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Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."
No, there was "progress" -- fusion and "smooth jazz." The genre completely lost its way and died.
What is considered "traditional jazz" is now the vestige of museum-music types like Lincoln Center.
See the story that was on Yahoo yesterday about the close of the Monterey Jazz Festival. Really sad
that the finale is a bunch of octagenarians who are still musical treasures but are far beyond their
best playing (by their own admissions). One last holdout of fun but not always excellently-played
jazz -- "Riverwalk Jazz" on public radio. At least Cullum and the guys have fun and don't play the
stuff like its a solemn mass. They also have good easy-to-digest jazz histories on each show, much
better than the leaden, serious fare seen on PBS, for instance. Jazz died as a home for new musical
expressions and ideas when it became a "proper" black-tie music. Yuk! It's fun, dammit, and it's
meant to be!
I totally agree with Aaron about bop and post-bop, but there was also plenty of great music in the
hot-jazz era. Listen to Bix Beiderbecke "In A Mist" solo piano or take your choice of his work with
Whiteman or earlier. And of course Louis Armstrong and the earliest Duke Ellington stuff (which the
Duke was still fulfilling requests for 50 years later). I also really dig the transition period
between hot jazz and swing, the early swing, which was much less sappy and swung much harder than
the later stuff that Bebop was partly a reaction against. I don't dig much jazz beyond the mid-60's
as far as new ground, but different strokes for different folks and some of the funk-jazz crossover
was awesome (Richard "Groove" Holmes' "Comin' On Home" for instance). I do like many of the Pablo
returns to old fertile fields in the 70's and 80's, and there were a few stand-out last efforts by
the old school after that (but very few). For me the Norman Granz formula -- take a bunch of great
musicians, put them together, keep everyone comfortable and keep running tape as the magic happens
out of thin air -- never gets old. I keep hoping that Universal/Verve and Fantasy/Pablo will get
together and put together a "complete Jazz at the Philharmonic" box set. They'd need to be together
because a lot of great stuff never issued on Verve showed up on Pablo decades after the shows.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger and Allison Kulp" <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."
I agree,as someone who does not especially like jazz,in any form,but can appreciate great music.I
was shocked myself,that anyone could believe this, sixty years after the bop/modern jazz
revoultion.I thought the merits of "Kind of Blue",the Bird and Diz recordings of the 40s,"My
Favorite Things",etc.,were so well established that NOBODY would question it.My gripe with jazz,is
that there hasn't been anything new,and revolutionary,since the days of "Bitches Brew". THIRTY SIX
FREAKIN' YEARS AGO!!
Acid jazz held some progress,for some innovation,and new ideas,but by and large,it fizzled. : (
Roger Kulp
Aaron Levinson <aaron.levinson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I must take issue with Steven's dubious
assertions about modern Jazz. To
suggest that the music of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker,
Thelonious Monk, etc was somehow inferior to "Dixieland" is simply
absurd. Dixieland does NOT survive
in any meaningful way while "Kind Of Blue" continues to sell to every
successive generation that discovers its
unearthly beauty. One man's opinion may be just that but to denigrate
all developments in jazz after Benny Goodman is an
insult to many listeners the world over and to the contributions of the
artists themselves. If you like Dixieland
fine but do not use this archaic form as a pedestal to disparage the
work of hundreds of artists who are among
the most talented people that America has ever produced. Anyone that has
heard Coltrane with Johnny Hartman
would immediately agree that Steven's suggestion that he eschewed
"familiar, ear-catching tunes" is not just
a shallow statement it also patently false. Finally, Steven damns modern
jazz for its "introspection". In an age
as loud, abrasive and glitzy as today music or anything for that matter,
that encourages introspection
seems to me an excellent antidote for the self-absorbed materialism that
has suffused our culture. When I need a respite from a
world gone quite mad, Miles Davis playing "Someday My Prince Will Come"
is a guaranteed moment of clarity,
profound introspection and ageless wonder. I suggest it to anyone that
appreciates great art.
Aaron
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