that greater inclusion of this music into the J@LC programming would have an enormous impact on the marketability of this music across the country.

And, over at SpiderMonkey Stories, Taylor Ho Bynum voiced similar objections:

The point isn’t whether the avant-garde needs Jazz at Lincoln Center, the point is what truly creative artists could do with the truckloads of money they pour into that place! In a culture of very limited arts funding, Jazz at Lincoln Center is the elephant in the middle of the room, eating everything in sight, while everyone else fights over the crumbs. Marsalis, Crouch, and crew were very focused in marketing themselves as the only arbiters and purveyors of “real jazz” during their jazz purges of the 80s. I really think this was as much a well-organized business plan as it was an aesthetic crusade. Arts funding in general and in jazz in specific has become a very top-down, institutionally dominated field, and Lincoln Center is the most dominant institution. There is little support for independent artists and grass-roots movements. The festivals and record labels Ratliff mentions were all started out of necessity and run on shoe-string budgets. The Stone is a great place, but comparing a tiny sixty-person capacity room on the lower East Side to a multi-million dollar complex in a corporate mall on Columbus Circle is simply silly. A few MacArthur grants does not make up for the difference. (And hardly “almost all the major figures of the jazz avant-garde” have gotten one, that’s a pretty snarky comment. And I’m sure Marsalis’ annual salary over five years dwarfs even the generosity of a MacArthur Fellowship.)

These are all good points. I honestly do not begrudge Lincoln Center its conservatism. They are supposed to be conservative -- that's their cultural function. And while I'm glad to see Zorn and Taylor finally get their turn onstage at JALC, I also don't see this as embracing the avant-garde so much as embracing reality. Cecil Taylor and John Zorn may have started out as shit-disturbing radicals, but they have been established, respected figures for decades now. Their music may still be vital, provocative, and controversial, but it's been a long time since either of them has been a hardscrabbling up-and-comer.

James and Taylor are right that JALC would generate a lot less antipathy if they hadn't appointed themselves the exclusive arbiters of jazz legitimacy. But the problem is far bigger than who gets a JALC gig and who doesn't. The real issue here is that there's no structural support for up-and-coming artists. For starters: jazz has nothing remotely like South by Southwest -- although David Ryshpan asks an excellent question: why can't IAJE be more like SXSW? Taking over the local clubs, showcasing new talent, reaching out to the public and generating buzz outside of the hermetically-sealed walls of the hotel convention halls -- why doesn't this happen?

The record labels are fading away and there's nothing emerging to take their place -- no way to pay for that crucial first studio record other than going massively in debt to predatory lenders, with scant hope of ever breaking even. The only recording grant for US artists (that I'm aware of) is the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording, which is supposed to "provide wider exposure for the music of contemporary American composers," but look at who gets their support -- that's not exactly a who's who of hot young artists (notwithstanding a handful of notable exceptions). And no disrespect intended, but -- Roger Sessions? John Cage? Conlon Nancarrow? Lou Harrison? Harry Partch? Charles Ives??? The Copland Fund people are obviously operating under a definition of "contemporary" somewhat at odds with the one I'm aware of. They also tend to disproportionately reward large organizations whose staff includes full-time professional grant-writers -- like, say, Jazz at Lincoln Center.

While I'm obviously all for the proliferation of independent, artist-owned, do-it-yourself labels and young musicians trying to pull off ambitious projects even in the absence of institutional support, the problem is (as I have said elsewhere) if everyone's just doing their own thing, how does a collective scene emerge from that? How do we get people excited about the vanguard of independent, creative, contemporary jazz as a movement, instead of just gravitating towards the handful of stars who somehow emerge to wider acclaim?

Hands up, hands up for Stanley

Back when I first started this blog, I kept tossing around the idea of writing a post entitled "Why are The Bad Plus so controversial?" I was going to start by riffing on the very deeply polarized reaction to the band, using it as a jumping-off point to talk about some big picture stuff -- you know: Irony. Authenticity. Historical Continuity. The State of Jazz Today, and Just Who The Hell is Listening to It, Anyway?

For various reasons I never actually got around to writing this post. But I was reminded of it last month when I saw Stanley Crouch at The Bad Plus's Vanguard hit, walking past the long bench along the right side of the club so he could sit right next to Dave King -- he was practically onstage. This was during "Anthem for the Earnest," I think, and Stanley's eyes were fixed on Dave's hihat. Ironically, the next tune on the setlist happened to be a 12-bar blues (Ethan's "Guilty"). Stanley was clearly digging it. I later learned that Crouch had come to the club three times that week, lavishing Stanley-like praise on the band -- upon meeting Dave King his first words were: "Man, you can play! I thought you'd suck!" -- and hung out shooting the shit with the guys until the wee small hours.

So that's it. It's over. If even Stanley Crouch is willing to give the Bad Plus his seal of approval, they are officially Not Controversial anymore. In fact, I hear Wynton has tapped Ethan, Reid and Dave as the rhythm section for his upcoming Blue Note record, Is This Love? A Jazz Tribute to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Meanwhile, over at Do The Math, Ethan has a loooooong interview with Crouch -- but it's definitely worth your time. Some salient excerpts:

SC: The next point is that Betty Carter always complained to me that she always was searching for a pop tune to put in her band. (She believed in the classical jazz tradition of using pop tunes to connect with the audience.) But there wasn't anything in the music of those three guys--or anyone else in big money pop music--that she could use on a gig. There wasn't enough harmony or melody.

EI: Um, there's a certain irony that you are talking to a member of The Bad Plus right now.

SC: Of course. But it's not really that ironic, because you and Reid and Dave go so far from the original tune that you aren't playing on the form of the song.

EI: Well, you're right: we don't play jazz harmony or jazz solos on the tunes the way Betty Carter would have needed.

SC: But you also don't play anything after the head that that anybody would call pop music. Your first phrase, after the melody, is always totally "out." I find it really interesting how your audience is shocked and exhilarated by the conclusions you come to with a melody they already know.

To me, the conception of The Bad Plus is actually derived from the way Coltrane and his band played "My Favorite Things," which is really far from hearing Julie Andrews sing it. What Coltrane--what everybody in his band--was playing on it is like…[shrugs] "What are they playing?" -- "'My Favorite Things.'" --"Where is 'My Favorite Things' here? I don't get it." That's The Bad Plus, too.

EI: You are on the money with this comparison, Stanley. I have actually brought up Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" to interviewers myself.

SC: Well, there you go. Right.

This is interesting, because to me, the striking thing about Trane's first recording of "My Favorite Things" is how literal it is -- listen to how much of the track is taken up by Trane and McCoy just playing the the melody. They even keeps the minor-major contrast from the original, where later it would become a straight minor vamp. It has the reputation of being some kind of radical reimagining of the tune, but it's actually more faithful to the original than, say, the reharmonized and remelodized version of "But Not For Me" from the same recording. In other words, I agree that "My Favorite Things" is a good analogue to how The Bad Plus approach covers like, say, "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," but for exactly the opposite reasons that Stanley does.

SC: I don't write things to shock people, necessarily, but sometimes, when making an argument…

Let me put it this way: Some people go out into a field of wheat and they'll pick something--just one thing that they like. However, other people will drive a thresher through there.

Sometimes, if I have a choice, I'll just drive the thresher through.

[extensive laughter]

SC: Sometimes I think that's what's called for. Style and form are what I'm thinking about, you know. Sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph there is an attempt to personalize everything I learned from Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Martin Williams, and Whitney Balliett. Then, in something like “Body and Soul,” I get to a symphonic version of essay form that I am very proud of. Form is always my concern and is what I am always experimenting with, even when I am driving the wheat thresher.

EI: Well…there are friends of mine that you have driven the thresher through, and I know that it doesn't feel good.

But I understand that there is an argument for being over the top, just putting it out there, and seeing the dust settle. I'm sure we will be still looking at this book long after history has forgotten those who never came down on one side or another.

[...]

EI: Should we talk in more detail about the most controversial piece in Considering Genius, which is "Putting the White Man in Charge?"

SC: Ok.

EI: I don't know too much about Tom Piazza or Francis Davis, which are your topics in the first two pages, but I do know something about Dave Douglas, who you get to at the end. Here's the paragraph:

There is nothing wrong with Douglas, who can play what he can play and should continue to do whatever he wants to do, but there is something pernicious about [Francis} Davis and all of those other white guys who want so badly to put white men--American and European--in charge and put Negroes in the background. Douglas…is far from being a bad musician, but he also knows that he should keep as much distance as possible between himself and trumpet players like Wallace Roney, Terence Blanchard, and Nicholas Payton, to name but three, any one of whom on any kind of material--chordal, nonchordal, modal, free, whatever--would turn him into a puddle on the bandstand. Unlike the great white players of the past, such as Jack Teagarden, Bobby Hackett, Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz--or now, Joe Lovano--Douglas will never be seen standing up next to the black masters of the idiom. The white critical establishment couldn't help him then.

Well, all I can say is, if Roney, Payton, or Blanchard tried to play Dave's harder music, they would not find it easy--and they could never play it as well as he can. They would have trouble playing even a few bars of it unless they studied it in detail. There are authentic systems in Douglas' music that contribute to his unique voice.

SC: Whether or not there are authentic systems in Douglas’s music is not even close to the point. To me, the question is: What is jazz music? What I really don't like is how the avant-garde, which is more like contemporary European music, is treated as the solution to jazz to the exclusion of real jazz. I realized the problem years ago when Roland Kirk complained to Cecil Taylor in Downbeat that Cecil wouldn't let him sit in with his band. Cecil said they had arrangements, and that's why he didn't let Kirk sit it, but that's not a good reason. That's what holds the music back. It is a real problem that there is no agreed-upon place for avant-garde musicians and the musicians who play real jazz to play together. Because if the avant-garde musicians stay away from the jazz musicians, their music gets to the point where it has less and less to do with jazz. I don't like that. Some people do; I really don't!

I do know this: if Douglas got up on to the bandstand with Wallace, Payton, or Blanchard to play some blues, he would be in trouble.

EI: I'm not so sure, Stanley..but here, let me put this on me, not Dave. We are going downstairs to hear Eric Reed play in a little bit, and I wouldn't dare get up and play a straight-ahead blues solo after he did. He (or Cyrus Chestnut or Marcus Roberts) could cut me into little pieces. But I don't think any of them could play in The Bad Plus. You have got to make music based out of your life experience.

SC: Yeah, well, I think if you are playing jazz, you really need to be able to play some blues. Ornette is the perfect example: he always sounds like a blues musician, no matter how far out he gets. And this is why Duke Ellington could make a record--a supremely great record--with John Coltrane, with both men just playing their individual personalities but making music together. In fact, Elvin Jones told me how nervous he, Jimmy Garrison, and Coltrane were until Ellington got to the studio and cooled everyone out. Listen to the solo Ellington plays on Coltrane’s tune called "Big Nick." It's two perfect uncliched choruses that could be transcribed and made into a song.

It's a bit weird to hear Terrence Blanchard trotted out as some kind of blues-drenched hyper-authentic arch-traditionalist in this context, since his latest record (Flow) makes me think he's been listening to a lot of Dave Douglas lately. This is Stanley at his most infuriating.

Finally, Stanley and Ethan talk about Stanley's early days as a player:

EI: Julius Hemphill is someone I would have loved to gotten to know.

SC: Did he ever die too young! He's another cat who really had the blues in his playing, no matter how far out he got.

EI: You must have known Phillip Wilson.

SC: He was rough, man, a great drummer. But of those cats, it was Don Moye who impressed me the most. I heard the Art Ensemble almost every night at the Five Spot in 1976. They were playing! Wow!

EI: Back then you were playing the drums yourself.

SC: Not well, but not that bad, either, in that free-form style. Check it out:

[Stanley plays a tune recorded live in Amsterdam with David Murray, Butch Morris, Don Pullen, and Fred Hopkins. It's a long waltz with extended solos by each member--Pullen sounds the best on it. The drumming for the swinging waltz is a sloppy slow groove, quite behind the beat, and broken up by free fusillades.]

EI: I dig it! Why did you quit?

SC: Well, when I was in California, I thought I was really good. But then I moved to New York and kept hearing Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Billy Higgins, and all the other truly great drummers. That was a level I had no hope of achieving. In my own style, Don Moye was the guy who closed the door.

EI: I guess you had a different destiny anyway.

SC: Yeah…that's certainly true.

Read the whoooooole thing...

I blew it all at the penny arcade

Jen and I had plans to try to get tickets to one of the Arcade Fire's run of five shows at the Judson Memorial Church next month -- tickets theoretically went on sale at 9 AM this morning. It was supposed to be a tickets.com online exclusive -- so no calling out-of-state Ticketmaster numbers or any of the other tricks people used to get Radiohead tickets last summer. Just click when the clock rolls over, and first come, first serve.

Of course, well before 9 AM the site is swamped, and everyone gets put in a waiting queue. But eventually Jen and I both managed to get into the actual ticket purchase screen (albeit for different nights), so we thought we were golden... only to be told that the system was too overloaded to actually take our money. And after several minutes of frantic clicking, all of the tickets -- including the ones that we'd thought we'd scored -- were gone.

May the tongue of the tickets.com CEO wither and die in his mouth, and then be consumed by a thousand tiny maggots. And may a worse fate await this usurious eBay scalper.

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...

The dead accounting of old guilty promises

Sting -- yes, the same Sting who is coming out with a record of 17th-century lute music -- accuses Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake of being "too commercial." Unlike them, Sting is focused on the "spiritual" experience -- because everyone knows there's nothing more spiritual than slick easy-listening production values and glib, disengaged vocals.

You won't get anything you don't deserve where we were born in time

Bob Dylan, 1964:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan, 2006:

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in that time, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like... static."

He then gave reporters an exclusive preview of the new album's first single, "Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn!"

Fish+barrel+gun, I know, but since all the cool kids are doing it...

I wish to sponsor a festival

By way of a followup to the comments spawned by this post, I bring you this:

George Wein wonders why people aren't going to his Newport festivals anymore:

NEWPORT - George Wein looked at the shaky attendance numbers for the 2006 Dunkin' Donuts Newport Folk Festival and the JVC Jazz Festival-Newport and made a decision: he's going to become more hands-on.

He's not calling it a rescue mission, but the recent numbers worry Wein.

The folk festival drew 4,000 people Aug. 5 and 4,600 Aug. 6 to Fort Adams State Park. There was a time when the festival could draw 8,500 a day.

The jazz festival brought in an encouraging 7,200 people last Saturday, but attendance fell to 4,500 on Sunday - the lowest turnout in recent memory at the 8,500-capacity venue.

Wein - who helped start the jazz festival in 1954 and the folk festival in 1959 - said he believes quality and quantity need to match up. "I think we had good festivals this year, but the numbers are very disappointing," he said Sunday. "Whatever we've been doing isn't working."

[...]

For instance, the Indigo Girls, who headlined the folk festival on Aug. 6, played two nights at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., on July 24-25, potentially hurting folk festival sales in South County, Westerly and into Connecticut.

Wein said he is looking for ways to re-ignite interest in the Newport festivals. He wants to keep them going, and does so with corporate sponsors, but he is concerned.

"We have Dunkin' Donuts through next year, and I think with a better year next year we can keep them with us," he said. "We've had JVC for a long time (since 1984), and we can't do it without the sponsors."

Emphasis added.

Literal answers to rhetorical questions

Fortune asks: Who Needs Record Companies?

Coolfer gives the depressing-but-accurate answer: Except for the superstars, most artists need record companies.

How come you taste so good, baby?

Can anyone can think of a more patronizing and insulting title sponsor for a women-in-jazz festival? Because I'm drawing a blank here.

Someone called us Babylon

The major labels have stopped shipping product to Tower Records:

Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group sources confirmed privately that each of the companies had stopped sending albums to the Sacramento-based chain, which has struggled with declining sales as digital technologies have changed the way consumers buy music.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment also suspended shipments, according to industry sources.

The four record companies declined to comment.

The move comes just days after Tower Records named a new chief executive: crisis management and bankruptcy specialist Joseph D'Amico. Tower executives informed record companies this week that they would not pay outstanding invoices, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

Tower executives, including D'Amico, did not return phone calls. A Tower spokesperson declined to comment.

Industry insiders and analysts said it was unclear whether Tower Records had run out of money or was attempting to pressure the record companies to extend better terms.

Coolfer has more. Tower has been an intensely depressing place to buy music for a long time now, but I can't help but wax nostalgic -- back in the 1990's when I was living in Montreal, Tower Records was invariably my first stop during any pilgrimage to New York.

Dear Chris Martin

I'm not sure you realize this, but it's possible, and sometimes even desirable, to have unvoiced thoughts. Do you remember that press conference when W. blurted out "this is scripted"? He wasn't telling us anything we didn't already know, but it was still weird to hear him come right out and say it. What you said here? It's like that.

UPDATE: More great moments in headline writing.

Fever Pitch

Neko Case talks about what is easily the worst thing to happen to popular music in the past ten years, the gratuitous and inescapable use of auto-tune pitch correction:

Pitchfork: You seem like somebody who would be especially annoyed by the "American Idol"-ization of modern pop.

Case: You mean the horrible singing?

Pitchfork: Yes.

Case: When I think about Jackie Wilson or the Platters and then I think about modern, Top 40 music that's really horrible, it makes me mad. Singing isn't important anymore. I'm not a genius-- if I had been around during the time of Jackie Wilson or Rosemary Clooney or Patsy Cline, I would be shit. I would be singing in some bar somewhere for $5 a week and that's as far as I would ever go. But I'm living now and I write songs, it's different. There's some part about the craft of singing -- craft is too important of a word, I hate that word but I just used it anyway -- in a lot of places, it hasn't really made it. It's not to do with the people who are doing it as much as the people who are producing it. There's technology like auto tune and pitch shifting so you don't have to know how to sing. That shit sounds like shit! It's like that taste in diet soda, I can taste it-- and it makes me sick.

When I hear auto tune on somebody's voice, I don't take them seriously. Or you hear somebody like Alicia Keys, who I know is pretty good, and you'll hear a little bit of auto tune and you're like, "You're too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don't you know what that means?" It's not an effect like people try to say, it's for people like Shania Twain who can't sing. Yet there they are, all over the radio, jizzing saccharine all over you. It's a horrible sound and it's like, "Shania, spend an extra hour in the studio and you'll hit the note and it'll sound fine. Just work on it, it's not like making a burger!"

[swoon]

There's a great discussion of auto-tune on the Stereogum thread, which is where I first spotted this item.

They don't care where they kick

Just as long as they hurt U

How do you say "Arrrrr!" in Swedish?

Avast, me hearties, thar be the Pirate Party:

In Sweden, a new political party is pushing a platform that would abolish patents and free creative works from copyright protections after five years, instead of the 50 to 100 years typically associated with a creator's exclusive rights.

Politically, the only issue that unites members of this fledgling party is intellectual property protection; on all other debates, they agree to disagree, or not.

Leaders of the Pirate Party - that's what they are calling themselves - admit that their most likely accomplishment is raising awareness of alternatives rather than changing the world all at once.

"Overall, today's copyright does not strike a balance between the creator's interest in regaining an investment on one hand and society's interest in creation of culture on the other," Rick Falkvinge, the party's founder, told the LinuxP2P tech blog. "The law is totally one- sided toward the creator's interests, preventing the spread of culture."

Juno Regina

The Juno awards just keep getting better and better:

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Red-faced Canadian broadcaster CTV on Tuesday apologized for airing a commercial congratulating Vancouver crooner Michael Buble for winning a prize that had yet to be announced during the recent live telecast of the country's top music awards.

The commercial network ran an advertisement from Buble's Warner Music Canada label before he walked on stage in Halifax to grab his Juno Awards trophy Sunday night. The gaffe sparked rumors that Warner Music knew the results before the ceremony began, something the label vigorously denied.

You know what else sucks?

The Juno Awards.

The Toronto Sun states the obvious (someone's gotta do it):

It's a great time for Canadian music, as everyone will tell you.

In the past couple of years, artists of many musical styles have emerged from thriving scenes across the country to make great records, and bask in an unprecedented amount of international support.

The indie boom is undoubtedly the story of the year, so tonight's Juno Awards will naturally celebrate those artists and their success. Right?

Not exactly.

Broken Social Scene may sell out in London, New York and Tokyo, but the Junos are more about celebrating TV karaoke contests and the priorities of major labels, which seem to be increasingly relying on Canadian Idol judges as their talent scouts.

The list of nominees for the major awards reveals a dependence on characterless, TV-polished material that could have (and in some cases did) come from elsewhere, rather than reflecting the flavour and variety of recent Canadian music.

What's up for album of the year, for instance? Surely The Arcade Fire's Funeral, which has sold half a million copies. No doubt Neil Young's Prairie Wind. Perhaps Jully Black's This Is Me, Blue Rodeo's Are You Ready, Stars' Set Yourself On Fire, K'naan's Dusty Foot Philosopher or The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema?

Oh, no. Those artists are lucky to get nominated for non-televised genre awards.

Instead, the nominees include a Christmas album, a collection of retro standards -- which contain exactly one Canadian song between them -- two forgettable releases by Canadian Idol contestants and Nickelback's All The Right Reasons.

What can I say but "I told you so."

[via largehearted boy]

UPDATE: Nice.

Following their Juno win, members of the Toronto indie band [Broken Social Scene] took some shots at the major label side of the industry, slamming the Canadian Idol star-making machine.

"I feel really sorry for those kids in Canadian Idol because they're going absolutely nowhere," singer Kevin Drew said backstage after Sunday's awards.

"It's a trick . . . It's a Canadian music industry downfall because in three years no one is going to remember them."

What a major label can do for you

... if you're Prince.

Although I doubt even Universal's unstoppable hype machine could have made The Rainbow Children a megahit.

I love you, Scarlett

Just not in that way.

We thought you wanted to be a star

From Reuters (via the WaPo):

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kelly Clarkson beat out singers including Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow and Paul McCartney to become the first contestant from "American Idol" to win a Grammy on Wednesday but she failed to thank the wildly popular reality TV show that made her famous.

Clarkson thanked Jesus, God, the radio, her fans and her mother when she picked up Grammys for Best Pop Vocal Album and for Best Female Pop Vocal performance, but in two speeches she omitted any mention of "American Idol," which aired on Fox against the 48th annual Grammy Awards (CBS) for part of the night.

Apparently the fact that the show's producers own, in perpetuity, the unconditional rights to her "name, likeness (whether photographic or otherwise), voice, singing voice, personality, personal identification or personal experiences, my life story, biographical data, incidents, situations and events which heretofore occurred or hereafter occur" throughout the universe isn't enough for them. Apparently, Clarkson also has to get up there at the Grammys and thank her lifelong masters for all the money she's made for them.

It's a wonderful life

… or, how Rudresh Mahanthappa pays the bills.

This is actually a very good article on the economics of the jazz life, from Will Layman at PopMatters.

Some choice quotes:

"The dream is that in the future I spend more time playing music. Right now, I spend most of my time hustling: emailing, on the phone, applying for grants. I don't have a manager or an agent. I have 12 students who I teach for about ten hours each week."

[…]

"The summer after my first year at Berklee, I got a cruise ship gig that was a big eye-opener. Almost every musician on the ship had forgotten the reason they started playing," Mahanthappa tells me. "No one cared about music any more. They were just drinking, living the life on the ship. And I thought, if that's what making a living as a musician is about, then I want no part of it."

[…]

The musicians, as it turns out, make little or nothing from their records. Jazz recordings, for the most part, are calling cards; demo recordings to get you into a club and advertisements so the small but dedicated batch of jazz nuts knows what you're about. The money — for Mahanthappa or Rollins or even Keith Jarrett — is mainly in the fee the musician can charge for his hardest work: playing gigs. Still, even if your disc is only going to sell a thousand copies, tops, you need a record label to get your name into the stacks at Barnes & Noble, Tower, Virgin, even the Downtown Music Gallery.

[…]

"Younger people are the market for this music," he says. "I don't really identify with labels — and my music isn't 'free jazz'. It's very structured. But I'm not interested in selling out at all." At the same time, Mahanthappa would love to have the chance to record for a major label jazz imprint, like Blue Note. "I know a deal like that wouldn't last, but the promotion would boost my future career away from a major label." In jazz, even dreams of success are leavened with hard reality.

Tunes the Young People Will Enjoy

Guestblogging at The Rest Is Noise, Justin Davidson picks up a thread from Greg Sandow:

Now I have nothing but admiration for full-throated efforts to rope kids into the concert hall. There can never be too many discount tickets for students. Singles night at the symphony sounds a little painful but harmless. But as soon as come-ons to the pre-gray crowd take the form of specialized programming, the results often wind up looking positively geriatric. (Marvin Hamlisch is the illest!) I may not belong to the 18-34 club any more, but I didn't renounce my membership that long ago, and I don't recall liking lame, slurpy concerts any more then than I do now. Focus groups notwithstanding, the artistic tastes of the young are unpredictable. The 33-year old, musically inexperienced friend whom I took to hear Thomas Ades' hard-hitting Asyla and a Mozart Piano Concerto played by the Berlin Philharmonic last weekend had this to say: "That first piece was fantastic! And the Mozart was OK, too." It wasn't youth-oriented programming that got my friend to the concert (although, as a matter of fact, both pieces were by composers in their 20s). It was that irresistible opiate to which the callow and the ancient alike are addicted: a free ticket.

Attention Carnegie Hall management -- you want to know why I wasn't at that gig? (Of course you do. I'm an influential thought leader in your target demographic.)

Ethan Iverson says it all:

I saw the NY premiere of Thomas Adès' Asyla from the third-to last row in the rear balcony of Carnegie Hall. (Tix for two were still $155.)

[…]

In three of the four movements, tiny events happen before a crash, and I couldn’t really hear any of the tiny events well enough, even though all are marked “as loud as possible” in the score. Being so high up must have been the problem--perhaps in the $300 seats I would have heard the details better.

There was a recent discussion of ticket prices on the Finale users' listserv, especially the cost of seeing classical gigs versus rock or jazz gigs. Contributor Owain Sutton wrote:

At the South Bank Centre, you can see the Alban Berg Qt or the London Sinfonietta for £8, and the LPO for £6.  And Figaro at the Royal Opera for £7.

Is the situation in America really that much different from this?

Goddammit. If I lived in London (like my brother), I'd be at The Barbican every week. (Especially for stuff like this.) But I haven't been to an orchestral concert since moving to NYC and barring some miraculous windfall, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

By contrast, Alarm Will Sound at Zankel Hall is a (relative) steal at $28-33. But when $30 is the low end of the price scale, it's not terribly mysterious why even people like me, who would have have loved to have caught this Met Orchestra gig (having yet to experience a truly killing live version of the Rite) tend to stay away.