From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V3 #621 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Monday, November 19 2001 Volume 03 : Number 621 In this issue: - Re: c a n - suggestions? Re: Tommy Flanagan Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Fwd: Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke Panama Francis Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) Re: R.I.P. Tommy Flanagan [was RE: R.I.P. Michael Karoli (Can)] Re: Panama Francis ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:02:02 -0500 From: Perfect Sound Forever Subject: Re: c a n - suggestions? Jon said: > << I have been meaning to venture beyond my single can record, ege > bamyasi. Any suggestions where to head next would be greatly > appreciated. >> > > Tago Mago, Tago Mago, Tago Mago! in my opinion, the best rock record ever > made. > That one is definitely in my all-time top 10. Cannibalism 1 is a good sampler though I enjoy all the early records which a lot of that comp is culled from: Monster Movie, Tago, Soundtracks, Ege. Delay (some of their earliest pre-debut recordings) is also a fine record. A shame that the Can "reunion" never made it here to the States. The show that I caught with Damo Suzuki and Michael at the Cooler in '98 was a lot of fun. Damo came around and hugged everyone who was still there at the end at about 3AM. Best, Jason - -- Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine perfect-sound@furious.com http://www.furious.com/perfect - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:16:14 -0600 From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Tommy Flanagan Just got my computer up & running after moving over the weekend. This may have been posted by now, though it wasn't in the recently arrived digest: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/obituaries/19FLAN.html November 19, 2001 Tommy Flanagan, Elegant Jazz Pianist, Is Dead at 71 By BEN RATLIFF ommy Flanagan, a jazz pianist who with a classic trio set a high standard for elegance in mainstream postwar jazz, died Friday night at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Manhattan. The cause was an arterial aneurysm, said his wife, Diane Flanagan. Mr. Flanagan, a distinguished accompanist who came into his own as a leader late in his career, stood in the stylistic tradition of Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. All were technical wizards who played sustained single- note lines and who integrated rhythmic and melodic ideas with both left hand and right hand. Also like those predecessors, Mr. Flanagan was a connoisseur of American-song obscurities, and he spent relatively little time in the medium of the blues. His touch at the keyboard was clear and illuminating; his art was urbane and refined. The youngest of six children, Mr. Flanagan was born in Detroit. He began studying the clarinet at age 6 and started piano lessons when he was 11. In Mr. Flanagan's youth Detroit was such an important center for jazz that it was possible to play in a nationally known band without leaving town; its Blue Bird Inn, where he was long part of the house band that played with visiting stars, was one of the most hallowed jazz clubs in the country. (One of Mr. Flanagan's own best compositions is a tribute to the club, "Beyond the Blue Bird.") In his hometown he was surrounded by a loose circle of musicians from the same generation who like him would deeply affect the jazz tradition: the brothers Elvin, Hank and Thad Jones, playing drums, piano and trumpet; the vibraphonist Milt Jackson; the pianist Barry Harris; the bassist Paul Chambers; the guitarist Kenny Burrell; and the singer Betty Carter. Mr. Flanagan moved to New York in 1956, at the tail end of Charlie Parker's reign, and learned bebop through the filter of his own strengths as a distinctly witty, fluid language. He handled its labyrinthine progressions of chords like a painter with a fine brush; he had the speed but not the rattling intensity of Bud Powell, another close colleague after Mr. Flanagan's move to New York. In 1956 during the Newport summer jazz festival Mr. Flanagan first accompanied Ella Fitzgerald, a job that would keep him occupied for a good deal of the next 20 years; he also acted as her musical director. "He really started getting me singing what I heard inside and what I wanted to get out," she said in 1983. Mr. Flanagan worked with Fitzgerald from 1962 to 1965, then again from 1968 until 1978; he also worked for Tony Bennett, and as a sideman on many important jazz records, including John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" and Sonny Rollins's "Saxophone Colossus," and others by Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, Gene Ammons and Coleman Hawkins. In 1978 Mr. Flanagan had a heart attack and stopped working for Fitzgerald. But then he slowly began to establish himself as an individual artist of the first order, and in the early 1990's, with trio albums like "Jazz Poet" (1989) and "Let's" (1993), he was suddenly one of the most celebrated figures in jazz. The critic Gary Giddins wrote in his book "Visions of Jazz" that Mr. Flanagan had "perfected his own niche, a style beyond style, where the only appropriate comparisons are between his inspired performances and those that are merely characteristic." He created a fluid, democratic trio, rather than one featuring a pianist with accompanists. This trio - including the bassists George Mraz and Peter Washington, and the drummers Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash and most recently Albert Heath - forged a deep repertory out of bebop miniatures, the work of jazz composers like Billy Strayhorn and Thad Jones, and little-known pieces from the American songbook. His trio created arrangements lined with short improvisations, with one player's solo framed by concise phrases worked out between the other two musicians. A sense of self- restraint permeated all the band's performances, with solo breaks that were not too long and all ideas tastefully wrapped up; the melody line never disappeared under his improvisations. Mr. Flanagan's touch and rhythmic bounce connoted the spontaneity of jazz, and yet the shape of his playing gave evidence that he could see a map of the entire piece. A quiet man with a fringe of white hair, Mr. Flanagan had in recent years been working with a heart condition, but his performance schedule remained unabated. For the last several years he played two consecutive weeks at the Village Vanguard twice a year. One of his most recent recordings was "Sunset and the Mockingbird: The Birthday Concert," recorded live at the Vanguard in March 1998. He was to appear at Iridium for the weeks including Christmas and New Year's Eve. He won the distinguished Danish Jazzpar Prize in 1993. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Tommy Flanagan Jr. of Redondo Beach, Calif.; two daughters, Rachel Flanagan Jackson of Lemoore, Calif., and Jennifer Flanagan of the San Diego area; and six grandchildren. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:51:10 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 17:57:40 -0500 David Keffer wrote: > > > > I have seen that the new cd "Insignificance" by Jim O'Rourke is out on Drag > City. If anybody on the list has heard it, let's hear a review. I am > interested but have reservations. By my reckoning, this is the fourth > "pop" record that O'Rourke has released on Drag City, the first three being: > Bad Timing (1997) > Eureka (1999) > Halfway to a Threeway (1999) > Each release in this series has been progressively worse (less original, > more redundant). Does the new record, Insignificance continue this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ With such a title, I would definitely be scared. If you trust what people do with products, what is written on the packaging is usually what you get inside. Maybe O'Rourke used that title to cover his ass: if you think that the record sucks, you were warned :-). Patrice. > downward trend, or is it something different? Thanks. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:59:42 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 11:05:22 -0500 Mike Chamberlain wrote: > > > Which also goes to show that looking to a physicist for views on > > religion is about as trustworthy as, say, looking to a linguist for > > views on politics. Or basing your taste in music on what Linus > > Torvalds listens to. > > Nah, I just think that Weinberg didn't get out too much. Happy to know that you are familiar with the man's life. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 18:05:39 +0100 (CET) From: =?iso-8859-1?q?efr=E9n=20del=20valle?= Subject: Fwd: Re: Review Request: Insignificance by Jim O'Rourke > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > With such a title, I would definitely be scared. If > you trust what people > do with products, what is written on the packaging > is usually what you get > inside. Maybe O'Rourke used that title to cover his > ass: if you think > that the record sucks, you were warned :-). > > Patrice. > > > downward trend, or is it something different? > Thanks. Patrice, you're on the right track. Absolutely!. I heard "Insignificance" today and I was absolutely dissappointed, even more than with "Eureka". I have no great insights on the album: it just sucks. I hated the vocals, the rocky guitars, the songs themselves. If someone's looking for innovation, you won't find it here, but neither you'll find beautiful pop songs. I'm starting to wonder if O'Rourke has done any good so far! Maybe just as a collaborator. Best, Efrén _______________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Messenger Comunicación instantánea gratis con tu gente. http://messenger.yahoo.es - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 18:05:01 GMT From: Parry Gettelman Subject: Panama Francis Thanks for the link to the obit. Panama was a charming and fascinating guy. Despite ill health in recent years, he was still quite the firebrand when any of his favorite topics came up. He was very annoyed that New Orleans was considered the birthplace of jazz, because he said when he was a tiny kid, you could hear similar music in Miami, coming from the same African-Caribbean roots, but white people never heard it because the city was much more segregated than New Orleans, so people think the jazz scene there never existed. He remembered playing the drum starting as a five-year-old w/ a brass band in funeral parades, just like they had in New Orleans, and he had very old posters from jazz groups that played all over in Florida. He said when he was young, every town in Florida had its own band (except Orlando, he loved to recount, because Orlando was nothing but a teensy cowtown, "and even Alachua had its own band"). He said New Orleans just had a better "chamber of commerce" than other cities and had been very clever about advertising its role in the development of jazz. He also talked a fair bit about racism within the African-American jazz community in the early days, and how he was always supposed to stand in the back when photographs were taken because he was so dark-skinned. I think he found this especially galling because his family had actually enjoyed some stature back home in the Caribbean. His family had owned valuable property, I think in the Bahamas, but was cheated out of it at some point. Panama had a couple Orlando buddies who had played w/ Ray Charles at one time or another and sometimes they would all get going on the topic of how so many people in Orlando had helped him when he was just a nobody, and he snubbed all of them once he got famous. Panama always got quite incensed about the fact that folks like Monk "couldn't play" and was monumentally indignant over the fact that people couldn't dance to jazz anymore. Of course, he never got to attend one of Sam Rivers' Orlando shows w/ the big band, where there was generally a lot of dancing, although I'm not sure Panama would have approved of some of those chords, in any case... I only got to hear him play a few times, but it was always a pleasure. It's a shame his health prevented him from playing more and finishing that book he was always talking about writing. He was sure full of stories. Parry - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:36:58 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 22:49:21 -0600 Joseph Zitt wrote: > > Sure: but I do see a goofy tendency in people to assume that someone who > excels in one field is automatically equally expert in others. > > "Why are we listening to this guy?" > "He won a Nobel Prize in something or other!" > "Oh, then he must know what he's talking about here!" > > Thus people get their politics from pop stars and role modeling from > boxers. There is a slight difference since Weinberg has been writing about these issues for a while. And (to counter an attack) with enough wit to be invited in many universities to express his ideas on these topics. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:28:16 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 05:24:47 +0000 "Bill Ashline" wrote: > > It's fame's cruel joke to be certain, but it's also a problem with those who > take their information at face value and don't pursue things further. I got > my politics initially by listening to a lot of early punk and of course a > lot of sixties stuff. If it had stopped with that, the politics would have > likely disappeared from my concerns. I was just reading a statement from > various Nobel Prize winners and well-known philosophers criticizing the war > in Afghanistan. Seems to me like a worthy application of one's "fame." > Better than just cranking out another fame-enhancing book. (This statement > will no doubt play well with a certain sector of the list that likes to wear > its anti-intellectualism on its sleeves.) People should use the efforts of > famous people to become "alert." After becoming alert, they should wake up > on their own. Being alert and being infatuated with some fashionable theories are two different things. Free to you to assume that being on top of the flavor of the month intellectual theory makes you an alert person (and put the others in the sleepy category). Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:19:43 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 00:21:55 -0600 Joseph Zitt wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 12:17:08AM -0500, Mike Chamberlain wrote: > > on 11/16/01 5:19 PM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel@ichips.intel.com wrote: > > > > > > > > Reminds me the statement from Weinberg: > > > > > > "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people > > > can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion." > > > > I guess that capitalism and materialism would then qualify as, if not > > exactly religions, then religious in the same sense. > > Which also goes to show that looking to a physicist for views on > religion is about as trustworthy as, say, looking to a linguist for Interesting way of looking at things... You would have judged the opinion of an average joe on theoretical physics as not trustworthy, I would have understood. But is not religion something that all of us (often against our will) are all drowned in it (specially sickening in the US...)? Since our lives depend a lot on what religion (in a way not so different than with politics), shouldn't we all have something relevant to say about it? By following your logic to the extreme (people outside a field being not qualified to say anything worht), you end up with obscurantism, where regardless of what bullshit you are saying, only the members of your church (in the general sense) have something relevant to say. This reminds me of Chomski saying that he never had any problem to discuss with scientific audiences, and only when addressing human science ones, he was questioned for not having the correct (academic) background. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:42:55 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 05:24:47 +0000 "Bill Ashline" wrote: > > It's fame's cruel joke to be certain, but it's also a problem with those who > take their information at face value and don't pursue things further. I got > my politics initially by listening to a lot of early punk and of course a > lot of sixties stuff. If it had stopped with that, the politics would have > likely disappeared from my concerns. I was just reading a statement from > various Nobel Prize winners and well-known philosophers criticizing the war > in Afghanistan. Seems to me like a worthy application of one's "fame." > Better than just cranking out another fame-enhancing book. (This statement > will no doubt play well with a certain sector of the list that likes to wear > its anti-intellectualism on its sleeves.) People should use the efforts of If by "anti-intellectualism" you mean the class of people who don't automatically identify obscurity and byzantine arguments with deepness, I guess you hit it right. Although sometimes I can't prevent myself from reading your "anti-intellectualism" as "anti-my-intellectualism". Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:10:41 -0800 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: re. zorn/zionism (and some music stuff) On Mon, 19 Nov 2001 19:17:28 "Mike Chamberlain" wrote: > > I don't know shit about his life. It does appear from his statement, > however, that he didn't know much about human nature. Let's say, more modestly, that his opinion is not yours, and that this does not prevent him (and the people who agree with him) to have a life. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 15:27:12 -0500 From: "David Beardsley" Subject: Re: R.I.P. Tommy Flanagan [was RE: R.I.P. Michael Karoli (Can)] - ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Smith > There have been no further details released regarding Flanagan yet, as far > as I have seen. No Times obit as yet. The news popped up on http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/obituaries/19FLAN.html * David Beardsley * http://biink.com * http://mp3.com/davidbeardsley - - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:59:37 -0800 From: Skip Heller Subject: Re: Panama Francis It's nice to see someone discuss Panama at length. He was on more great records than you can count, was a major figure in quality rhythm'n'blues, and definitely deserves the props. skip h - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V3 #621 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. 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