Category: Thoughts

Facebook …friendship or communication tool? Stage | guardian.co.uk

Critics shouldn’t befriend artists |Stage |guardian.co.uk:

“As a woman of reasonable drive and sanity, I try not to spend too much time on Facebook. I’ll log on weekly to see which friends have a birthday approaching (felicitations, Peter and Lars) or to post an update. And for a while I really liked that Slayers game, Zombies Must Die! But lately I find myself forced to visit the site for an uncomfortable purpose: declining ‘friend requests’ from actors, directors, playwrights and publicists.

Why not just hit ‘accept’? Yes, many of these people are unknown to me, but so are several of the erstwhile classmates I cheerfully agreed to ‘befriend’. And many are known to me and very likable – a category that includes, remarkably, several publicists. But I write for publications with strict codes of ethics – chiefly, the New York Times – and they don’t look too kindly on pals profiling pals. Yet, to friend or not to friend is really a modern gloss on a much older dilemma: what is the appropriate relationship between the artist and the critic?”

This is an interesting dilemma. I am getting to the point that I don’t necessarily see a Facebook Friend Request so much as a request to be my “friend” as much as a request to have approved communication. More and more I am finding people that have my email address, and phone number, and mailing address (it’s all on my website) using Facebook (or MySpace) messages to contact me. The addition of another layer of technology is mildly annoying, but it seems to be a somewhat necessary annoyance. Apparently this is how people want to communicate, and if I want to be accessible, I need to be accessible there.

Thoughts? Leave a comment, or email me…or friend me so we can message each other.

Pazz and Jop with The Bad Plus | Indie Music Blog

I have mentioned the new TBP album here before, and the review linked below is a pretty good take on it. I really like the term “art rock song.”

Pazz and Jop with The Bad Plus | Indie Music Blog:

“I have almost always enjoyed their fusions of rock and jazz, not in the sense of 70s and 80-s era ‘jazz fusion,’ but a new hybrid that creates a type of ‘art rock song.’  The inclusion of an actual vocalist is a logical extension of these efforts.”

Music criticism criticism and The Bad Plus

There is fine line that the thinking/blogging/music-reviewing recording artist must walk. I have never really claimed to be a music critic, but I have written reviews of music that I like here. I find it awkward to be critical of others’ work, while putting my own music out, with hopes of people liking it, and writing positively about it.

The relationship between reader and reviewer is one that has gotten significant, if inconclusive, thought from me on many occasions. I want to be able to judge a critic’s taste from their body of work, then be able to draw my own conclusions about new music based on my balancing of the critics words, and my knowledge of their taste.

I don’t know much of Michael J. West’s taste, but he reviewed For All I Care by The Bad Plus in the March Jazz Times. This is an album that has kept returning my listening bin. There is something that I find very compelling about it, although I don’t know that I can articulate exactly what it is about it that compels me. I do know that the two parts of the album that West singles out as “unlistenable” and “demented…like they’re playing on separate planets” are the two parts of the album that catch my ear as the most interesting.

I guess we all already knew that there are differing tastes in our business, or we would all listen to the same records. I just find it interesting that the same parts of an album can be heard as the best and worst parts by two different, yet seemingly aware and educated, listeners.

Matt Wilson in Travellin’ Light

Travellin’ Light: “What I dig is when you get to eat great local food made with love.”

This quote reminded me of when I was traveling with the Harry James ghost band. We were fed every night between the sound check and the concert. It was usually catered, but the night we played in Orange, TX, the food was provided by the ladies that were part of the Community Concerts group that was presenting the show. It was all homemade, and just wonderful. One of the saxophone players, named Sid, commented, “you can taste the love,” and that was very true. We played one of the best shows of the tour that night.

…still digging Matt Wilson

It’s no secret that I have dug Matt Wilson’s music for a while. This Ottawa Citizen blog piece confirms that I like the way he approaches music personally as well.

Matt Wilson interview outtakes – Thriving on a riff:

“My stuff is not too hard… I’m proud of it, actually, they’re easy I like ’em easy so that I can see what people can do with them. I’m big into how people can look at something and go with it. And go from there.

…

As long as the music doesn’t get in the way of the musicians, I think it’s pretty cool. But when the music inspires the musicians and gets stuff out of them, it’s really great. That’s what all the good writers and arrangers, all those conceptualists do. They know how to usher people
into an environment and allow them to play with it and see what can occur. I dig that part of it.”

(Via @accujazzdotcom.)

Change is gonna come

Ok, when I have an emotional reaction to Jon Bon Jovi as part of a duet, there are likely extramusical forces at work.

I grew up in Lafayette , LA in the 70s and 80s. I was in first grade when crosstown bussing started in the public schools. I remember lots of kids leaving to go to private schools, but I didn’t understand why. When I was in 6th grade there was a new kid at school. His name was Ronald, and he played bari sax, and we had a bunch of classes together. He was cool, and we hit it off and became fast friends. When the first teacher conference came around, one teacher mentioned to my mother that it was so nice that I took Ronald under my wing. My Mom told that was a nice thing to do, but I didn’t understand, he didn’t need a wing to be taken under, he was just the cool new kid in my eyes. Ronald is black. To the teacher, and my parents, it was unusual for me to have a black friend. That thought hadn’t entered my mind.

It takes generations for attitudes and ideas to change. My parents aren’t racists, but my attitudes about race are different from theirs, and theirs are very different from their parents’. I am almost overwhelmed at the realization that we are in the middle of history making on the grandest scale. To me it is still a big deal that our nation has become enlightened enough to elect a black man President. Hopefully to my kids, it won’t seem out of the ordinary.

Wynton on categories

Wynton Marsalis, from a CNN commentary:

“On the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, let’s recognize the pernicious effects of separating people by generic categories.”

What is true of people is also often true of music. If we can get past our need to put people (and music) into categories, especially categories that declare it like or unlike us, we will have a better world, both socially and artistically.

(Via The Rest is Noise.)

Mahalia Jackson Theatre re-opens

Irma Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and more shined along with the newly reopened Mahalia Jackson Theater – Keith Spera – Times-Picayune – NOLA.com:

“Preservation Hall tuba player and creative director Ben Jaffe stood at the lip of the stage and gazed out into the theater as it emptied. ‘There’s a lot of memories here,’ he said.”

It has been over three years since the great flood of 2005. In the summer of 2005 there were three nice large downtown theater venues in New Orleans: the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, The Saenger, and The Orpheum. From September 2005 until last weekend there were none. Now there is one.

Ben is right about the memories. The first time I played with Wardell Quezergue’s Big band was at MJTPA. I played there with a reggae band, and I played a Wagner opera (Das Rheingold) there. I’ve been on the receiving end of lots of great music there as well. It’s nice to have her back.

Hung up on style

The following thoughts were initiated this post on Doug Ramsey’s Rifftides blog:Correspondence: Two Young Pianists – Rifftides

A reader had written to Doug, asking a question about a reference Doug made in the liner notes he wrote for a Houston Person CD. The reader was relating his experience at an Eldar performance.

” Brilliant though he may be, his choice of music almost boredered on semi classical.”

It struck me that the complaint was not at all about quality, but solely about style. The fact that the music “almost bordered on semi classical” bothered the reader. It is a shame that many of us, as listeners, seem to consistently miss the chance to enjoy good music because the style does not meet our expectations. Is the placement of the eighth note more important than the honesty and depth of the expression?