Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

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

Despite "sound recalls none of them," think I could sense Ornette's effect in there, considering how he melded with the Jajoukans on Dancing In Your Head.

oy i can hardly parse that christgau review; can somebody translate that into english?

eldritch sonorities!

kif-addled Westerners

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ZapandKif_8284.jpg

i hate the fucking coyness of who else? Hint:

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

My guess is you can credit Hal Willner.

Willner was the music director of SNL, so that helped re Michaels & Night Music. Howard Shore was the SNL music/band director before Willner, and o course later did the Naked Lunch soundtrack with Ornette.