"If That Arm Heals, It Ought To Be Broken Again" 2008 Jazz D Minor Bags Thread

So, what's with Charlie Parker showing up in a Grand Theft Auto ad?

i posted this unnecessary shit on IMM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeJt1cB7AA0

(dude playing along to the Giant Steps sax solo on keys while accompanying himself on electric bass)

picked this up this weekend, $8 on nice shape vinyl:

http://img11.nnm.ru/imagez/gallery/4/c/1/8/6/4c1863edbde0c5d2fe67754c4d28c0b0_full.jpg

early coltrane stuff...looks like the bandleader is wilbur harden.

it's a nice little record...breezy bop for the most part, but it's cool when coltrane takes a solo as it's clear he's already starting to strain against the conventions, clearly on another level than the others (who are great players, don't get me wrong)....but yeah def. worth checking out...

Harden did a pair of albums with Coltrane in the band. A few years ago Savoy put 'em together on a 2CD set.

This Mary Lou Williams record with Ronnie Boykins and Roy Haynes is awesome.

it sounds like it

oh shit, there's finally a new Brian Blade fellowship album, must get immediately.

the clips alone sound incredible.

Interesting article about jazz obsessive: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/19/080519fa_fact_remnick
I'm listening to the radio show embedded on the bottom of that page. Dude is giving an hour-long monologue on what date Charlie Parker was recorded making a primitive overdub on a Benny Goodman 78 disc. WAS IT 1944 or 1941?!!! I think this guy might be king of the jazz d-bags. Fun stuff.

i'm reading this ethan iverson article on lennie tristano, race, etc.. i've never listened to tristano but it's pretty fascinating: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2008/05/lennie-tristano.html

yeah, that does look good! thanks for the link. have only heard a little Tristano.

Was that Phil Schaap you were listening to tylerw? Every time I tune into his show I never hear any actual music, only him going on for an hour about what he played in the previous half hour.

Ah yes, I see it was. Mary Lou Williams disk is still great a week later.

Over a decade later he is still complaining about the drums in this 1958 interview for Down Beat. He does have one accurate and nice thing to say (“The cymbal beat is an intrinsic part of jazz. You just cannot do without it”)
Haha, that reminds me of a certain famous thread around here.

Tristano’s comment that “I never heard anyone’s foot keep steady time” is ludicrous. Tristano himself played with Philly Joe Jones, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Shelly Manne, Buddy Rich, Art Taylor, and Paul Motian. Granted, that’s a collection of humans, not metronomes,
One time I talked to Lee Konitz a little bit and he told me a story about once when he was playing with Lenny T and Jimmy Garrison and Lenny wanted to use a metronome! "What do you think of THAT?" said Lee. "Um, Um..." (I'm thinking that's insulting to Jimmy, isn't it). "I think it's a little corny, don't you?" said Lee.

ha, further down in that article:

One of the most amusing stories in Shim’s book is told by Konitz about the time Jimmy Garrison showed up at Tristano’s studio to play a session:

The first thing Lennie did was place the metronome on the piano, and Jimmy said, “Oh, no.” He refused to do it. I thought that was kind of an insult to do that to Jimmy Garrison, who had great time.

I’m sure Tristano didn’t mean to be insulting; he was just caught up in his own systems and not realizing just what kind of young musician he was dealing with. But this story is good example of the divide between Tristano’s scientific approach versus musicians who consider jazz folklore to be of the highest importance.

I've been reading that article and it's various links for half an hour and still haven't gotten to the bottom of it.

I didn't like The Bad Plus too much when I saw them performing outside City Hall across the street from J&R once but everything you've ever linked to in the blog is amazing. I guess I've gotta give them another chance.

I can listen to Phil Schaap for about 90 seconds before I want to reach through the speaker and throttle him. He is the absolute world-beating king of the jazz d-bags. That being said, he comes across in that article as slightly less pathetic than Rodney Bingenheimer, and very nice to lonely old jazz players the rest of the world has forgotten.

jazz is 95 percent wack. smack a sax player. i need some sessions i could call actual phrases that are coherent on a simple level. jazz heads are fucking wackos unless theyre down, which seems exceedingly fucking rare as it turns into an academized specialization

i heard this miles davis and the lighthouse allstars from 53 i think and they seemed on then, heard it again when i was 20 and it seemed dead, empty

listen to some new orleans jazz

Jordan, are you turning into a Moldy Fig?

yeah i'll read th thread

moldy fig?? wtf is u on

haha, maybe! i do listen to (and play) more traditional jazz than modern these days, because that shit is funky.

I've been enjoying some songs by Build an Ark lately, off their late '07 album Dawn. They're a big improvising collective out of LA that plays very direct, spiritual music (sample song title: "You Yourself Are the Key to the Universe") sometimes with vocals, sometimes without - perhaps a bit of a throwback to the ethos (if not the sound) of late-period Coltrane - but they're a bit more mellow and West Coast sounding than Coltrane. Some lovely textures.

http://www.myspace.com/buildanarkdawn
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=61154

Some band photos here:

http://www.undomondo.com/2008/04/build-an-ark/

what about old jazz lyrics? who were the greatest in the 30s-63. some of those songs are magic

Most of the songs that later became known as jazz standards started out as songs from musical comedies written for the stage or screen.

I've been wanting to read this book:

The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty by Wilfrid Sheed

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812970187

Yeah, me too.

Here's a rave review from Garrison Keillor, of all people, in the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/books/review/Keillor-t.html

I'm listening to the radio show embedded on the bottom of that page. Dude is giving an hour-long monologue on what date Charlie Parker was recorded making a primitive overdub on a Benny Goodman 78 disc. WAS IT 1944 or 1941?!!! I think this guy might be king of the jazz d-bags. Fun stuff.

-- tylerw, Thursday, May 15, 2008 11:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

He's like that every show too. Some kind of weirdo jazz aspie for sure, and almost unlistenable, but an immense wealth of knowledge.

And I find Iverson kind of boring as a player but I'd like to read that Tristano article as soon as I have time.

I sat next to PS once at the bar at Dizzy's, and he talked to the bartender a little but nothing too much. I was a little afraid he was going to go into one of his big spiels even while off-mic.

What was the last Iverson thing that was linked to, Why Miles Didn't Like Oscar Peterson?

My favorite PS shows are the ones with a guest.

PS: "So you subbed a few nights with Charlie Parker at the Half Note in December of 1941, and the drummer for those dates was Kenny Clarke. Now due to the recording quality it's difficult to make out, but it sounds to me like Clarke's snare is a bit higher-pitched than normal. Was he using a different snare that night, or did he perhaps tune it higher than usual? I do know that the weather was unseasonably humid at that time."

85-year-old Bass Player Who Has Played on Thousands of Sessions: "???"

lol

(i've never heard this guy)

Haha. One time I saw Doc Pomus in the audience at a Lonnie Mack show and I asked him some dumb question about something. He said "People are always asking me questions- one guy got mad at me and said 'You mean you don't KNOW who played saxophone on that record made in 1963?' I've been on thousands of record dates- how the hell do I know?"

Jo Jones was impressed. So he said, ‘Madame, you’ve got yourself a new babysitter.’ ”
!

And when Schaap asked him if he remembered the name of the song that Benny Carter opened with at the Apollo seventy-four years ago, Lucie said, “I know, Phil, but do you?”

“Sure, it was ‘I May Be Wrong (But I Think You’re Wonderful).’ ”

“That’s right.” Both men laughed.

“And you played the first notes,” Schaap said. Indeed, they were the first notes played in the Apollo when, in 1934, the theatre opened
!

Bilal Sunni-Ali and Raja C are doing a Sun Ra tribute at Ruta Maya next Sunday.

Sorry, that's Cosmic Intuition with special guests Bilal Sunni Ali and Raja C

the new Brian Blade Fellowship is so great, really simple and deep. not a lot of solos or long tracks. the beat on "most precious one (prodigy)" is so heavy.

Ah crap, I spaced out on the space jazz. Well, they were pretty good about 8 years ago when I saw 'em.

crazy interview w/kurt rosenwinkel: http://campstudio.blogspot.com/2008/05/real-rosenwinkel-now.html

random snippet:

My friend Chris V.V.V.B. told me he heard Larry Grenadier take a solo on a Mike Stern record (this was in the early 90s) and it shot him (Chris) into this whole like Irish Leprechaun World, and that's what made him learn Jazz on the Double Bass. It seems like you probably know the Leprechauns. Like you've found peculiar feel-zones and worlds in the corners of what the insensitive listener might just label (and potentially dismiss) as Jazz, you discover little Goblin doors in what most people would just see as a regular hill.?

Kurt Rosenwinkel: sometimes all i have are the goblin doors. i realized today while riding my bike that if i could make something good, music, that would be really meaningful beyond my life, that i would run my bike into an oncoming car and obliterate myself if that's what it took. i would do that for it.

i think that fact might make it difficult for me to find stability or happiness but i know it's true.

in outer space it's either lasers or free float. guidance. thrusters are so byzantine; crude. they won't ever get you where you need to go. ok maybe in a spacecraft but that's just a very crude analogy for the space travel we do as human beings. in our minds. who hasn't been afraid of the dimensions there? humanity seeks comfort but also gets used to wider circles of knowledge, little by little over eons. i feel like i have lived eons. what else would you call it when some of the lives you have lived are like postcards or dreams. sometimes i can't tell the difference between dream and memory. time seems ancient even in my own memory. just as ancient as anything. egypt. my own personal fictions. my lived life is a personal fiction. ancient egypt is just as close or far, really to my thoughts, to my dreams, to my memories. past life experiences? hell yes! even within my living brain!!
i haven't really got a fucking clue who i am. anyway, knowing is over. starting is learning. i don't want to be someone who knows.

Nobody told me Esperanza Spalding was gonna be on Letterman.

i didn't know about her before today, but i'm watching some youtube stuff and she is bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7jZCjNz_kQ (letterman)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ulxSAiWR70

I went to see the Flamenco guitar player Niño Josele last year and it turned it the rest of his band was Esperanza Spalding and Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez. It was like a very good-looking, super-charismatic three-headed monster up there.

i am going to try to catch a set of Roy Haynes tomorrow before i have to go play a gig!

Awesome. I was just looking at the Roy Haynes box set, thinking about getting it. Got some other stuff instead, including the Brian Blade and the Esperanza Spalding and Sarah Vaughan, Duke Ellington Songbook, vol. 1.

If you get a chance to talk to Roy, tell him you heard good things about his grandson.