Has anyone had trouble commenting on Scratch My Brain? There seems to be some technical issue with comments from some people, and I am wondering how widespread it is. If you have unsucessfully tried to comment recently, please send me an email and let me know. The email link is on the right side of the page.
Leonard Pitts: My freedom linked to others — including gays
The local New Orleans paper (The Times-Picayune) ran this Leonard Pitts piece today. If we all thought like this, the world would be a better place.
MiamiHerald.com | 12/15/2006 | My freedom linked to others — including gays
…as white college students were risking their lives to travel south and register black people to vote. Somebody asked why. He said he acted from an understanding that his freedom was bound up with the freedom of every other man.
How To Develop an Interior Life
» Destination Out » How To Develop an Interior Life
Destination Out is rocking the solo George Lewis!
This should be required listening for everyone.
Record it all!
I agree with the idea that the best way to really experience an improvising group is to hear them on multiple occasions in a relatively short time span. This allows you to hear the growth and evolution of the music, as well as get a sense of some of the other variables like the mood of the players, the venue, the weather, whatever. Similar thoughts have been championed by Ken Vandermark.
The Vandermark 5 recorded every note of a 5 night stay at the Polish club Alchemia in 2004. The whole week of music was released as a 12 CD box entitled Alchemia. It is very interesting to hear every note the band played that week, and there is the added angle that some of the tunes that eventually ended up on The Color of Memory were first introduced on the tour that produced Alchemia. You can really hear the interpretations develop.
Dave Douglas is taking a slightly different approach to offering an all encompassing take on the state of his band. He is recording every active tune in the quintet’s repertoire over the course of a week at the Jazz Standard in New York, and making the whole week available as download’s from his web store. The extra interest here comes from these being Douglas’ first recordings on cornet.
DD on life changing music and DRM
It’s nice to know that other musicians have similar thoughts on DRM.
Where would we all be without that first life changing album that a friend taped for us when we were 12? When I was in high school, I used to sneak my director’s albums out of the band room and take them home and tape them, then stealthily return them. (Well, I thought I was stealthy, come to find out, he knew all along.) In my adult life, I have purchased everyone of those albums that I could find.
Charlie Brown Christmas
Selecting Christmas music in my house is usually the source of some great disgreement. I like all the freaky jazz versions of Christmas tunes, which my wife thinks are way too weird, and the stuff she likes, I think is way too cheesy.
We always end up finally agreeing on the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack.
It has been reissued with 4 alternate takes and groovy new packaging.
George Benson & Al Jarreau – Givin’ It Up
Every so often I’ll get an email from On Target Media Group touting the newest project that they are running PR for. It usually has a link to some streaming files, and an offer to send a review copy if I’d like one. It is usually some sort of smooth jazz release. The first time I responded and told them that I don’t usually listen to or write about much smooth jazz, but if they had anything more adventuresome to send it my way.
I kept getting the emails, but nothing seemed more adventuresome, so I just ignored them. Then I got an email about the new CD by George Benson & Al Jarreau. I had seen some print and TV ads for it, and the concept stirred my curiousity. I had no plans to buy it, but if someone wanted to give me a copy I would certainly check it out.
Al Jarreau was a big part of my journey into jazz as a teenager. The bass player at our school had older brothers that were into music, and much of their taste affected my early taste. This was the mid-80’s and Jarreau tunes like “Boogie Down” and “Morning” got a lot of play in my car cassette deck. They were catchy and had a groove that made my body want to move. I further explored the Jarreau catalogue and got back to the fine live album “Look to The Rainbow” which I found moving on multiple levels.
My listening moved further away from the mainstream, and Jarreau left my playlists for the most part. I was hoping this new CD would give me a great flash of mid-80’s Jarreau nostalgia, but it hasn’t really. Maybe my ears have just changed too much. Jarreau has always been slick and polished, but there was some fire up under the polish in the old days. This disc feels more calculated than passionate. The Jarreau I knew in my youth wouldn’t have done “Four” as a medium slow swing, it would have been a burner.
It really isn’t fair for me to review this disc, because I am not it’s target audience. The CD is well done. The production and musicianship are all first class. My tastes just don’t line up with the tastes of the producers of this disc. I don’t want to make it sound like the whole disc is bland muzak, it’s not. Only some of it is bland muzak. Some of it is good music.
Free Play
Read this book!
The professionalism of technique and the flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power; hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators.
…if you create your own material your own way, developing artwork that is more and more authentically yours, people will spot it as genuine. In resisting the temptation to accessibility, you are not excluding the public; on the contrary, you are creating a genuine space and inviting people in.
Just a couple of my favorite parts of the book. This should be required reading for anyone who wishes to advance their creativity, in any discipline.
Alex Rawls on definitive
In this week’s Pop Life column, Alex Rawls talks about definitive recordings.
Rob Wagner addressed this subject once when his “Lost Children” album was coming out. He talked about having a hard time getting excited about the CD not because he wasn’t happy with it, but because the recorded versions didn’t represent anything special to him. They weren’t the best versions of those compositions that he had ever performed, only the best of those performed at the session, and when he played those compositions in the future, they would never sound exactly like the album. In short, there wasn’t really anything authoritative about those versions, even though listeners tend to treat recorded versions of songs as THE versions.
This fits in with the Ken Vandermark championed idea that recordings aren’t particularly good ways to experience a band. Hearing improvisers regularly over a period of time is a much better way to understand the essence and progression of a group’s music.
Dave Douglas is using technology to get closer to this ideal.
Just outside
Brian Olewnick has some interesting thoughts about writing about friends and acquaintances.
That said….I can’t deny that my perceptions of someone’s music is often biased to one degree or another by either what I think of them personally or, if I don’t actually know them, by what impression their (perceived) personality has made on me. It can work both ways.