Jazz (Jass) Today
I bought this video of an 1984 Switzerland concert featuring some of the children of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham--piano, bass, and drums for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm watching this video with a critical eye while wondering what the hell ever happened to the many progressions of jazz that these guys I'm watching now certainly experienced and had to develop in order to be chosen by a god like Miles Davis--Miles took jazz up another river, a very successful one for Miles, though his old jazz habits eventually caught up with him--and that's a story for another time. I'm wondering why is the jazz I hear today on the college and PBS radio stations I tune into on the computer sometimes, why is it so ho-hum? Why do I feel like I've heard it before and played and understood better--though I try and view my critical feelings out from behind my biased eyes and look at it from an observer's point of view. I am a college-trained sociologist so I depend a lot on keeping alert empirically, which is kind of like being able to see around corners, you know, the extra-sense you get from being a trained observer (or a statistician, too, if you want to be cruel to a sociologist--though it's true, sociologists are data collectors, numbers crunchers, all of their philosophies based on statistics of all kinds from all sources. Karl Marx was a sociologist really; he certainly used sociological methods in putting all of his statistical findings into the final philosophy of Das Capital and its being made into a religion by the Communist Manifesto and the brilliant Frederick Engels. Das Capital, a good book made evil by the corporate gods who have convinced billions of us that capitalism is the only ism when it comes to their getting rich and keeping YOU and ME in a form of slavery whether we know it is or not. (Credit is a form of slavery invented by the corporate-controlled banks--IF YOU WANT REAL POWER, START YOUR OWN BANK. I have a very rich and powerful past (long-gone) relative who became convinced that banks and bankers were not to be trusted and that they were in a conspiracy to steal money--plus this person brought up a good point--What right does a bank have making huge profits off my money when it's supposed to be under their vaulted protection by loaning it out, by investing with it 24 hours a day, etc. I had a friend who was a banker and his job was to take deposited monies and play the money exchange game with them 24-7--you know, buying francs at a low then selling them real quick with the first upturn in their price; or they may buy tons of bales of Euros at the a current price in order to hope it'll drive Euros even higher. This guy said banks were making millions of dollars off simple half-a-cent rises in the money markets.
Evidence. That's what is lacking. Convincing evidence. If there were convincing evidence that a god existed, I mean, no problem, I'd be on my knees babbling allegiance in a matter thunderstruck seconds. Convincing evidence is unavailable. However, there is plenty of convincing evidence that our current government is lousy, crooked, pocket-lining, anti-average-Amurican Joe, even Amurican GI Joe, with its nose so far up and tight in the crack of corporate assholes, they are letting their shitty opinion of most world people, most world POOR people go to their brains and they become aggressive...HELL, it all has to do with parenting, something most parents in the good ole US of A know nothing about. My mother depended on a book written by a Doctor Spock, the first advocate of formula feeding of babies rather than giving them nurture from their mothers's breasts--we as children were giving another animal's mother's milk--we are part cows, all of us poor ole Dr. Spock babies, the Atom Bomb babies. Baby Boomer's are especially mostly cow in both the physical and the mental. Think like cows; eat like cows; are destined to the same slaughter as cows. Unless you become a prize bull.
And after that great swing around a beltway diversion, the video of the Herbie Hancock Trio has ended--I did hear through a brilliant version of "Willow Weep for Me," one of the coolest songs ever written, and written by a woman, Ann Ronell. Check Ann out here--I mean, she wrote "Whose Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf." I say bullshit to the suggestion at the end of this bio that while she was banging George Gershwin he wrote "Willow" for her--it doesn't even sound like Gershwin to me and could be a vicious rumor spread by Kay Swift, who also was mad for George--hell, he could have written some of her songs for her, that's for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Ronell
The video ended with Herbie's interpretation of Richard Carpenter's be-bop classic "Walkin'" and old Herbie did it great justice. Of course, this video was filmed 22 years ago. Holy Cow, many waters under all those bridges over those years. So jazz has surely changed in those 22 years, hasn't it?
I always said the Beatles changed the mode of American black music; they put it into the acceptable church mode--here's a great lesson in church modes:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/~cyrus/ORB/orbmode.htm
The Beatles didn't understand the true meaning of the blues they were hearing out of the US. We overhere grew up with the blues and we heard it in everything we did, even the church music that turned us on the most wasn't those dried up old fig mixolydian and lydian modes from the white church--snoring songs, I call them, but rather the powerful swinging blues-developed gospel hymns of the swinging black choirs and the lead vocalists those choirs carried with them. The white southern gospel quartet successes of the late forties and early fifties, the Blackwood Brothers, the Stamps Quarter, the Jordanaires even, got their blues from the black gospel groups, like the Golden Gate Quartet (the Golden Gate Quartet actually toured with some of the white groups back in the early fifties, though I don't ever remember seeing them perform together; I don't think that was allowed yet in the south. I've seen the Golden Gate Quarter, on its last legs, yes, in person with the Blackwood Brothers, but I don't remember them ever combining on stage)--or the Pilgrim Traveler's, the Soul Stirrers, the Five Blind Boys From Alabama, and the always wonderfully great Dixie Hummingbirds, most of whom had guitar accompanyments and not pianos, which all the white groups were based around.
WE ARE SORRY TO SAY THAT THE REST OF THIS POST WAS LOST IN THE ETHER--IT WENT ON SEVERAL MORE PAGES...DISCUSSING THE EMPORER MAXIMILIAN--INCLUDING A PIECE OF SCANDALOUS INFO ABOUT thegrowlingwolf AND HIS LOVELY EX-WIFE DOING A NASTY DEED IN CARLOTTA'S BED IN CHAPULTEPEC CASTLE.
AGAIN, THIS HAPPENED WHILE GOING OUT OF THE BLOG AND USING FIREFOX. ONE SLIP ON THE KEYBOARD AND WHAM THE POST WAS LOST.
THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS POST WAS LOST AMONG THE STARS...OF WHICH THE PLANET PLUTO IS NO LONGER GIVEN PLANET STATUS. IT'S JUST A BIG SNOWBALL IN OUTERSPACE. THEN WHAT MAKES A PLANET A PLANET?
theverylousyDailyGrowlerstaff
for The Daily Growler
THREE CHEERS FOR MAYOR RAY NAGIN. TO US, THE NEW ORLEANS TRAGEDY WAS MUCH MORE DISASTROUS THAN 9/11...I MEAN MAYBE THREE TIMES AS MANY AMERICANS WERE KILLED IN NEW ORLEANS AS IN 9/11. IN THE CASE OF NEW ORLEANS, THE TERRORISTS WERE AMERICANS WITH THEIR HEADS UP THEIR SHITFILLED ASSES.
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