Jazz Criticism…a criticism…

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well El Senor the filthy capitalists paid me £6 a week to work in their retail emporium in 1961 ... you are right that much wow!

[Serial_Apologist]

well El Senor the filthy capitalists paid me £6 a week to work in their retail emporium in 1961 ... you are right that much wow!

SIX POUNDS???

Now when I were a... (Contd. P 789)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yep suit change and a night out etc ..............

speaking yesterday to two younger persons working their Sunday shift in a fashion outlet [if such may be said to exist in Melton Mowbray] the subject of 'duffel coats' arose .... these items were as definitive a statement of aesthetic choice in jazz as the italian mohair suits and sharp shoes .... and the emerging jeans and t shirts of the beats welcoming the new sounds of the sixties in jazz ....

incidentally i bought me first hoodie yesterday .... layered man layered .... just like Trane eh ............

so i take el Senor to be saying that jazz critics are now predominantly dressing in the style of R1 DJs in the early 70s ...... ab fab etc ....



payola! who said that ...................

[Jazzrook]

Listening to Jamie C. this week on R2, where every track played is “amazing, superb, brilliant, outstanding” (ohhhh really?) and reading John Fordham’s reviews in the Guardian, with nothing less than three stars even if its matt paint drying (esp BRITISH matt paint drying), what has happened to Jazz critiquing? Hump in his R2 slot regularly slagged off some of the music he played – I happily remember a scathing remark about Bobby Watson playing Chelsea Bridge…

Has jazz now reached a level of competence and facility that everything melds in one? Where’s the REAL effort? Where’s the edge?

Where ‘s my wine.

BN.

Bluesnik ~ I usually give Jamie Cullum's programme a wide berth but agree with your comments about the current low level of jazz criticism on radio and elsewhere.
For me, Charles Fox was the doyen of jazz radio critics and his long-running 'Jazz Today' programme(which was axed by Radio 3) has never been bettered IMO.
Also admired the perceptive jazz reviews & articles of Jack Cooke(Jazz Monthly & Jazz Review). Not forgetting Richard Cook & Brian Morton of the monumental 'Penguin Guide'.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Calum - I remember earning c.£20/wk as a trainee architect in 1965? Thought I’d cracked it, NEVER been so well off…wk/end trips to Ronnies, Austin Reed button downs, tonic mohair/raised seams , levver coats cheap down the market…well it beats “work experience”/slavery for kids today chez Tesco.

JRook - Agree with you. Cooke, Max Harrison, Charles Fox etc. etc. Jazz Monthly with those long essays on Art Pepper, Kokomo Arnold, Anarchism …and Elmo! I had a book years ago of the “best fifty modern jazz records” (or similar) by them. Invaluable and long lost.

I was re-reading “Flaubert’s Parrot” last night (Well, it was Monday in Wales) and Julian Barnes’ narrator states his hatred of critics as “not so much failed artists but more failed critics” and “the elevation of the average so that the critic can then demonstrate his/her further refinement” . I misquote but that’s the gist.

Didn’t Rimbaud say that the critic “rides in the dung cart of progress pointing out which way the horse has gone”? Or was that Johnny Morris?

BN.

[handsomefortune]

Didn’t Rimbaud say that the critic “rides in the dung cart of progress pointing out which way the horse has gone”? Or was that Johnny Morris?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

oh Austin Reed button downs and knitted black ties! and in '65 '66 madras cotton jackets El Senor!

i think that currently in UK no one is doing the job in the way of those hallowed names or in the way of a Giddens or a Williams; informed, analytic and critical .... jazz may be slipping down the agenda but what it does not need is the sycophantic puffery that El Senor Blues draws to our attention ... good bit of controversy stir things up a bit ... bit of stir gets you up the agenda and moves the dung onwards ..... suggestions for moving the dung?

[Alyn_Shipton]

I beg to differ slightly. I'm not sure all those hallowed names mentioned above were quite so special. Martin Williams, for instance, good writer, but definitely a man of enormous critical prejudice as evidenced by his selection for the original Smithsonian Anthology. Max Harrison, often extremely perceptive, but definitely carried around his personal soapboxes (even to the point of his deliberate mis-spellings, eg "Chew" Berry). Max was very supportive of me in my early days as a writer, but he was sure that his views were "right". And Charles Fox, lovely man, and a good friend, but who never actually wrote the book (or maybe books) that he might have - if only he'd expanded on Jazz In Perspective or his essay on Max Roach in that Channel 4 anthology. It's always been rare to find jazz writers and critics of real quality - but I'd suggest that the net and fewer national boundaries on publication mean that the likes of Giddens, Nate Chinen, Ashley Kahn, Paul Berliner, Robert O'Meally, Brent Edwards, Robert Walser et al are international level critics, writing as well as ever in the music's history. And once you add the French, men like Laurent deWilde (excellent broadcast a couple of weeks ago on Radio France about Hank Jones, and a fine biography of Monk) or Ludovic Tournès, and other European writers like Walter Van De Leur, who combines his scholarship (eg the Strayhorn book) with live musical projects, I think jazz criticism is definitely healthier than it has been before.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

er Alyn when i posted that no one in the Uk etc it was foremost in my mind that you live in France .... ahem ...

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

AS... "And Charles Fox, lovely man, and a good friend, but who never actually wrote the book (or maybe books) that he might have - if only he'd expanded on Jazz In Perspective"

AGREE totally with that and maybe I am looking back with a litre of rose colour but in retrospect (and again a lot of this was the '60s when, as Calum says, jazz wars were fought, "Isims" were foremost), there did seem to be depth and edge. The music does not exist in isolation.

Does a debased and gutless political climate produce dumb cultual criticism?

Does braad get buttered? Discuss.

BN.

Do artists themselves produce the best critiques? One of the best things on late Coltrane I've read was a long essay by Evan Parker. Coltrane himself talking about Monk was fascinating.