Aunt Anne's mattress after agent blue is released by carnivorous clam.

heaven

I become flat with the chair. None of my body protruded. My head became a flat panel TV that no longer received nor transmitted, just was, faded into the chair. “I could die this way” I thought, no fear attached; and I began to think of heaven. Would there be freedom from rules? I imagined I would jam with Miles and Trane. Or would they be reserved for only the elite dead that were “worthy”? No, it would be fairer than that and I would be included. Would they play the same? Well, almost, I decided, but with even less regard for the audience to “keep up”. Was it beautiful? Yes, absolutely, and everyone got it without work or struggle. They didn’t really listen so much as let it flow through them. (Since there was no mass to their bodies, this was much easier in heaven) And while we are on the subject of no mass, there is no pushing others around. If you push, you will make a hole in their spirit which would quickly close as if nothing had happened. Generally, there weren’t many people who had pushed people around in heaven, because most of the them didn’t make it. But there were a few who did, where their actions “for the greater good” was judged more important than their pushy character flaws. Besides which, aggression had been so long accepted and was so widespread on earth, that the rules were bent a bit to let them in as long as they weren’t outright pigs about it.

Trane and Miles played pure, as they were likely to do on earth. They were so far along when they came up that they didn’t have to adjust too much. Despite the widespread acceptance of aggression, Miles had some interim work to do but that was on his personal spirit, not his outgoing spirit. But he lead the way when playing with others, feeling comfortable with Jimi, Janis, and Otis right off. I remember when Bird came up. He came with such nasty habits but soon we discovered he was a scared genius-child underneath. He went right for Bach. Bach learned how to swing and write music really fast as Bird improvised over his master works, composing as he went. Bird softened with time and ironically wound up hanging with the romantic classical guys. One by one he wore the composers out and returned to his jazz roots where the players could play all day and all night without getting tired. Another surprise was how much the artists crossed over. Picasso liked to jam, and he and Miles were very similar. So similar they would have hated each other for being so alike on earth, but here they saw their differences and laughed them away over a few Martinis (Yes, alcohol is accepted) . They both mastered art and music, their styles becoming so enmeshed that the works they made in heaven were so similar that one could not tell them apart. Nat Hentoff, almost here, is still writing about them in loving prose, having fulfilled his earthly duties to lift everyone up and get them to listen and feel the music on earth, he writes on other things now that help lead earth-souls to heaven and even occasionally slips a note to the living to try to get them to be wiser and more prepared. In heaven, everyone already has the message.

That’s fine, all the artists went to heaven, but who else is there? What about the everyday man, especially those good people who work 9-5, maybe are kind of bland and average? They’re here too, the ones with good intentions while on earth, that is. But as on earth, they don’t stand out, mostly choosing not to, and staying within their “comfort zone”. Most of them wear bland clothes and pleasantly fit it, preferring recreation to conversation, TV to live music, magazines to books, and often still read the newspapers daily to search for news that never happens, never has consequences for them, nor even interests them. I guess it’s a comfort thing. Auras can wear polyester, too, and most of them choose to.

A few individuals, thought to be despicable on earth, make the grade and freely enter heaven. Most are awestruck that they have actually done well enough They were so uniformly despised in the former life. Teachers that were there to help others on earth made it. Hookers made it. Many housewives did not. They just didn’t do enough good to cut it. Some businessmen made it, but most didn’t. The funny guys and the wise guys often made it as they knew the real story and were brave enough to tell it. Just rewards, so nice after life on earth, went to those that followed that horribly undefined and often upside down concept of “goodness” on earth.

Like dancing to jazz, you will have to figure it out for yourself.

This is a carnivorous clam.

Blogging is too personal – or is it?

For pure emotional release there’s always the blog. It’s when I feel most free to open up . I know there isn’t much of anyone out there but in a funny way that kinda frees me to say whatever I want. It’s like I’m invisible now and I have no secrets to reveal. But if I do reveal them you will the first to know.

Will you analyze them? It might be interesting but it’s a little scary. I mean, what if my screen (my monitor) could record an x ray of my clothes and show me wearing dirty underwear? I know I’d be embarrassed. But then I’m getting ahead and running away with myself. I forgot I don’t need to worry about that because no one is reading it anyway.

If I were insecure my not being popular it would throw me into a major depression. I know you laugh, but it’s happened many times before and might again. So I hope my blog becomes popular because not being popular has always been a drag for me.

My car wouldn’t start this evening. And I got so mad when AAA made me wait so long. It’s not as lame as it seems. Actually, it is., It’s just one of those complaining stories you hear everybody do all the time. In triple time, with quadruple copies made four times over. You say anything to go along with what I say because anything is better than listening to what I say and I say fuck you you numb out now listen to my boring shit – I listen to your boring shit.

If I were to actually start writing, I’d have to decide on how I’d write. Would I write knowing bloggers were listening or not? And would it be Ok to write boring stuff (if I promise to read your boring stuff?). I’m starting now. If you see something after this sentence, you know I’ve started.

Groove from the bottom up

(Why jazz is dying and what it needs to become vital again. A rant by bassdocta)

Jazz sessions follow the real book picking out tunes and playing standard for head-solos-head. The problem as I see it with standards. Standards are built on the pop songs of the 20’s 30’s 40’s. They are old workhorses that even by Charlie Parker’s time were tired. Bird reused the chord changes because everybody knew them. He just discarding the corny melodies. Here we are fifty years later using standards as a basis for playing jazz. Ludicrous. Who relates to these corny old melodies? I for one didn’t grow up with them , and when I did hear them I quickly changed the channel. We now have to LEARN standards again because there is no context – and then internalize the forms in order to blow on them. I LIKE some of the standards that serve well as blowing vehicles – where the chords move in interesting ways. But the melodies require a chink-a-chink drum pattern that locks the bass player into quarter notes. This proves to be a waste of resources at best. The soloing is well supported but the “support” team is more like a “slave” team. They are supporting the soloist without any sign of life themselves.

Trane opened it up in his later years. He let Elvin have his run, and it worked. Rythym and melody came to the forefront. Mccoy was just about out of a job. It was the revitalization of the pulse that allowed Trane to go so deep. (Although he could go deep even playing crap like Mary Poppins, which he did). But the pulse of the music became much more important and the music depth or soul was undeniable.

On the hard boppers.

By the late 50’s the time was ripe for swinging a little harder and talking it easier. It took players a decade to try to catch Bird. They never did but they at least began doing something else. The tempos slowed, the players took on forms that were more digestible and the diet was more that just rhythm changes and bluse. If the beboppers where listening to the pop of their day, standards, and blowing off its song forms , what were the hard boppers listening to (bombarded with?) from the everyday world. Rock and Roll was well on its way, but jazz was still mainly a black tradition and all but the luckiest the jazz guys were still playing pop on the side to make a living. Rhythm and Blues, early soul, and pop is my guess. Most of the elements of soul were not in place for soul to be rich enough to steal from. It would be the mid 60’s before soul really had some content to it. So maybe it was just some of the simplicity of the popular music that they dragged in. Add some hip horn charts, and careers bloomed for Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley and the rest of the Blue Note artists. They were just bringing in some of the elements of their environment. What they lacked was the worship of rhythm that James Brown would get to in a few years.

James brown knew about Trane, he clearly admired him. You can hear his tell Maceo to “blow like Trane” on his records. Did Trane influence him to free up his rhythm? I don’t know, but by 1967, JB had reduced the chords and increased the rhythm. Funk was born. JB hit gold musically and $ wise. By reducing the chords, players could concentrate on the rhythm more, and the afro part of Afro-American came more in to play. It was the drums that drove it. The drums pushed the bass, and the guitar parts changed radically too. The long passages of evolving rhythms required breaks in what would become either hypnotic or monotonous, depending on whether the music got to you or not. The horns added layers to change it up, and then killer hooks, and then “take it to the bridge” would throw in a whole new section. Jazz snobs laughed at “take it to the bridge” because “the bridge” was usually just the 4 chord for an indefinite amount of time ended by a tight hook to get back into the verse. Jazz players be dammed. This form worked more like the textbook definition of a bridge than standards did. It truly provided contrast to the verse. (Ironically standards have a bridge that provides no relief from the chink-a-chink “swing” rhythms – only different chord patterns.)

Jazz did not successfully bring in Soul for the most part. Miles used its influence and produced some great records, Jack Johnson (Miles’ Record, not the pop artist) comes closest (IMHO) but lacks a low down funky groove, and isn’t really down home at all unless home is a big apartment with a river view. Headhunters? Close – even funkier, really “bad” playing but still no warmth.

I’m not going to try to prove myself. It’s all opinion anyway

Jazz is searching now to find a new basis. Players regularly adopt pop songs as the “new standard”. Herbie even names an album as such. I like some of it just because clever people are working so hard on it - so there’s bound to be something “interesting” come out of it. But “interesting” is what Keith Jarrett is, not a movement. Why? There is no basis. Pop songs have boring chord changes (disappointing the standards oriented jazz guys) and they have no rhythm to speak of, so they don’t swing or sweat.

I n my jazz playing experience, players are constantly duplicating the jazz “real book” Half of the book is standards, old and tired when the book was published in the 70’s. Some really hip tunes, too. But all based on a whole environment that has not existed for 50 years! Why do we struggle with 2/5/1’s when you really can’t NOT make them sound tired and clichéd? Why do we struggle with the form of standards? 70 years ago they served a role: it was a form that everybody knew instinctively – because it was all around them, almost the “folk” music of the time.

Suffice to say, we play from our cultural roots. (Like it or not pop music is our folk music) So for us to be playing standards is wrong. We’re in a time warp. The options are grim, though. We all grew up with the Beatles, so we share that experience, but is there something to blow on? Not much.

So, if Standards and the real book are our , the jazz players, basis , and the basis is no longer relevant. What is there?

(so glad you asked)

What the previous masters did. Decompose. Go back to the rhythm. De-cliche. Simplify. Go back to the meaning of a verse and a bridge as statement and a contrast. More than do the unexpected, don’t do the expected: (but don’t do it too much, then the unexpected becomes the expected) Occasionally, deliberately emphasize off beats. Don’t always play in 2/8/16 bar phrases. And always build from the bottom up. The “Riddim, mon” . Skip chord changes, go to MODE changes. Don’t sound weird just to sound weird. I hate that. So many people listen to jazz and are attracted at first to Monk or Dolphy. Why – because it’s so weird. There equation is jazz=weird. They want to be on the fringe as well! Well, god bless them, they are welcome, but that’s not what jazz is, that’s only a compartment, a piece of what jazz is. (I know it comes from the mentality of “anything I don’t understand is “weird”. My feeling is that jazz players genuinely want to communicate, not be weird, but they do insist on communication on their own terms

Jazz before 1940 could be considered folk music if you take a broad definition of folk music. Many people listened to it, it was “singable”, and you could dance to it. Bebop ended that. Jazz become a language for listeners, not dancers, and very little was hummable. Jazz could be folk music once again. Drill down simplify, play da riddum, make it tight and loose at the same time. (see JB) . I don’t have a map so don’t ask for more. I haven’t been there yet.

(Music that is “folk” music around the world is usually but not necessarily simple. It is simple to the local culture but if you are not privy to that culture, it may be sound very strange to you. Listen to Middle Eastern Belly dancer music. That and Eastern Europe music. They play in “odd’ (to us) time signatures that take us years to learn and rarely sound natural. )