Playlist 9/5/05 + Why ECM Don't Give Us Play
Artist "Song Title" - Album Title [Record Label]
Frank Lowe "Epistrophy" - Fresh [Arista Freedom]
Paul Bley "Open,To Love" - Open, To Love [ECM]
Ian Smith "Don't Even Think About It" - Daybreak [Emanem]
World Saxophone Quartet "Come Sunday" - Plays Duke Ellington [Nonesuch]
The Vandermark 5 "Auto Topography (for Archie Shepp)" - Acoustic Machine [Atavistic]
Steve Reid "Odyssey of the Oblong Square (Side B)" - Odyssey of the Oblong Square [Mustevic]
Roland P. Young "Velvet Dream" - Isophonic Boogie Woogie [Flow Chart]
McCo "For A.K." - Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol. III [Leo]
Sun Ensemble (David Wertman) "Dance of the Mid-East Madness" - Wide Eye Culture [Sunmuse]
Steve Kuhn "Oceans in the Sky" - Remembering Tomorrow [ECM]
The Lounge Lizards "They Were Insane" - Live in Tokyo [Island]
Borbetomagus "Bathed in the Blood of the Lamb (excerpt)" - Experience the Magic of... [Agaric]
Spent an hour before the show really digging through the jazz vinyl archive of WUOG. I had certainly perused the library, but never ravaged. I knew our collection was stellar in terms of bop and cool jazz, but we do have some incredible avant-garde material, too. Last week I played some Anthony Braxton (we have some seriously out of print LP box sets, too) and this week I found some Frank Lowe, Paul Bley, Oliver Lake, and Kenny Wheeler, which brings me to the topic: Why isn't WUOG serviced by the mighty ECM Records anymore? First of all, the German label doesn't have a distribution deal with Warner Bros. like they did in the '70s and part of the '80s or with BMG Classics like they had in the '90s. It's indicative of trend: free/avant-garde jazz wasn't the right kind of challenging for major labels anymore. At one point in American music history, free-jazz was a thriving, even lucrative business in the hands of Archie Shepp, later-period John Coltrane (much to the chagrin of his bop admirers), and Pharoah Sanders. But as the late '70s and '80s rolled around, Coltrane - basically the poster boy even though most sax players were already beating him at his own game - had died, people lost interest, and the players in the scene weren't really doing anything revolutionary. I won't say the '80s was a stale or dark time for avant-garde jazz (some incredible records came out in that decade), but we can certainly lay some blame on the lame trad-jazz revivalists like Wynton Marsalis. (Sidenote: Out of this division came specialty imprints like the aforementioned "BMG Classics" that implies avant-garde jazz is only for a select crowd, which might be true in some cases, but it excludes an entire listening audience who might share in that aesthetic.) Plenty's been written on Marsalis's arrogant attitude with jazz critic Stanley Crouch (including a violent breakout between Crouch and pianist Matthew Shipp at a jazz awards show), so I won't delve further (surprisingly his brother Branford would sign David S. Ware to Columbia's jazz label for a couple spectacular albums), but I'd like to think the music never went away, just underground, and became more innovative and challenging in the process. And it's been regaining critical speed somewhat in the past few years with the success of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series (though I could really do without most of their DJ/electronic-jazz collaborations), but there's an incredible wealth of work out there that needs to be heard. (I have a rant about Pitchfork's treatment of jazz for a later time.)
Anyway, with all that said... ECM Records, send WUOG CDs. The Dave Holland and Steve Kuhn reissues, the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble CDs... just no Keith Jarrett. :)
Frank Lowe "Epistrophy" - Fresh [Arista Freedom]
Paul Bley "Open,To Love" - Open, To Love [ECM]
Ian Smith "Don't Even Think About It" - Daybreak [Emanem]
World Saxophone Quartet "Come Sunday" - Plays Duke Ellington [Nonesuch]
The Vandermark 5 "Auto Topography (for Archie Shepp)" - Acoustic Machine [Atavistic]
Steve Reid "Odyssey of the Oblong Square (Side B)" - Odyssey of the Oblong Square [Mustevic]
Roland P. Young "Velvet Dream" - Isophonic Boogie Woogie [Flow Chart]
McCo "For A.K." - Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol. III [Leo]
Sun Ensemble (David Wertman) "Dance of the Mid-East Madness" - Wide Eye Culture [Sunmuse]
Steve Kuhn "Oceans in the Sky" - Remembering Tomorrow [ECM]
The Lounge Lizards "They Were Insane" - Live in Tokyo [Island]
Borbetomagus "Bathed in the Blood of the Lamb (excerpt)" - Experience the Magic of... [Agaric]
Spent an hour before the show really digging through the jazz vinyl archive of WUOG. I had certainly perused the library, but never ravaged. I knew our collection was stellar in terms of bop and cool jazz, but we do have some incredible avant-garde material, too. Last week I played some Anthony Braxton (we have some seriously out of print LP box sets, too) and this week I found some Frank Lowe, Paul Bley, Oliver Lake, and Kenny Wheeler, which brings me to the topic: Why isn't WUOG serviced by the mighty ECM Records anymore? First of all, the German label doesn't have a distribution deal with Warner Bros. like they did in the '70s and part of the '80s or with BMG Classics like they had in the '90s. It's indicative of trend: free/avant-garde jazz wasn't the right kind of challenging for major labels anymore. At one point in American music history, free-jazz was a thriving, even lucrative business in the hands of Archie Shepp, later-period John Coltrane (much to the chagrin of his bop admirers), and Pharoah Sanders. But as the late '70s and '80s rolled around, Coltrane - basically the poster boy even though most sax players were already beating him at his own game - had died, people lost interest, and the players in the scene weren't really doing anything revolutionary. I won't say the '80s was a stale or dark time for avant-garde jazz (some incredible records came out in that decade), but we can certainly lay some blame on the lame trad-jazz revivalists like Wynton Marsalis. (Sidenote: Out of this division came specialty imprints like the aforementioned "BMG Classics" that implies avant-garde jazz is only for a select crowd, which might be true in some cases, but it excludes an entire listening audience who might share in that aesthetic.) Plenty's been written on Marsalis's arrogant attitude with jazz critic Stanley Crouch (including a violent breakout between Crouch and pianist Matthew Shipp at a jazz awards show), so I won't delve further (surprisingly his brother Branford would sign David S. Ware to Columbia's jazz label for a couple spectacular albums), but I'd like to think the music never went away, just underground, and became more innovative and challenging in the process. And it's been regaining critical speed somewhat in the past few years with the success of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series (though I could really do without most of their DJ/electronic-jazz collaborations), but there's an incredible wealth of work out there that needs to be heard. (I have a rant about Pitchfork's treatment of jazz for a later time.)
Anyway, with all that said... ECM Records, send WUOG CDs. The Dave Holland and Steve Kuhn reissues, the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble CDs... just no Keith Jarrett. :)
posted by Lars Gotrich at 8:58 PM
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