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music collector-record store dork knowledge

71 by capnreverb_Archive
me, john wrote:first of all thanks to steve for hopefully bring campreverb back down to earth. it's daft to think that you can have any authority on such a broad subject as music, and i am glad that most people seem to realise this.

it's the people that refuse to believe they are wrong, or that there is another side to the coin that cause the tiresome friction which holds the rest of the people up. life is short.


uh, i think you got me confused with geiginni.
Steves diatribe was not aimed at me.
Even though the same generalizations steve accused geiginni of making, he made himself in his critique of jazz.

I may be a pompous know it all, but i usually like almost every kind of music. My initial post was aimed at fellow pompous know it alls who work at record stores who act like they know everything, but really only know what they like and what they think is cool.

I play mostly improvised music now because i got bored playing the same songs over and over again in the rock bands i was in. I can record improvisations and edit them, overdub over them, or tweak them. Its just another palette to work with.

Even "free" musicians still rely on a pallet of ideas they have all ready learned. You can detune a guitar to abstraction, but your approach to playing it will still be influenced by the way you have always played it. The trick is finding something to say with it that communicates to you or your listeners.

Free music is not free, and there is nothing left musically to rebel against. From Napalm Deaths 1 minute of pure speed to Borbeta Magnus walls of noise to john cages 3 1/2 minutes, its all been done. Either someone has something to say that you want to hear or you move on, no matter what kind of music.

Improvised music and free music are not necessarily the same thing, and can be quite different, or the same.

I know that there are a lot of spelling errors in my posts, but the spellcheck on this site wont work for me. Either it hates macs or me, or both.
www.soutrane.com

music collector-record store dork knowledge

74 by capnreverb_Archive
When I used to work at 2nd hand tunes years ago at the 53rd street location we had a small stack of records we would play when a customer would complain about what we were playing. If I can recall right, Yoko Ono's Fly lp was a good one, and generally pissed everyone off. We also had a borbetamagnus lp, Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, Tiny Tim, AMG's "Bitch Better Have My Money", Captain Beefhearts Trout Mask Replica, or some horribly dissonet string quartet by Scnittke.
It was amzing what folks would complain about. People did not like 12 tone classical. Indian Music really put a bug up peoples craw. People would complain loudly that the guy we were playing (palace) could not sing worth a shit. People absolutly hated delta blues. If you had a full store you could change the whole dyanamics of the people by going from Al Green to Gastr Del Sol to Funk Inc to Willie Nelson to Slayer to Tony Joe White to Walter Piston to Eric Dolphy.
The coolest thing was when you were playing something out of left field and someone who looks like they would never like it comes up to you and asks what it is- and then buys it.
Without a doubt, the one cd I could play and almost always sell a copy was Nick Drakes Pink Moon (this was before the VW comercial) People had no idea who he was, but bought it anyway. tons of times. Black or white, young or old, he's got something on that record that people are drawn too.
Miles Davis Kind Of Blue had a similer reaction, along with Jim Hall/Bill Evans depressing lp Undercurrent.
Oh, the Meters on Josie did it every time!!!!!!
People would surprise me all the time with what they were open too and like.
An open mind is the best mind.[/img]
www.soutrane.com

music collector-record store dork knowledge

76 by givemenoughrope_Archive
steve wrote:
Jazz serves a cultural function in the music scene. It is a signifier for musical "adulthood." To embrace jazz is to don a kind of graduation cap, signifying a broadening of tastes outside "mere" rock music. This ostentatious display of "sophistication" is an insult, and I find the graduation cappers transparent and tedious. Certainly there must be interesting music one could call "jazz." There must be. I've never heard it, but I grant that it is out there somewhere.

Jazz has a non-musical parallel: Christiania, the "free" zone in Copenhagen. In Christiania, like in jazz, there is no law. People are left to their own inventions to create and act as they see fit. In Jazz, the musicians are allowed to improvise over and beside structural elements that may themselves be extemporaneous. Sounds good, doesn't it? Freedom -- sounds good.

The reality is much bleaker. Christiania is a squalid, trashy string of alleys with rag-and-bone men selling drugs, tie-dye and wretched food. Granted Total Freedom, and this is what they've chosen to do with it, sell hash and lentil soup? Jazz is similar. The results are so far beneath the conception that there is no English word for the dissappointment one feels when forced to confront it. Granted Total Freedom, you've chosen to play II V I and blow a goddamn trill on the saxophone? Only by willfully ignoring its failings can one pretend to appreciate it as an idiom and don the cap.

*and finally: A retreat into international/multicultural eclecticism as a salvation.
There are so many sources of musical inspiration in the world. So many ethnic and traditional, classical (not just European, think Japanese, Javanese, Indian), and modern (Jazz, musique concrete, etc). It would be exciting to see aspiring music lovers and performers draw inspiration from deeper sources than the Beatles, Ramones, or Nirvana.

It occurs to me that there is a Javanese post-collegiate intellectual typing onto a web-board these words right about now: "There are so many sources of musical inspiration in the world. So many rock and pop, noise (not just Cage, think Japanese, Ann Arbor, Providence), and modern (glitch, puppet music, etc). It would be exciting to see aspiring music lovers and performers draw inspiration from deeper sources than the Gamelan..."

You are bored because you think you have grasped rock music in-toto. Because you think you understand it, you think there is nothing more to it. You are wrong. Your "understanding" of rock music is based on misconceptions, misunderstanding, ignorance (willfull and passive), and a delusion bordering on megalomanic about your insight.

There is genius in rock music.


Of course there is.

Blah blah, you need to hear Sonny Rollins and Sidney Bechet. Two maniacs.

What the fuck is puppet music?! I need to hear this NOW!

music collector-record store dork knowledge

77 by jimmy spako_Archive
man, steve, sometimes i think your jazz criticism is your own kind of galloesque performance art.

you'd think ornette coleman killed your parents with his plastic alto or something when you were a young'un.


that having been said, even though jazz is of course abused as american classical arriviste music, i (& countless others) didn't "graduate" to it. i discovered it quite by accident as a twelve year old & ate that shit up because it sounded fucking cooler than anything around me in rural ohio & i fell hard for this culture that took hate & oppression & ignorance & answered it with dignity, beauty & genius.

anyways, no-one ever said it was strictly about freedom, whatever that is. quite the contrary. they were always talking about discipline & form. for me it's about freedom within form, like life itself. using the tools to transcend the form or strain against it. no different than any other music.

lastly, people who don't make music might be surprised to learn that making music doesn't necessarily have to do with having heard & analyzed everything in the entire fucking world. in fact, that's just the kind of thing that would keep someone from making music.


an incident from last week comes to mind: a dude the other day told me that i won't understand germany until i listen to all of wagner. i called bullshit & told him that i'd been too busy living in germany for ten years to listen to wagner.


i'm jimmy spako & i approve this rant.
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