'Deconstructionist' Music

Maybe it's because the Devo cover is almost entirely re-fabricated save for the lyrics. Even the topline vocal melody has been broken down into this stuttered yelp - a bizarro darkside version of Mick Jagger's sultry drawl. The rest of the music is bare-bones, but then so was much of the Stones' music stripped down and raw. The Devo cover is like looking at an exploded diagram of the original. I don't get this feeling with My Favourite Things.

There's definitely a camp/kitsch factor abounding on 'My Favourite Things'. I don't know what a modern-day equivalent might be, but you'd have to appreciate the more lighthearted aspects of "serious jazz dude" re-purposing a popular showtune and yet using it as a display of pure musical might.

this is nonsense

i wonder how ironic he and miles were being that same year when they played "some day my prince will come"

yeah, sounds reasonable to assume that most of Coltrane's audience would assume "My Favourite Things" was ironic given that they probably hadn't heard the original

if they hadn't heard the original, how would they have associated it with kitsch?

There's definitely a camp/kitsch factor abounding on 'My Favourite Things'. I don't know what a modern-day equivalent might be, but you'd have to appreciate the more lighthearted aspects of "serious jazz dude" re-purposing a popular showtune and yet using it as a display of pure musical might.

See I think it's just a great melody and Coltrane recognized that. He wasn't trying to elevate something he thought was kitsch into high art.

But my bigger point was that ironic or not, Coltrane's cover was hardly an innovation. A huge part of jazz's foundation was built on a cover of a corny song from a musical! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_changes

See I think it's just a great melody and Coltrane recognized that

people who covered rodgers & hammerstein songs from 1956-1961: sarah vaughn, frank sinatra, j j johnson, glen miller, ahmad jamal, ray conniff, stan kenton, kenny dorham, cannonball adderley, lena horne

so it's not like a way out of left-field thing to cover a rodgers & hammerstein song

and rodgers & hart were hugely popular w/ jazz dudes so it wouldn't have been a big leap sideways to rodgers & hammerstein

and ironic or not, it can't be read as a critique of jazz itself (at least i don't think it invites such a reading)

so it's not like a way out of left-field thing to cover a rodgers & hammerstein song

yeah, exactly

Now I'm wondering about why I think Devo's version of 'Satisfaction' fits here but Coltrane's 'Favourite Things' doesn't...

It's not that I don't think there was any humor or irony in jazz, but I don't think it was attached with the same level of cynicism that a contemporary rock audience reads into it. I think it was a more openminded borrowing. And because of that I think people read a bigger distance into My Favorite Things than there really was. But Devo or Residents doing Satisfaction definitely have less distance. They're still operating within their own genre I guess.

The big elephant in the room (re: residents, devo) is Zappa. But I think people overestimate the level of cynicism there too. I think it was Julian Cope who compared Zappa to Faust and claimed that while the Mothers were these really cynical guys who hated Louie Louie and covered it in a mocking way, the Krautrock bands genuinely loved that music. But it seems obvious to me that Zappa had a real affection for it too.

A jazz dude rather than a rock dude, but:

this completely undermines the claim that irony-finding is an outsider's wrongheaded view

the irony isn't a two-dimension dumb irony, i think the problem here is that people seem to be using irony as if it weren't a sophisticated artistic device. "My Favorite Things" is from square culture, safe white culture - jazz is avant-garde, especially bop. The irony in "My Favorite Things" isn't "ha ha, I'm playing 'My Favorite Things,' isn't that hilarious" - that's like amoeba-grade irony. The irony is in musical conversation between things that would be thought of, my non-musicians & probably by some musicians, as incompatible, and in how fluid that conversation in, how much there is for the jazz rendition to show us about the thing in which we did not previously here jazz. It's a free ride when you've already paid, you know.

my = by as almost fuckin always all my fuckin life

"My Favorite Things" is from square culture, safe white culture

I don't really agree with this but either way, isn't the same true of Gershwin?

What's the difference between the subtler form of irony you're talking about with MFT and say The Beatles doing a Buck Owens cover?

and anyway coltrane was FROM square culture, he'd been in the air force band like glenn miller!

lol a stint in the air force band does not make Coltrane a square - and besides, all players know that AFB/Navy band is player central, those guys are on point

should own up that most readings that people think of as crude "ha ha" irony don't strike me that way - "Act Naturally," for example. I think the Beatles do that because it's a great tune and a clever lyric; I don't think the Beatles are saying "Buck Owens is dumb" - they're musicians, they know Buck Owens is incredible

maybe not but i think it would be an easier case to project that onto coltrane's thinking ca. "my favorite things" than his attitudes of the 60s

by project i mean project the square attitude onto him

well, I mean - dude grew up in nowheresville, NC, right - but he's been making the scene for a while by the time he does "My Favorite Things." he's played with Miles & Monk, played Newport, done Giant Steps - he's for sure a heavy intellectual imo but his immersion in jazz as culture and his presence as a moving force in it is sure, I think. there's a divide between the culture in which his music is made and the culture of Rogers & Hammerstein, but a musician doesn't really acknowledge that divide as valuable: there's more to learn by contrasting crafts. irony is contrast, especially when, right, a guy from the avant-garde is putting "My Favorite Things" over modal changes.

surely the listener can locate irony in coltrane's "my favorite things" regardless of coltrane's intent

by that logic you could locate whatever you want in it

max if you start with that I'm gonna give you such a punch

should own up that most readings that people think of as crude "ha ha" irony don't strike me that way - "Act Naturally," for example. I think the Beatles do that because it's a great tune and a clever lyric; I don't think the Beatles are saying "Buck Owens is dumb" - they're musicians, they know Buck Owens is incredible

Exactly. And in the same way, TSOM is not kitsch, it's great! And Coltrane obviously felt the same way or he probably wouldn't have taken a song from it as a jumping off point for a 13 minute improvisation. So I don't know, maybe there's an irony inherent to a jazz musician borrowing influence from square white culture, but that doesn't mean Coltrane did that as a statement. I think he chose the song for purely musical reasons but I don't have any proof to back that up.

There's a similar dynamic at play within hip hop sampling. Where's the line between simply sampling a great break vs making some kind of hidden gesture or getting a kick out of the idea that the great break came from the Monkees? It's like the white rock audience and critical community has this weird self-hating thing going on where assume that a black artist couldn't genuinely enjoy "square white" music on its own terms without some layer of irony.

i dont think im saying anything that pomo or weird

xp

i don't know if it would be right to call coltrane a heavy avant-garde dude in 1961, when ornette coleman was doing "free jazz" the same year and what eric dolphy was doing and so on etc

miles and monk played all that songbook shit too and probably engaged w/ it even more than coltrane

i feel like this conversation is imposing this post-70s "jazz is the black rock fire music of beatnik rebellion" onto what was basically a given at the time, which is that dudes would play modal changes over a good tune regardless of whether monk had written it or rodgers had written it.

and the idea that "the sound of music" is some safe pedestrian shit is funny too

jazz dudes please school me on this but i thought taking riffs from pop songs and running with them was standard practice in jazz -- like it's just an established ritual that doesn't necessarily bring with it any trappings of irony or appreciation of the original. don't they still do that in jazz of today?

right, but it's not completely meaningless when they grab that tune from, as elsewhere on the same record, antiquity (Greensleeves) - there's play there, there's some irony. I think Trane's point is actually yours, that music is a vast conversation and that a new way of approaching it shows us new ways of hearing things, but another layer is the irony of a (what I'll hold still counts as avant-garde post-Ornette) jazzman playing a medieval melody

jazz dudes please school me on this but i thought taking riffs from pop songs and running with them was standard practice in jazz

afaik yes? and I think there's an affectionate irony in it. idk I think people have this conflation of irony with sarcasm or insult that's really limiting and dumb

The irony is in musical conversation between things that would be thought of, my non-musicians & probably by some musicians, as incompatible, and in how fluid that conversation in, how much there is for the jazz rendition to show us about the thing in which we did not previously here jazz. It's a free ride when you've already paid, you know.

― we don't wanna miss a THING!!! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, September 5, 2012 10:33 AM (13 minutes ago)

i still don't hear the incompatibility. i instead hear some rather self-consciously "serious" musicians taking a break from that identity to play something light, popular and beautiful, something they genuinely seem to enjoy and respect. it's not as though there's no awareness of irony and incongruity, but the musical embrace of the piece seems completely earnest.

xp

well i'm sure he must've studied some classical / medieval music at some point - well actually i know he did - so is it equally ironic when he begins to deploy indian classical / medieval melodies or only ironic when it fits into a neat narrative of jazz dudes vs squares

i instead hear some rather self-consciously "serious" musicians taking a break from that identity to play something light, popular and beautiful, something they genuinely seem to enjoy and respect.

as if the other stuff they were playing was dark, heavy and alienating?

it wasn't so entirely lighthearted & rooted in pop, no

surely the listener can locate irony in coltrane's "my favorite things" regardless of coltrane's intent

Of course, but I think that does a disservice to the spirit of the piece. I think people are imagining a greater distance between R&H and Coltrane than actually existed in '61. Sound of Music was a popular, award winning work and became even bigger in '65 with the film release and that massively selling soundtrack album. Coltrane doing MFT would seem to be a conversation as aero calls it. Through that gesture Coltrane is bringing himself and R&H's music closer together, not highlighting any binary opposition between hip and square. The irony exists solely in the mind of the audience, not in the music itself. But rather than leading to contemporary audiences embracing R&H and SoM, I think the general rock crit reading pushes them further apart. Coltrane is elevated to canonical status within the rock world, partly because he is seen as having elevated a song that the rock audience perceives as being low and kitsch into something great.

lots of cps

so is it equally ironic when he begins to deploy indian classical / medieval melodies or only ironic when it fits into a neat narrative of jazz dudes vs squares

^^^ exactly. rock audiences are projecting their own arbitrary perceptions of high/low, hip/square.

afaik yes? and I think there's an affectionate irony in it. idk I think people have this conflation of irony with sarcasm or insult that's really limiting and dumb

― we don't wanna miss a THING!!! (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, September 5, 2012 11:10 AM (3 minutes ago)

a lot of the "deconstructionist" rock music under discussion yesterday is both ironic and sarcastic (and perhaps even insulting), as well as self-negating, self-sabotaging, a deliberate critique of its own chosen form. so simply locating irony in coltrane's choice of material doesn't really connect it to this tendency.

well, when you're engaging a musical culture which has had little dialogue at all with your point of reference, it'd be hard to locate irony - how had indian music previously received jazz, it at all? and vice-versa?

but let's clear - your claim is that to hear irony in jazz renditions of non-jazz tunes is to misread what the players are doing, is that right? fine if so, I think you're imputing all kinds of alien stuff to the claim of irony, just making sure

so when jazz players riff on "my favorite things" today, are they still making a commentary or just referencing coltrane? i got the sense that it's just part of jazz vocabulary now, however it started. is there really any sense of archness involved when it seems like the selections are chosen out of how well it fits the jazz idiom? I'd grant that someone's probably being arch if they took some limp bizkit song or something but "my favorite things" really doesn't sound at all out of place.

but let's clear - your claim is that to hear irony in jazz renditions of non-jazz tunes is to misread what the players are doing, is that right? fine if so, I think you're imputing all kinds of alien stuff to the claim of irony, just making sure

No. I just think the importance of that irony is vastly overstated in the case of MFT. And "jazz renditions of non-jazz tunes" is the entire foundation of jazz!

And I think this line of thinking sets up a weird dynamic where a black artist can only take influence from a white artist in an ironic way.

No. I just think the importance of that irony is vastly overstated in the case of MFT.

yeah I mean - I agree with this, as I say, I think there's a mild irony, an awareness of contrast and of transformation, but if there are people claiming there's a sarcasm (as we might imagine in Zappa covering something from a B'way show) that's obviously wrong. But I don't know that there are such people!

well there are people itt calling MFT kitsch, which would make the cover more ironic than if you don't consider it kitsch.

coltrane had played 'surrey with the fringe on top' with the davis quartet, what, three years before?

also your original mention of MFT was in the context of contenderizer's "talking about music that seems to establish a kind of love/hate relationship with a specific genre. music that is in some sense of that genre, yet remains openly hostile to or critical of it"
xp

but i'd want to claim, or at least be willing to concede

i. 'surrey with the fringe on top' is (by the standards of r+h, or any external standard) really f'n bad
ii. 'my favorite things' actually isn't
iii. it's not hard to hear *things going on* in coltrane doing 'my favorite things' that aren't going on in 'surrey' (which is on ... cookin' with? relaxin' with?)

I guess you could argue that jazz criticizes musical theater by stripping away the corny and sentimental lyrics and entire theater aspect and using it as raw harmonic and melodic material. The problem for me is that I think MFT supports two contradictory ironic readings:

The current popular reading: Coltrane the hip jazz guy covers a piece of square white kitsch and makes it hip
or
IMO, a reading that may have been more accurate to the time: A piece of popular, acclaimed "high art" music is recontextualized as underground club music.

the popular reading is based on a contemporary understanding of the worth and relevance of musical theater which doesn't reflect it's actual status and cultural dominance in 1961.

its like skrillex covering u2

i. 'surrey with the fringe on top' is (by the standards of r+h, or any external standard) really f'n bad

I disagree. The rhythm is interesting as is the repeated note which then jumps up higher at the end of each line. pretty easy to see why it would work in a jazz context.