Truth in Advertising?

There has been debate here and here about the validity of including artists like Elvis Costello, Robert Plant's Band Of Joy or kd lang in one of Canada's largest, and oldest, jazz festivals.

Where to begin? Well, first, I can't stop laughing at the fact that someone commenting on Ken Gray's screed against pop artists like Costello, Plant and lang takes a swipe at Peter Hum, who isn't too happy about the situation himself. You know the old saying: Put two jazz fans in a room and a fight will break out.

I suspect that the guy who snidely posits if Hum—one of the most knowledgeable jazz journalists I know—thinks Bix is the name of a breakfast cereal might be only slightly older than me. I'm 56, and think the inclusion of artists like Costello, Plant and lang mirrors my own relationship with jazz.

The first music I remember in my parents' house was equal parts rockabilly, folk music and jazz. My older brothers split along the lines of Gene Vincent and the Kingston Trio. My father filled the house with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington on Sunday mornings. When I became old enough to buy my own records, I evolved from Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones to Cream and Jimi Hendrix in the course of three years. From Hendrix, it was only a short step to Miles Davis, and from there the world opened up into John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Charlie Parker. I never drew a line between Hendrix and Coltrane or Muddy Waters; it was all great American music, drawn from the same source. When I produced and hosted a radio show, I regularly mixed the Jackson 5, Bruce Springsteen and Weather Report. To me, it's just second nature. Why would you want to exclude Bix in favour of Hendrix, or vice versa?

So a festival that includes popular artists and more marginal ones is just fine with me. One of my best festival experiences was seeing Patti Smith at the Montreal International Jazz Festival a few years ago, and the fact that she poked fun at those who thought her booking was odd—and at herself—just endeared her more to me.

The financial implications take it all into another dimension, of course. As Catherine O'Grady, who heads the Ottawa jazz fest, points out, booking jazz artists on the festival's large outdoor stage is a equation of diminishing returns. Even the few remaining 'household names' (Shorter, Rollins, Marsalis) in jazz just don't draw the way they did a few years ago. So, if you want to bring in Vijay Iyer or a big band like Darcy James Argue's, you need the revenue that will flow from putting Costello, Plant and lang onstage. That's just financial reality.

But it's also my listening reality, and I expect that it's the same way for most of those jazz fans under 60.

Band Of Gypsys: Coming 'Round Again

The Jimi Hendrix estate folks announced today that their next series of releases through Sony Legacy will include a reissue of the Band Of Gypsys video documentary that was originally released in 1999. At that time, I published this critical look at the film, Hendrix's performances spanning 1969/70 at the Fillmore East, and the enduring mysteries surrounding the dissolution of his only all-black band.

For your entertainment, here 'tis:

The passage of 30 years and the mellowing effects of nostalgia have coated the rock music of the late ‘60s in a patina of recreational drug use and outrageous clothes. For many, time has erased the reality that rock was closely linked to the political and social upheaval of the day.

No one was more of a lightning rod for change than guitarist-singer Jimi Hendrix. Already worshipped by millions of white fans when his sardonic performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” closed the Woodstock festival in August 1969, Hendrix became a hero to fellow blacks through a series of events in the year before his death Sept. 18, 1970.

Those events, culminating in four New Year’s concerts at the Fillmore East auditorium in New York City, are the subject of a new video (Band Of Gypsys) and double-CD set (Live At The Fillmore East) released by the Hendrix Estate and Universal Music Group.

The summer of ’69 found Hendrix at a musical crossroads. Bored with the role of psychedelic ranger he had ridden to stardom and under increasing legal pressure on a number of fronts, Hendrix was looking for a new direction.

The most pressing legal problem was his need to record an album to fulfill a contractual agreement that pre-dated the formation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966. A more personal concern was his desire to reach out to the black community, which had largely ignored the spacey sounds of the Experience, its all-white rhythm section and British roots.

A new trio — the all-black Band Of Gypsys — and the recording of four sets at the Fillmore East on the cusp of the new decade were the result.

Billy Cox, Hendrix’s bandmate from the days when both were members of the 101st Airborne Division, replaced Experience bassist Noel Redding. A fluid yet rhythmically solid player, Cox was adept at feeding Hendrix melody lines that fuelled his high-flown improvisations. Buddy Miles, a heavy-hitting drummer who had played with Wilson Pickett and the Electric Flag, was recruited to fill in for Mitch Mitchell.

Miles was the antithesis of Mitchell’s flowing, multi-dimensional style, and brought a funky bonhomie to the group.

Six songs from the Fillmore concerts, including a version of “Machine Gun” that many music critics consider the highlight of Hendrix’s career, were released in April 1970 — fulfilling the contractual agreement with Capitol Records — and another three were included in a compilation in 1986.

Live At The Fillmore East presents 14 previously unheard performances from those concerts. None of this new material approaches the apotheosis of the original “Machine Gun”, though there are several pieces that can stand alongside most live Hendrix recordings.

“Stone Free”, one of the few Experience numbers included at the Fillmore, shows Hendrix’s masterful ability to shape feedback, and includes some inspired rhythm playing during the coda. “Hear My Train A-Coming” is rendered as a blues march with Hendrix soloing passionately, and two alternate versions of “Machine Gun” contain highlights, although neither has the sustained tension and drama of the original.

But the four sets make Miles’ technical shortcomings obvious, and it’s evident that the band hadn’t fully learned the material. There are blown lyrics and sloppy transitions, and Hendrix apologizes after a particularly messy version of “Stepping Stone”.

That was the only weak number in the first set of the New Year’s Day show, which also produced the ground-breaking “Machine Gun”, an aggressive version of “Power Of Soul”, and an effective soul song called “Stop”. As well as forming the bulk of the material on the original Band Of Gypsys album, that set was videotaped in black-and-white, and is the centerpiece of the 83-minute home video of the event.

The video stresses the historical perspective, examining the social importance of Hendrix’s shift to an all-black band through interviews with influential black disc jockey Frankie Crocker, musicians Miles, Cox, Lenny Kravitz and Vernon Reid, engineer Eddie Kramer and a dozen others. Along with six songs from the Fillmore, Hendrix is shown performing on BBC-TV, “The Dick Cavett Show” and at Woodstock.

Appropriately, the film pivots on the epochal performance of “Machine Gun”, which is shown almost in its entirety. Dedicated to “all the soldiers fighting in Vietnam” and, pointedly, to the members of National Guard called out to quell rioting in America’s black ghettoes, the song is an angry torrent of sound that flows from Hendrix’s guitar with a seamless inventiveness that rivals solos by jazz musicians like John Coltrane or Miles Davis. Indeed, film of Davis performing at the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival is used to underscore how Hendrix influenced the jazz trumpeter’s shift to electric music.

Kravitz, Reid and several others provide insights into how Band Of Gypsys increased Hendrix’s influence on young blacks. Kravitz recalls how Hendrix’s appearance on the Cavett program in a bright turquoise robe and Afro haircut was revolutionary for TV in the 1960s. In fact, there is little that symbolizes the cultural schism of that era more succinctly than the sight of the ultra-cool Hendrix positioned between the tweedy Cavett and actor Robert Young of “Father Knows Best” and “Marcus Welby MD” fame.

The video speculates that the Band Of Gypsys did not sit well with Hendrix’s management or record label, which apparently feared erosion in his white fan base. The evidence is inconclusive.

True or not, the trio was short-lived. Within a month, Mitchell was back on drums and the music made as Hendrix’s last year began became little more than a footnote to a brief, brilliant career.

Now, at last, more of those legendary sessions by the Band Of Gypsys are available as a reminder of how much music mattered in this century’s most turbulent decade.

© Copyright 1999 by James Hale.

Michael Corleone Could Relate

Just like poor Mikey, those Italian forces are pulling me back in. In this case, they're Tuscan, not Sicilian, but just when I thought I had carved out some jazz-free time this year I got -- you guessed it -- a pretty hard offer to refuse. (Enough already with the bad Italian/Godfather references... I'm racking up an anti-Scots Canadian deficit here.)

I'm honored to have been invited to participate in this year's Siena Jazz Workshop, and really looking forward to 10 days under the Tuscan sun, particularly since it will be in the company of some of my favorite musicians, including Dave Douglas and Eric Harland.

My challenge now is to develop a suitable topic to use as the basis of the lecture I have to give at the workshop. At this early stage, I'm toying with the idea of revisiting a thesis I used to discuss with my late friend, jazz writer Eric Nisenson. It revolved around a jazz variation of pianist Glenn Gould's "idea of north," using examples of Paul Bley, Sonny Greenwich and others.

I may use this space as a canvas on which to sketch these thoughts. Feel free to chime in if anything grabs your attention.

Laying Out

Jazz Chronicles is going on hiatus beginning today. I have a non-music book project that is moving into high gear and won't have any major jazz outings between now and the fall.

You can still find me in the pages of DownBeat and Signal To Noise until Jazz Chronicles returns.

Who's On The Bill?

My friend and former newspaper colleague Peter Hum has ignited a discussion about the rock-star dominated booking policies of some jazz festivals in his blog.

What set Peter off were announcements that pop artists like Elton John, Kid Rock, Arcade Fire and Lauryn Hill are being touted as headliners by festivals in Rochester and New Orleans.

I've added comments to Peter's posts, so I won't usurp him here, but do check it out and weigh in. I'm hoping he attracts some insightful comments from some jazz festival promoters.

Gregg Allman: Still Riding

The first album I ever reviewed—some 33 years ago—was a Gregg Allman LP, so it's nice to circle back and write about another of his solo projects. This is his first new release in about 14 years, and in Allman's terms that's a lot of water under the bridge, including sobriety, potentially fatal illness and a liver transplant. As I wrote here, Allman has emerged in strong voice and unbroken spirit.

He has also emerged with a fine recording that stretches him outside his usual comfort zone, thanks to the efforts of producer T-Bone Burnett. For someone who has been recording and performing most of his life—or perhaps because of that—Allman has always been somewhat reluctant to move beyond what he can get by on with just his world-weary voice, and there has always been a big part of him that has been reluctant to let go of the sonic landscape he inherited from his big brother, and no one can blame him for that. Still, it's great to hear him addressing different aspects of the blues idiom—from Sleepy John Estes' opening "Floating Bridge" to a beautiful public domain song called "I Believe I'll Go Back Home." Harkening back to his radical remake of his signature composition "Midnight Rider" in 1973, Low Country Blues ends with a startling re-arrangement of Muddy Waters' "Rolling Stone" by Allman, Burnett and sideman Mac Rebennack.

There are horns on five of the 12 songs, a potent reminder of how good he always sounded fronting a band patterned after the Ray Charles model, and most of the remaining pieces feature acoustic musicians, including string wizard Colin Linden on dobro and acoustic bassist Dennis Crouch.

Not since his debut solo effort, Laid Back, has Allman sounded this focused and confident. He sounds like a man at peace, and for anyone who has followed his career for four decades that's more than enough.

The Eternal Search for a Better Online Mousetrap

Following up on our recent town hall meeting on the future of jazz journalism, held as part of the APAP Conference in New York City, I was struck today by this quote from Ken Auletta's profile of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in The New Yorker:

"Relying on Web advertising was a promising business idea ten years ago, when advertising rates appeared destined to climb endlessly higher as it became possible to target ads precisely for narrower groups of consumers.... But Web businesses have come to realize—as online newspapers and magazines have—that they need a second revenue source, whether it is e-commerce or paid subscribers."

Very true, and a succinct explanation of why we still don't have a viable online outlet for jazz journalism that actually pays its journalists. Will we have one by the time that an estimated 130 million North Americans own tablet computers by 2015? If not, things will be grim for jazz journalists—and for those (I know you're out there) who enjoy their work.

Changing The Guard

One of North America's longest-running and largest jazz festivals, the TD Ottawa International Jazz Festival, named a new programming manager today, and it's notable that the organization selected a musician who plays with a wide range of collaborators. For saxophonist Petr Cancura, the new job represents something of a homecoming; although he was born in the Czech Republic, he spent many years in Ottawa before moving to Brooklyn. As well as working with the creative guitar improviser Joe Morris, Cancura is also a member of pianist Danilo Perez's big band.

I think it's always a good thing when musicians have a hand in booking, and in Cancura's case it's especially promising due to the breadth of his own experience and contacts.

I should note that, although I've worked on contract as a media consultant for the organization during the past two festivals, I'm not currently working with them, so this is very much an unbiased reading of the Cancura's hiring. As someone who lives in Ottawa and has interacted with the festival as attendee, journalist and employee, I'm looking forward to everything he can bring to the job.

Is 'Jazz' A Dated Term?

I heard a lot of good music between late Thursday and very late Saturday in New York City. I might've normally been tempted to write "saw" in that opening sentence, but I didn't really see much on Friday and Saturday, except fuzzy headwear and the backs of a lot of tall university students. At a town hall meeting I moderated on behalf of the Jazz Journalists Association on Saturday afternoon (pictured), I also heard a clear delineation about how music should be covered/represented by journalists that split pretty clearly along generational lines.

My own dichotomy was between the perfect sight lines and sound at Birdland, where I caught a set by a revised version of the Overtone Quartet (with Jason Moran, Chris Potter, Eric Harland and Larry Grenadier, subbing for Dave Holland), and two nights of shows at Winter Jazzfest, which drew more than 4000 people to multiple shows at five venues in Greenwich Village. On the first night of Jazzfest, I missed one act I wanted to catch because I was lined up outside a club waiting to be let in (this, with a media pass; as Ben Ratliff points out in this overview from the New York Times, the door staff were making no exceptions). After being admitted, I never made it past the bar area, except to confirm that the sight lines and sound were little better if you forced your way past people into the main room. On Night 2, I had a good spot stage left at Le Poisson Rouge, but was constantly jostled aside and obstructed by others—and at 5'11" and 190 pounds, I'm not a particularly small person. Did I want to leave to hit the bathroom or get a drink before Nels Cline & Stained Radiance—the primary act I was there to see—hit the stage? No. So, the result was like the last time I went to a Bruce Springsteen show in general admission: good proximity to the performer, regularly obstructed views, aching knees (hey, forgive me, I'm heading for 60 here), and an uncomfortably full bladder.

I know...whine and bitch. Suck it up, Hale. But this isn't about me; it's about the potential for growing an audience for new artists and maintaining an audience for established artists. Aside from a few fellow journalists, I didn't see too many people who appeared to be older than 30 at those Winter Jazzfest shows. That's to be expected, and that's potentially a good thing; it's obvious we need to grow an audience for improvised music. But neither did I see too many young faces at Birdland, just as I seldom see too many people under 30 at clubs anywhere where there's a $40 cover and a $10 minimum.

With those realities in place, it was no surprise on Saturday afternoon to hear attendees at my open forum on the future of jazz journalism split clearly along age lines on whether journalists should move past the traditional label of 'jazz' and meld improvising artists into a broad category that includes pop, rock and hip-hop acts. Two things to note on that: one, the notion of losing the 'jazz' tag is nothing new, and two, many of the critics of my generation grew up with an appreciation for a very broad range of artists. But just as most critics younger than 60 have an ear for lots beyond artists who play what is traditionally classified as jazz, there is a huge cadre of people who still think that artists like Moran are barely, or only sometimes, playing jazz. Just bring a turntable onto the stage of any major jazz festival in North America, then listen to the feedback from paying customers who still have a hard time letting go of Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. I'd be interested to hear what some of those folks—the folks being targeted by major festival sponsors like Lexus and TD Bank—would say about the idea of ignoring jazz coverage for a more 'balanced' approach that includes artists from Arcade Fire to Jay-Z.

I think that might be reminiscent of the old 'mouldy fig' debates of the '50s.

So, while there's no real news in any of this, the contrast between the traditional model of concert presentation—in one of the world's very successful venues—and the model-of-the-moment has never been more stark.

Will those people who flock to Winter Jazzfest for two nights make the trek to Birdland on one, two or 20 of the other 363 days of the year in 2011 and into the future? No doubt, some of them will. Will any of those well-dressed people paying good money to see big names at Birdland head downtown next year for the sweaty intimacy—and inherent disappointment—of Winter Jazzfest? That's more questionable, in my estimation; certainly, they will have to revamp things substantially to draw me back for any type of serious listening—to say nothing of reviewing—experience.

The result, it seems, is a relatively large gap between twentysomethings who like the buzz of the moment and the aging audience that can still recall when musicians like Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJohnette were young and promising.

Do we have a problem here?

If You Are At APAP

As noted earlier, I'll be moderating a "town hall" discussion on behalf of the Jazz Journalists Association at the annual APAP Conference in New York City next week. Here's the official session description. Note that it now has a location assigned to it. If you have any interest in the current and future state of jazz and jazz journalism, please drop in. We'd love to have you.

JJA Town Hall: The State of Jazz Journalism Now, and Immediate Prospects
1/8/2011 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Sheraton - Conference C

Session Description
What's happening now in jazz journalism, and what's happening next? Moderated by James Hale, Ottawa-based journalist/former vice-president of the JJA, this meeting wiil focus on the current landscape of professional music journalism, including developments in online/in-print publication hybrids, multimedia reporting, the rise of musician bloggers, using social networks to maximize audiences, realities of online income, advertising and other entrepreneurial strategies. Confirmed participants include: Darcy James Argue, composer/orchestra-leader/blogger; Jerry Portwood, Manhattan Media/City Arts-New York editor; Jana Herzen, Motema Records principal; Russ Davis, Moja Radio; JoAnn Kawell, Ozmotic Media; David Adler, AllAbout Jazz-New York, JazzTimes, the blog Leterland and editor, JJANews.org; Howard Mandel, JJA president. Attendee participation encouraged.

The Best of 2010

The results of the Village Voice year-end critics' poll are out today, and as the poll's organizer, Francis Davis, points out, it was Jason Moran's year.

You can follow the link to my ballot from Francis' article, but here it is, slightly annotated:

Top 10 New Releases

1. Jason Moran & The Bandwagon – Ten (Blue Note)
I fell in love with Moran's trio the first time I saw it live, and this recording captures everything that is great about it—the rhythmic movement, the leader's tremendous imagination regarding reharmonization, and the scope of his vision in terms of what constitutes terrific repertoire. I didn't get a chance to write about this CD, and I'm almost glad I didn't because I keep finding more things to love about it.

2. Rova & Nels Cline Singers – Celestial Septet (New World)
I did review this sprawling and engrossing release, and wonder if many of my colleagues discovered it, given that it seems not to have made a ripple. Here's how I summarized it in my DownBeat review: "There is much to explore here, and no shortage of high emotion and ecstatic release." If you haven't heard it, give it a shot.

3. Vijay Iyer – Solo (ACT)
It seems like a long, long time ago that I first encountered Vijay Iyer online during the very early days of the internet, and I can't think of another musician I've enjoyed hearing develop as much. His solo recording allows you to really savor the way he finds his way through a song. Like Moran, his vision is singular, and like Moran, he has demonstrated time and again that he has the stuff to stand beside any of the giants who influenced him. Anyone who still thinks contemporary jazz is in bad shape needs to be tied to chair with Iyer and Moran on repeat.

4. Paul Motian Trio – Lost In A Dream (ECM)
Beautiful, simply beautiful.

5. Mary Halvorson Quintet – Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12)
Halvorson won me over last year with her trio recording and work with Anthony Braxton, and Saturn Sings finds her expanding her scope and cementing her signature sound.

6. Kurt Rosenwinkel & OJM – Our Secret World (Word Of Mouth)
This is a relatively late release that I reviewed for DownBeat, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. I haven't enjoyed anything by Rosenwinkel as much as I liked his early work with Paul Motian, and I don't usually dig brassy big bands, but this combination really works. I was knocked out by the arrangements and the engineering, which allows Rosenwinkel's guitar to soar over the orchestra with as much clout as an entire horn section. I think my friend Peter Hum and I were the only ones who picked this, and we didn't even discuss it. Was it only released in Ottawa, or what?

7. Tomasz Stanko Quintet – Dark Eyes (ECM)
I came to Stanko late, but 20 years after the death of Miles Davis he has become the trumpeter who consistently moves me. I caught him live this summer for the first time—and had the honour of emceeing his show—and wasn't disappointed in the emotion he brings to his music. Always great to hear an older musician finding young associates, too.

8. Steve Coleman & Five Elements – Harvesting Semblances And Affinities (Pi)
I saw this band a few years ago, playing this same music, and hated it. Walked out, in fact! This recording has all the focus and shape that were missing in that concert, and I'm looking forward with anticipation to the next instalment of this music that Coleman is developing.

9. Ray Anderson/Marty Ehrlich Quartet – Hear You Say: Live In Willisau (Intuition)
This is another recording that dropped fairly late in the year. I hope people discover it, because it reminded me of a lot of the recordings I fell in love with—by David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Arthur Blythe and others—in the early 1980s. Great to hear Ray Anderson sounding so energized, and Marty Ehrlich is always a joy.

10. Allison Miller – Boom Tic Boom (Foxhaven)
I'm a bit surprised that this recording didn't rank higher with my fellow critics. Myra Melford kills on it, and the compositions are tremendously engaging.

Reissues
1. Henry Threadgill – Novus & Columbia Recordings Of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic)
2. John Carter & Bobby Bradford – The Complete Revelation Sessions (Mosaic Select)
3. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (Columbia Legacy)

Best Vocal CD
Rebecca Martin – When I Was Long Ago (Sunnyside)

Debut CD
Tania Gill – Bolger Station (Barnyard)

Latin Jazz CD
Marco Pereira – Essence (Kind Of Blue)

Addendum: You can peruse the entire top 50 here.

From Europe (and Japan) With Love

I've been on a digital kick lately, as I try to eliminate the clutter of CDs, magazines and newspapers from my office and bedroom, but with Christmas 10 days away it seems appropriate to focus on two European jazz labels that create pretty-looking (and sounding) things to go in someone's stocking or under their tree.

As one of the most-celebrated labels in the world, ECM Records holds few surprises for even the casual jazz or new music fan, but this holiday season it's the fortunate loved one who gets a copy of a new ECM 40th-anniversary catalogue produced by Tokyo Kirarasha. Edited by Kenny Inaoka with contributions from a number of Japanese writers—including my friend, U.S.-based pianist Nobu Stowe—the massive guide features small, glossy reproductions of every ECM release, as well as complete credits, listed separately in both English and Japanese. It might be the ultimate gift for ECM obsessives, and makes a fine companion to Horizons Touched, the book of essays ECM released through Granta a couple of years ago.

My second gift suggestion is slightly less esoteric, but no less interesting and beautiful. Thanks to a new partnership between Naxos of America Inc. and the German label Jazzwerkstatt, the latter will now have distribution in the U.S. Originally the name of West Germany's largest jazz festival, Jazzwerkstatt features recordings from the broadcast archives of East Germany's Rundfunk der DDR, live performances from the revamped Jazzwerkstatt Berlin-Brandenburg festival, and new works by Berlin-based artists.

The first three Jazzwerkstatt/Naxos releases feature small bands led by Dave Liebman, Perry Robinson and Gebhard Ullmann/Steve Swell, and they have the kind of esthetic values—including striking cover images and cardboard slipcovers—as ECM. Since these debut releases only hit the street on November 16th, chances are you'll be dropping a nice surprise on your jazz-loving gift recipient, and hipping him/her to a bunch of great new things to anticipate.

Happy giving.

Addendum: Nobu just informed me that the ECM guide is best ordered directly from ECM if you live in Europe, and from this site if you live somewhere else.

Taking The Temperature

I wrote my first online feature about jazz—a profile of pianist Andy Milne—15 years ago and, despite spectacular growth in digital media and significant changes in the channels that are used, there's still no real revenue stream for jazz journalists in 'new media'. Does anyone really know where we're going, and how we'll get there? When I wrote that Milne piece I was rubbing shoulders on a daily basis with some of the brightest minds in the information and communications technology sector, and I still got it wrong.

So, where are we headed? What's the state of the jazz journalism business today? Where are the markets, and where will they be tomorrow?

Those are some of the questions we'll tackle when the Jazz Journalists Association holds a town hall-style meeting on January 8 in New York City. The session is scheduled for 2-4 p.m., exact location TBA, but within the confines of either the Midtown Sheraton or Hilton hotels, headquarters for the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters. More details are here.

If you have an interest in this business, bring your comments, questions and predictions, and I'll see you there.

Bird Spice

All those wasted years of reading liner notes and jazz biographies has finally paid off in Andy Warholian fashion. Squirreling away the seemingly meaningless piece of knowledge (from page 73 of Ross Russell's book Bird Lives, to be precise) that Charlie Parker used to get high as a youth in Kansas City by ingesting nutmeg has resulted in my being awarded the Reader Comment of the Week award by Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.

That award, and a couple of bucks, will keep you high for about 15 minutes, and keep me laughing all weekend. The glory! I can't handle it.

Culture Creep

Blame Rolling Stone.

One of the attractive selling points of the iconic publication back when it was still a bi-folded newspaper based in San Francisco was that it "spoke to us" by combining contemporary popular music and cultural issues related to many young people and others who were exploring "alternatives."

That made a lot of sense when the non-musical issues were things like the way the FBI was targeting the Black Panther Party through its COINTELPRO program or the way actors like Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson were helping to subvert the dominant, conservative culture of Hollywood.

Now-- at least judging by Flip Music, the iPad-friendly music magazine included in Flipboard -- what we've come to is news of the stars of so-called reality TV shows like Real Atlanta Housewives and the obituaries of secondary actors like Leslie Nielsen. It's not like there aren't dozens of gossip publications -- print and digital -- where that kind of "news" can be found. Why put them in a vehicle that is designed to be about music?

Curse you, Jann Wenner.

2010 Long List

My full Top 10 list for 2010 will be published in the Village Voice again this year—in either the December 29 or January 5 issue—but here's what's in the running (at this point in the order in which I heard them):

Allison Miller – Boom Tic Boom
Paul Motian Trio – Lost In A Dream
Ralph Towner/Paolo Fresu – Chiaroscuro
Tomasz Stanko Quintet – Dark Eyes
John Geggie Trio + Donny McCaslin – Across The Sky
Jason Moran & The Bandwagon – Ten
Steve Coleman & Five Elements – Harvesting Semblances And Affinities
Rova & Nels Cline Singers – The Celestial Septet
Vijay Iyer – Solo
Mary Halvorson Quintet – Saturn Sings
Charles Lloyd Quartet – Mirror
Henry Threadgill Zooid – This Brings Us To, Volume 2
Ray Anderson/Marty Ehrlich Quartet – Hear You Say: Live In Willisau
Kurt Rosenwinkel & OJM – Our Secret World

So, four have to go. It's a particularly tough choice this year. All of these are quite worthy.

Improvising Online

It has been at least 25 years since the first time I heard someone opine that virtual concerts would soon supplement—if not actually replace—live music. We all know what's happened since then. Despite promising efforts—Michael Dorf's occasional live webcasts from his Knitting Factory in Lower Manhattan was one notable experiment—live simulcasts have largely been confined to the audio portion of the performances.

Adam Schatz, a 23-year-old promoter who runs a non-profit organization called Search & Restore is helping to change that. Search & Restore has posted a number of concert videos, and on November 29 Schatz is staging a fundraising event that promises to give fans of improvised music around the world a chance to witness some of the genre's leading performers.

Beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern time, Search & Restore's global webcast will feature 20 artists in continuous improvisation—passing the baton through a series of round-robin duets set in random order.

Featured in the webcast will be:

Andy Milne
DJ Logic
Ben Allison
Steven Bernstein
Ralph Alessi
Jason Lindner
Tim Lefebvre
Reid Anderson
Dan Weiss
Mark Guiliana
Roswell Rudd
Matt Wilson
Avishai Cohen (trumpet)
Theo Bleckmann
Henry Grimes
Andrew D'Angelo
Dave Binney

And others to be announced.

The webcast can be found here.

Creating A Jazz Hub

Veteran jazz publicist Don Lucoff has just announced the official launch of the Jazz Forward Coalition, a "global and unified voice for jazz." Joining Lucoff in developing the organization have been Michael Ricci, founder/owner of AllAboutJazz.com, Peter Gordon of Thirsty Ear Recordings, Martin Ashby of MCG Jazz, and Jeff Myers of THIS IS RED Agency. Here's the group's news release.

Jazz is as vital as ever, with vibrant local scenes, active educators and thousands of jazz recordings released each year. However, the jazz community lacks a central organization to coordinate and maximize its vast resources, and must take a mainstream new media approach through social and professional networking. The Jazz Forward Coalition (JFC) was formed by a consortium of industry leaders who seek to raise jazz's profile by enhancing its vitality and cultural relevance. The organization's leadership group includes: Peter Gordon (Thirsty Ear Recordings), Michael Ricci (All About Jazz), Marty Ashby (MCG Jazz), Don Lucoff (DL Media) and Jeff Myers (THIS IS RED Agency).

JFC plans to utilize existing and emerging technologies in order to sustain growth and expose jazz to an under-served community. The goals of the organization include creating a central hub for the jazz industry, a global brand for jazz, and a leadership voice for the jazz community. They plan to reach these goals through grants, fundraising efforts, music industry partnerships and with an online presence.

The work of the JFC will be focused on four levels: connectivity via a business-to-business website; a global voice that speaks both within the community and outside; a knowledge base library of tools bringing marketplace solutions to its membership base; and strategic partnerships to help with mainstream market penetration and economic viability.

JFC will create an interactive website that will allow jazz professionals to network, publish and exchange information and access marketplace tools. An online newsletter, "Business of Jazz," has already been developed to keep jazz professionals up-to-date on industry news and trends.

Radio Days

Thirty-two-year-old nostalgia rules my brain this week, in anticipation of Saturday's reunion for alumni of CKCU-FM and the blast of publicity surrounding next week's release of Bruce Springsteen's re-packaging of one of my seminal albums, Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

The fall of 1978 was a turning point for me. Out of school for a year, I'd put in nine months of work at a small arts magazine, learning the magazine business from the ground up, and had landed my first serious job in journalism (as dedicated as I was to the arts magazine, it was hard to view those nine months as anything more than a paid apprenticeship). At the end of the summer I got a chance to attend the reunion of The Allman Brothers Band in Macon, Georgia, which inspired what I considered my first substantial piece of music writing, and led to me selling a small article to Rolling Stone. In the fall, I began volunteering at CKCU-FM—landing several on-air shows that dominated my life for the next several years. This was heady stuff; it seemed that it might actually be possible to make some kind of living in arts journalism.

But, enough about me. What really has my thoughts occupied is how radio seems to have failed to keep pace with developments in jazz.

A casual look at the state of jazz in the late '70s/early '80s makes it appear that it was a relatively fallow time. Fusion had burned out and simultaneously turned in on itself and outward toward smooth jazz. The young Marsalis brothers were about to move out of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and launch the neo-conservative movement that would dominate the music for 20 years.

That much was true, but bubbling beneath the surface was a tremendous amount of great—albeit non-commercial—music by people like Henry Threadgill (as the leader of the trio Air), Arthur Blythe, David Murray, James Blood Ulmer and Ronald Shannon Jackson. What's more, exciting new bands like the Lounge Lizards and The Contortions were using elements of improvised music, and artists like Neneh Cherry were bursting out with dance hits that melded easily into playlists alongside Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis.

At CKCU and other radio stations these sounds were swept up and intermingled with smart pop bands like The Jam, Public Image Ltd., and DEVO.

Is that same thing happening today with artists like Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, Steve Coleman and Mary Halvorson? If it is, I'm not hearing it.

I'm trying not to let my 30-plus years of distance affect my thinking, and simultaneously hoping there's some young broadcaster out there who is mixing from Iyer into MIA, or from Lil' Wayne into Moran.

Any thoughts?

Journalists On The Bandstand

In Ottawa, November will be a significant month for two of the city's best-known musicians—both of whom also happen to be well-known journalists.

On November 12 at the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage, the Tim Murray Quintet—featuring trumpeter Charley Gordon, longtime newspaper columnist and editor—will be holding its 50th anniversary concert.

Pianist Murray, Gordon, trombonist Jerry Heath, bassist Sol Gunner and drummer John Sullivan started playing together in Kingston in 1960, at a house four of them shared while attending Queen's University. They also shared an interest in the hard bop popularized by Art Blakey and Horace Silver, and in the West Coast sound of Gerry Mulligan and others.

The band dispersed in the early '60s, but reunited—minus Sullivan—for several gigs in the '80s and '90s. In 2000, veteran drummer Scott Warren joined the ensemble. The NAC anniversary show will be partly a band retrospective, but several new original compositions will also be included.

On November 27 at Cafe Paradiso, pianist, newspaper editor and blogger Peter Hum will officially launch his long-awaited debut CD, A Boy's Journey.

An astute jazz critic (he and I shared reviewing duties at The Ottawa Citizen for a decade) Hum has long had his performing career on a slow boil while he raised a family and developed his journalism career. Backed by a superb band—saxophonists Nathan Cepelinski and Kenji Omae, bassist Alec Walkington and drummer Ted Warren—he recorded an album of highly lyrical original compositions after playing them in public a couple of years ago. Those who witnessed that show have been anticipating the eventual CD.

Omae, who lives in South Korea, won't be at the launch, but he'll be replaced by another of Hum's longtime collaborators, guitarist Mike Rud.