Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

(In other words, the idea was to go on too long.)

Haneke isn't just a 'shock' merchant, its a very willful misreading of what he is interested in. He clearly has interests and keeps coming back to them over and over -- the definition of non-shocking.

I don't need to expose myself to records dozens of times; the newness of a film/record can reveal itself fairly quickly -- and if it is new, it ought to do it with people who don't know that much about it. This is what's so attractive about improvisation in the first place, where you are looking for your precious art to be compromised by engaging with someone else. After spending enough time with some of the records improv is a mostly concert only occasion, as a listen once/treasure it-or-throw-it-away etc, so Jon coming over here like a mad studio scientist trying to make these AMAZING records that will REVEAL themselves should you want to LISTEN! makes you want to start thinking that how music should never that much of an effort.

The question what is or isn't harmolodics isn't THAT important when it comes to engaging with Ornette's music. The desire to want to unlock music does demand explanations from the people who make them but they can be terrible at providing them. That's where the work from the person at the other end comes in.

So music can be an effort. But I don't expect to get it from a guy who wears colourful clothing and says he comes from Saturn or this chess freak who titles his compositions by drawing squiggly signs, or from these 'normal' looking improv guys that make millions of CDs that get accused of sounding 'the same'.

To go back to Ornette I think Dancing in Your Head is probably my single favourite by him, and really coming in from a different angles to Miles or Fela. When thomp talks about a sense of (to put it slightly differently) 'Ornetting' that's where the sense that he has a system ('harmolodics', lets call it) to make this stuff comes from, surely. He has it, but its his own, because we will never know the 'it'.

So music can be an effort. But I don't expect to get it from a guy who wears colourful clothing and says he comes from Saturn or this chess freak who titles his compositions by drawing squiggly signs, or from these 'normal' looking improv guys that make millions of CDs that get accused of sounding 'the same'.

It seems like this paragraph is missing a word or two. Are you saying that you don't expect the people in the second sentence to provide explanations of their music? That you don't expect to perceive "effort" in these people's music?

i think the devotion of 60s avant-jazz heroes to THE SYSTEM is kind of interesting, be it a system of 'squiggly lines' or harmolodics or pretending to come from saturn

i think my comment about 'ornetting over whatever' was brought on by the bassist playing something vaguely baroque which i later read wz a fragment from one of bach's solo cello suites

i certainly got the impression that his playing was reaching for a set of rather crystallised gestures at how he plays a lot of the time, rather than a genuine conception of the moment: but, you know, he is a 79-year-old who had been playing pretty much every night that week. (when haden called him on to take a bow the previous night he looked utterly shattered.)

& it might be possible to say "oh, if only he'd spent years looking for collaborators who would push him in different directions" — his violin playing, for example, is over the top of what the rest of the band is playing on every record i've heard it on, rather than integrated with it — but he didn't, and it feels kind of ... uncharitable, at this point, to slate ornette ...

& if there's nothing wrong with the preservation jazz hall band being awesome i don't really see why ornette can't be awesome, which he was, despite all, in places.

(like: i can see why it might make some very angry that ornette holds this dual position as an elder statesman [which he is] and as an ambassador of the new [which he isn't] — but i don't see why that makes his records awful, it just means it'll take a while longer to arrive at an accurate assessment of them ...)

jon abbey, if you don't mind my asking, how do you feel about
i) blue series stuff
ii) the idea represented by derek bailey's 'guitar drums and bass'*

*rather than the actual record, which eh

sarahel -- What I meant was that I don't expect clarity from musicians in general.

Thomp -- I couldn't tell how 'good' or not Ornette's improv was at times. Thinking now there certain riffs that kept coming back. But I was just enjoying the cast of people he bought along, as in just the fact that they were there (like you, I don't think I could tell what Flea was doing apart from one piece). The thing I really thought about quite a lot was the first 3-5 mins of the section with Master Musicians of Jojouka.

I'd be inclined to agree on his fiddle playing: there is a type of improv person that basically 'trolls' and that seems to me to be what Ornette is up to. But because everyone else is playing with some other 'concept' of his there is a mis-communication.

there is a type of improv person that basically 'trolls' and that seems to me to be what Ornette is up to.

Henry Kaiser likes to do this a lot.

Sorry I'm not explaining properly (see how difficult these things are):

Thinking now there certain riffs that kept coming back

Basically, he seemed to get stuck in a certain 'riff' and a certain response that wore me out, but actually I'll strike this, I'm too far removed from that aspect of the performance.

"jon abbey, if you don't mind my asking, how do you feel about
i) blue series stuff"

dreadful music, although to be fair, I stopped paying attention after the first handful. like you imply with the Derek record, the idea is compelling in theory but the execution is generally quite poor. but then again, I believe that jazz is a dead language, much like Latin, and attempts to crossbreed it to other areas are pretty much doomed to failure.

"ii) the idea represented by derek bailey's 'guitar drums and bass'*

*rather than the actual record, which eh"

heh, well, that's a little hard to separate, but I think I know what you mean. the idea is admirable, but the problem is that Derek never moved much, no matter who he played with. he did his thing, and people were expected to adapt to him. drum and bass on the radio was just more source material for him to play against, not something to genuinely try to meld with and have it influence how he played, how he thought. there were occasional exceptions, like the live set I saw him do with the Ruins, where he was forced to play extremely loud, but for the most part that was his approach. I have tons of respect for Derek, saw him do plenty of great sets, and dedicated my last ErstQuake festival to him, as it took place at Tonic soon after his death, which was his home away from home in the final years, and his work as a musician, label owner, and festival curator (Company Week) was a crucial building block for all the styles of free improv that followed.

but I'll defer to my man Keith Rowe on this, in a piece that the Wire ran about him in 2001 (it should be noted that EAI had just begun to coalesce in the year or two before Keith's quote here):

"I have the very greatest admiration for Derek's work, but for me he's playing the old language. The structure, verbs and syntax are different but the language is the same. My work's always been oriented towards the future, finding a completely different language."

Keith and I don't agree on everything musical, but we're in total agreement on this kind of thing, and on the importance of at least trying to work in that direction.

"I don't need to expose myself to records dozens of times; the newness of a film/record can reveal itself fairly quickly -- and if it is new, it ought to do it with people who don't know that much about it."

yes, I agree, that's not what I meant. the newness part should reveal itself almost immediately, I'm talking about fully coming to terms with the content and the logic, and I think the best records continue to reveal new depths and facets after dozens of listens.

"This is what's so attractive about improvisation in the first place, where you are looking for your precious art to be compromised by engaging with someone else."

totally agreed, and why I primarily work with first-time combos that I've asked to play together, in the interests of pushing them out of their normal grooves. this isn't randomly throwing people together, like in Company Week, but trying to put together combos who have yet to play together but that I think could work well if given the chance.

"After spending enough time with some of the records improv is a mostly concert only occasion, as a listen once/treasure it-or-throw-it-away etc"

this is where I strongly disagree. records are very different from concerts, which everyone in most areas of music knows, but improv people seem to have an issue with. concerts are designed to be heard once live and not revisited except in your memory, records ideally should hold up to numerous listens, otherwise they're not a very worthwhile purchase.

"willful misreading"

This phrase is going around.

concerts are designed to be heard once live and not revisited except in your memory

Not always. There are plenty of concerts that are designed to be recorded, with the resulting document to be merchandised.

Sounds like it was good fun.

yeah this sounded like it was a pretty great show. i hope i get to see Ornette some day. Not to be morbid or anything, but time is running out! How old is he? Late 70s at least?

Tyler if you're in SF in nov. he's playing the jazz festival. I saw him 2 yrs ago, it was really good. Also he's 79...

hmm, yeah, probably not going to be in SF then ... Seriously, though I need to move there. It's not expensive, is it? ;) But yeah there are a few jazz living legends I really need to see before it's too late -- Rollins, Ornette, Hancock, Ahmad Jamal ...

Ahmad Jamal seems to play all the time. If you're in or near a major city you shouldn't have too much trouble seeing him. Sonny doesn't seem to travel much and Herbie (who is a mere lad at 69) hasn't toured in a while, from what I can tell.

yeah i'm in Colorado, we don't get too much in the way of the big jazz legends. I think Herbie played a big festival in the mountains a few years ago, but that wasn't really how I wanted to see him. Saw McCoy Tyner this year though, which was nice.

Posted this on the James Blood Ulmer thread, but when the hell does anyone open ILM threads about James Blood Ulmer these days, what with Azealia Banks runnin' things and whatnot. Anyway, my appeal:

At this point I'd probably pay one of my fingers for the elusive Ornette bootleg Lonely Woman Trio 66 / Quartet 74 (the latter of which has JBU on guitar and fucking SIRONE on bass!!!!!) = my most wanted LP. I think it's a 4xLP thing, on the Japanese label P-Vine. If anyone has this in digital form, I really just wanna hear the fuckin' thing at this point!!!

That does sound great ... and almost impossible to find. Looks like there are two versions, a 2LP on Craws the Italian no-label ('BAT') 4LP you're talking about.

Was psyched for a minute when I found Broken Shadows (the one on Moon) which promised to be another show as good as Crisis, my fave Ornette LP. The sound quality is absolutely awful though.

"of human feelings" from 1979 blew me away recently. like body meta & dancing in your head, but a little more corkscrewing, a little more cross eyed. it's wired.
was always in two minds whether i hated or loved the way he would always slip in a "colonel bogey" / "shortnin bread" or whatever in the middle of a "high minded" improv

This Lonely Woman Trio 66 / Quartet 74 does indeed sound cool! Are you just having trouble finding it on vinyl? Is it available for download or anything?

http://www.discogs.com/Ornette-Coleman-Trio-Quartet-Lonely-Woman-Trio-66-Quartet-74/release/2806651

There was a '74 boot put up on Dime some time back
There's also been this clip up on youtube for years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EOjTNtq1-k
which is Rome '74 with JBU .

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=368173
live Padua '74

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=335312
keystone San Francisco '74

So I heard Free Jazz for the first time today and... fuck, I couldn't get through the first five minutes. Just awful.

lol okay

Not my kind of music.

Can you elaborate? What else do you listen to from (roughly) the same era/area of activity? I'm only curious because, while I love Ornette's quartet records from this period, Free Jazz struck me as a missed opportunity (though it does feature much amazing soloing).

Skies of America is pretty bloody mental, innit?

no

:-(

That's you told

consider me pwned.

24-hour Ornette birthday broadcast today.

Thanks Tarfumes! A few minutes ago, they were streaming a big chunk of Science Fiction-era sextet sounds, live at Slug's. I swear at one point seemed like Rashaan showed up, with his mazello and stritch. Earlier posts, from What Are You Listening To?

Ornette Coleman Birthday Special, 24 hrs. This morning, I checked into "Focus On Sanity," and many more from The Shape of Jazz To Come. Had to go out, came back to a big dipper of Science Ficton, and now--back to "Focus On Sanity," and more from The Shape of Jazz To Come to come. Oh well, I'll stick with it for a while. Tomorrow, The Bix Beiderbecke Birthday Special (is there enough of that for 24 hours?), and this Tuesday's Afternoon New Music showcase is Carl Stone---stream it all here: http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/

― dow, Sunday, March 9, 2014 1:51 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really good sound quality, on my def. sub-audiophile headphones even.

― dow, Sunday, March 9, 2014 1:53 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoa, I only found this now.:(

Happy Trails! ("manzello," I meant.)

Lots more where that came from, ye are not too late, man.

i wish i could share it here, but his appearance on saturday night live in 1979 with prime time is incredible. it's on hulu for subscribers.

been getting deep into his prime time era these days, that sound is so beautiful.

a world where ornette coleman plays SNL is possibly a better world than the one we live in. or so one would think.

otm, and add Sun Ra (who did the show the year before).

also in the SNL performance he has a really lovely, shiny purple suit on

Miles Davis did SNL in '81, he was having a stroke at the time.

like, actually during the performance?

davis was into his kind of pop-friendly comeback at that point, no?

did jazz have more cultural currency back then or was it just that SNL wasn't quite as big of the deal and so they could take more risks?

Davis was promoting The Man With The Horn, his much-hyped comeback lp. According to his autobbio, on the day of the taping he'd been in pain all day. He was taken to a doctor directly from the studio, and was quickly hospitalized for a stroke.

I had always assumed that Lorne Michaels had a thing for jazz, given his later executive production of that Night Music show.

Oh yeah, hadn't thought of that; good point. Also, Milton Berle hosted SNL the night Ornette was on, and they were chatting away while the credits rolled...
Xgau reviewed this recently, about a year after its release, but better late than never, esp. since I'd never heard of it:
The Road To Jajouka: A Benefit Album
(Howe)

The centerpiece is ghaita master Bachir Attar, inheritor by hustle of the stoned Moroccan aulos-and-oud-variants-plus-percussion that has fascinated kif-addled Westerners since Brian Jones traipsed into the dying mountain village of Jajouka with a tape recorder in 1968. Live there’s nothing remotely like its eldritch sonorities and impossible rhythms, and sometimes (not always) that’s enough in itself—more than enough. On record it’s dicier, with the Bill Laswell-produced 1992 Apocalypse Across the Sky the standard. Until this. The angel is drummer Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin & Wood. The other participants? Well, how can you not love desert-mountain weirdos who can make a single thing of, to name the ones I know in alphabetical order, [Ornette Coleman, Aiyb Dieng, DJ Logic, Flea, Mickey Hart, Bill Laswell, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Lee Ranaldo, Marc Ribot, Howard Shore & the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and John Zorn? Largely NY-avant, sure, but on one sonically coherent record whose sound recalls none of them? Further enhanced by a female Indian vocalist unknown to me and the bassist from Ween? And the greatest of these is—who else? Hint: turned 84 March 9. A MINUS