Just so we’re all on the same page here, people.
The ever-entertaining Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere spent a large part of last summer and autumn sneering about how bad Avatar was going to be; the actual experience of the film turned him around, and he now regards it with the same sort of soulful eyes that Charlie Dog puts on when he wants to impress a potential master. So these days he feels compelled to call out the infidels, as it were, and today he issued a “take that” to AICN’s Mr. Beaks and CHUD’s Devin Faraci (or, as I like to call them, “the guys with the beards”) and “all the rest of the anti-Avatar fanboys” who compound their error by liking the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Said “take that” was in the form of a previously posted comment from someone with the handle “Plastique Elephant” who begins thusly: “Like people who can’t dig Arcade Fire’s Funeral, I’d find it hard to respect anybody who can’t enjoy this bloody masterpiece.” Reading that, I spit out my coffee. I thought about making the thing a “comment we never finished reading” item, but I read the rest in any case, and I left a comment on Jeff’s thread. I said it there, and I’m gonna say it here. Just so everyone knows where I’m coming from, man:
“That Arcade Fire album is a lotta overwrought, off-key, charmless, arty Canadian crap. Seriously: rock and roll is dead, alternative rock is dead, all forms of rock are dead. Free jazz lives. Peter Brotzmann rules. Get with the motherfucking program, people.”
You dig?
I certainly dig Peter Brotzmann. Less so what I take as the declaration itself, that all forms of rock are dead. What irks me is the claim’s readiness to disengage with a vast swath of art because of the prevalence of things you find overwrought, charmless, arty(?) – and probably a great deal many other unpleasant sounds that dominate your average radio station. Do the overwrought qualities that some are seeing in, say, Avatar have more weight somehow? Is it a technical thing? Is it a film critic thing, that this is what you have chosen to focus on, and outside of it there’s a greater capacity for discriminating taste? Or is it simply and utterly, you know, a personal thing?
And do note that I believe the comment to have been made largely in jest, as knowing hyperbole. And that the antipathy toward Arcade Fire is real.
Not sure I dig. Funeral isn’t an unimpeachable masterpiece, but the second half is pretty strong. I have a soft spot for certain types of bombast, and stuff like “Wake Up” and “In the Backseat” hits said soft spot. Neon Bible is a more consistently good album despite some absolutely godawful lyrics, like “I’m standing on the stage of fear and self-doubt.” Win Butler should change his name to Emo Metaphor Fail Butler.
Glenn: I’m turning 30 tomorrow. Any advice for what to do when those kids just won’t get off your lawn?
I have never heard an Arcade Fire song from beginning to end, but the snippets I have heard keep me from ever wanting to. I’ve seen Peter Brötzmann live more than once (at now-defunct NY venues like Tonic and the Cooler), and the entire Last Exit discography (for those who don’t know, Last Exit was an amazing jazz/metal group Brötzmann co-led in the ’80s and early ’90s, with Bill Laswell on bass, Sonny Sharrock on guitar, and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums) is permanently installed in my iPod. I listen to way too much metal to ever say rock music is dead, though lately a lot of extreme metal’s been getting so weird and abstruse it’s almost fairer to compare it to Elliott Carter than Black Sabbath. And I’m still passing on Avatar for all the reasons I cited in the earlier thread: the dialogue in the commercials makes my head hurt, it’s too damn long, and I don’t like the look of the blue Thundercats.
The middle class determines what will survive and the avant garde will die right behind polemical crap. As much as I like some of it… good luck, free jazz.
We understand that you generally won’t seriously criticize another member of the frat, so “ever-entertaining” is as close as you can get to acknowledging that Wells is an off-the-wall nut, and that his fascination with generically denouncing the so-called “Eloi” (a grand misnomer) distracts from his own low-to-middlebrow life and questionable judgement, and that one can’t adequately call him on his own blog for danger of being banished, so I say these things here. I much more respect Mr. Kenny and his analysis of film all the way back to the invention of shadows, as it were.
i love free jazz, but am certainly prone to enjoy overwrought charmless arty crap as well. however, i don’t understand the fascination with arcade fire. at all.
Wow! I showed this post to My Lovely Wife, and she said, “Boy, are you angry,” and I was like, “What? The obviousness of the hyperbole surely ameliorates that,” and she said, “Not so much.” Just goes to prove I should always listen to her.
Look: Jonathan W. is correct when acknowledging the comment was made at least in part in jest…and that my antipathy for Arcade Fire is real. I recently did some fall/winter cleaning of the spaces where I keep DVDs and CDs, and actually surprised myself with how many contemporary/alternative/what-have-you rock titles I found expendable. Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Duh, Expander, Exploder, whatever; stuff seemed interesting at the time but like Elvis said, just don’t move me. And it’s true; I do have less curiosity about/engagement with current “rock” and its offshoots than I have had for many years. I still read MOJO, but half-heartedly; more often I find keys to my heart’s desire in Wire, or the Downtown Music Gallery’s newsletter.
My most recent visit to Manhattan’s Other Music (where one of my most favorite people in the world, Mikey IQ Jones, is employed) yielded very few “rock” purchases: two Kraftwerk remasters, the Broadcast/Focus Group collab, and Roj’s Ghost Box debut.
Is it a “get off my lawn” thing? I dunno; I still love noise, whether it comes from the latest Sunn O))) exploration or Fripp’s manic soloing on the “Zoom Club” Crimson CD, which I just tracked down. Maybe I now love noise, and blowing, more than songs, or rather, songs that aren’t played/sung by Ellington, Armstrong, or Fitzgerald. I still love, as most of you know, the Feelies. And Ubu. But the vocal rock that’s represented in its way by Arcade Fire DOES seem very very tired to these ears. Seriously.
And again—kind of half kidding. Except for the love of Brotzmann, who really DOES rule. And everybody should check out the CD by Brown WIng Overdrive, a trio featuring Mikey and DMG’s Chuck Bettis, that sounds like something you’d hear on Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk” music if electronic instruments had been around then.
I think its fair enough to declare ‘rock is dead’, even if i do keep buying up indie rock albums. I’m not sure I agree with the commenter above who asserts that “the middle class determines what will survive”. I venture that there are a lot more people today who listen to Ornette Coleman than Ray Conniff. The middle class determine what gets produced in the most units (or downloads … disposable, either way). The true believers keep the flame alive. I think I’ll put on some Grachan Moncur…
I don’t know about Coleman v. Conniff. In certain trendy city spots perhaps. Look, the simplest melodies are the ones that last. If it has too many notes, then enjoy it while you can. Maybe it’s all relative, though… and the middle class of 2250 will be able to whistle along with Sun Ra.
This is all coming from a saxophone player, by the way, and one who loves to play Monk.
I think there’s still plenty of viable-but-contemporary rock and roll being made. For an example from this year, I would point to and endorse Future of the Left. Their name may make them sound like soggy neo-U2 “political” rock, but hoo boy, are they anything but.
And speaking of lasting simple melodies… I thought it was an interesting coincidence that Wang Chung’s “Dance Hall Days” appeared earlier this year simultaneously in DUPLICITY, ADVENTURELAND and the commercial for Major League Baseball 2K9
I say this, as Glenn might say, free of snark.
How many people actually believe Jeff has ever listened to Arcade Fire before?…
I always pegged Wells’ CD collection to be anchored by Sinatra’s DUETS, Clapton’s UNPLUGGED and, of course, to “keep it real”… Carole King’s TAPESTRY.
There may be an unopened Dylan soundtrack to Scorsese’s NO DIRECTION HOME in there somewhere.
@ Greg Mottola: Grachan Moncur, oh yes; fantastic. This weekend I’ve been educating myself on Prince Lasha, whose recently reissued “Insight” is knocking a few books off my shelf. Great stuff, and the only other thing with him in my current library is, of course, Dolphy’s “Iron Man.”
I feel dumber than usual, because I don’t recognize any of the bands named in this post or comments thread. But, that’s the great thing about all art forms: there’s always new stuff to discover, explore, and engage with, and I have a few names to get me started…
What’s it like being a self-loathing hipster, Glenn? 😉
Jeez, Don, I dunno. I didn’t think that an enthusiasm for “out” jazz and being a hipster had been seriously associated with each other much since shortly after Thomas Pynchon’s “V” was published. These days the term seems to mean anything vaguely slack and irritating: guys in trucker hats drinking PBR, latter-day refugees from Jackie 60, white fellows who affect hip-hop patois, what have you. And anyone who ticks off Armond White, of course. It’s all so confusing!
Re: “The middle class determines what will survive.” I’m guessing she’s not on your fave list, Chris O., which is fine with me. But you know, ask Patti Smith. From bebop to the Velvets – not to mention Georg Grosz or, knock wood, Guy Maddin – it seems to me the opposite is true. Sales at the time are one thing, survival (in the Artistic Immortality sense) another.
I wasn’t talking about sales at all. Jury’s out on all of it, of course – and really out on Maddin – but what will survive out of those folks? Patti Smith’s cover songs; “Candy Says” & “Sweet Jane”; “Oleo”, “Salt Peanuts” & “Take Five” (probably “So What”); and… I think Magritte will outlive Grosz.
As for being “on my fave list,” don’t get me wrong… I agree with Tom Russell about the excitement of discovering new stuff. I enjoy Mysteries Of The Organism as much as The Beatles’ Revolver. I don’t quite get the Arcade Fire/Avatar sentimment on HE, but at the same time I wouldn’t discount the Candadian band just because their melodies are digestible and they’re enjoying some mainstream success.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa there, Chris O.; my dislike of Arcade Fire has zip to do with relatively large numbers of people buying their records. I dislike/discount them because they suck. To my ears, that is. That’s all. But when you get down to it, saying that “I’d find it hard to respect anybody” who didn’t like an Arcade Fire album is chauvinism of a particularly obnoxious sort. I mean, what if Stephen Hawking can’t quite get into “Funeral,” you know? Or Nelson Mandela? “Oh, okay, for you I make an exception…”
Thanks for the clarification and I completely agree re: chauvinism – the narrow minded ball rolls both ways. But weren’t you saying that all rock, art rock and indie rock is dead? And isn’t that chauvinism of its own sort? Okay, okay, tongue in cheek, I get it and I’ll stop. But what if Stephen Hawking thought that Roland Rashaan Kirk playing more than one horn was showboating and egregiously excessive? I’d better see a post on his blog.
Oh and be warned… Brian Eno apparently told Coldplay that glam rock will be huge again. These little whippersnapper fanboys will be wearing the rouge and glitter.
Now, what do you think about this Jack White guy…
“Like people who can’t dig Arcade Fire’s Funeral, I’d find it hard to respect anybody who can’t enjoy this bloody masterpiece.”
Misplaced modifier?
Glenn, how much would it take to convince you to draw up a short list of good places to start in music? That sounds very broad–like, your own short guide to listening? Okay, like, ten bands/artists (or albums) you love, artists of whom we probably haven’t heard. Like, “Tell ya what, kid, why don’t you start here?”
Because I’m drowning in this thread a little.
@Chris O.: So far as I know, we weren’t arguing taste – just your notion that ‘the middle class’ is the arbiter of artistic longevity. I agree with you that Magritte will outlast Grosz, but are you implying that it’s because Magritte is more acceptable to the bourgeoisie? If so, a fascinating argument I’d love to hear amplified, and I’m not being sarcastic at all. And for the record, I’m also no unthinking basher of ‘the middle class,’ which these days I kind of miss. I just don’t think their track record in guessing what will last artistically is stellar.
Hey guys, is this where the hipsters are hanging out tonight??
Before anything starts, that was just a joke. But good Lord…free jazz? Random and disconnected knocks on the middle class? This thread is my own personal nightmare.
Good evening to you all!
Oh, Bill, you scalawag, you.
John M: Oh good lord, whittling stuff down to a mere ten is a real mind-boggling idea. Even with respect to Bill’s obvious favorite genre, free jazz, ten ain’t enough. But it I were to give you a primer on it, I’d tell you to start with some non-free records, because the genre, like abstract expressionism, is best appreciated within a certain context. In that respect, Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Music,” featuring both John Coltrane AND Coleman Hawkins, is an exemplary bridge between old and new. Then check out some modern jazz records with heavy emphasis on improvisation: Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and “My Favorite Things,” Ornette Coleman’s “Tomorrow is the Question” and the classically-titled “This Is Our Music.” And whatever album “Lonely Woman” is on. THEN check out Coltrane’s “Ascension,” Coleman’s “Free Jazz,” Albert Ayler’s “Spiritual Unity,” Cecil Taylor’s “Nefertiti The Beautiful One Has Come,” Archie Shepp’s “Fire Music,” Jackie McLean’s “Old and New Gospel” with Ornette. THEN check out Peter Brotzmann’s massive “Machine Gun, ” the European answer to most of the above. And if you like that, I’ll give you another list!
@bill, you know my politics, but the snob-leftist take on ‘the middle class’ has been driving me nuts since Nathanael West. Here’s hoping we get to discuss same in some other context.
No disrespect to free jazz. Honestly. I tried to like it, and outside of a few individual pieces, I just never connected to it. I have some CDs in my collection, and I feel like a poser because of it.
@Tom – “the snob-leftist take on ‘the middle class’ has been driving me nuts since Nathanael West.”
Man, you’re old! Ha ha, no, but really. Yes, me too, but yes, also, I’m not going to try and stir anything up. Have a good night, everybody.
Practically, it starts with schools, for one. There’s no time to work in Ornette Coleman or Grosz when you have to cover Miles Davis and Picasso. How much play does Dvorak or Penderecki get in music classes? Minimal. Baroque (the simple melodies) and Romantic (simple melodies with flair) reign. Pretty soon those guys left behind, unless you’re a fortunate soul with an interest in continuing education and self-directed learning (who can/will also pass that ethic on to your kids). Sadly, the latter ain’t the masses.
Idealistically, I guess it also goes back to the idea that the newness of the avant garde alone isn’t enough to save it. There’s got to be something else there, something personal that’ll resonate with the workin’ man in time. (Now my mind is wondering back to Kim Morgan attaching Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner to Von Trier’s “Anti-Christ” earlier today.) Again, or else it’s like the polemical and those things die every day.
As a small observational sample, I was at the Surrealism & Dada exhibition in Cincinnati in the spring and you could just see the reactions of people going from Duchamp, Breton, Ernst, Miro, Desnos to early Pollack, Dali and they would just stop in their tracks and take in Magritte’s Castle of the Pyranees. I guess the aesthetic was a spoonful of sugar to make the “weird” medicine go down. However, Magritte for the time being can direct people to the other guys, but that’ll fade out.
And while I’m thinking of it (sorry for the long post, guys) and going back to folks asking Glenn about what music to get and Tom Russell talking about enjoying new things… artists today don’t get asked the right questions. The dissemination and cross-pollination of the undersung can come out of these pieces. Like Bill Flanagan’s interview with Dylan earlier this year where they debate Sam Houston. What? I want to hear Dylan talk about the things he’s an expert on. (They do get around to Ovid and, I don’t know, Gordon Lightfoot.) I mean, I have “Dirty Little Billy” on my DVR because Tom Waits said it was one of his favorites. People will check out Bowie and Joy Divison because they’re Arcade Fire fans. I’m tired of interview questions like “Why did you need/want to make ____?” (I’m looking at you, Charlie Rose.) I want to know what Cameron has enjoyed been inspired by in these last 12 years. No one asks.
Anyway, sorry to cause a tizzy. A TIZZY!
I blame James Cameron.
It’s a fun tizzy, Chris; a nice way to spend a snowbound evening, at least in part. It’s funny you mention school. My musical tastes formed haphazardly, and were precocious; as the world’s youngest Beatlemaniac, I was all of five when I asked my folks to buy me a Beatles album, and as such got “Beatles ‘65” for Christmas ’64. When I got to school I was a genuine misfit, and I don’t use the term lightly; for much of second grade I had to go through a battery of medical tests to determine whether or not I was “spastic.” I wasn’t, just goofy, but I guess a part of me thought “if the show fits, wear it,” and there I went, taking out LPs of Schoenberg string quartets from the library as I continued to follow the Fab Four into psychedelia. By the time I met the high school teacher who would lend me “Ascension,” I was pretty primed for it. And all of the stuff stuck, but I still didn’t KNOW shit about it, and I couldn’t argue why it was any good; all that came later. A lot of it is still coming, as it were. Never ends, really.
I dig. And “Avatar” is dead (to me), too.
Glenn, Nelson Mandella got into Winnie Mandella, so anything is possible. Until that day, I’ll continue to sing “If the children don’t grow up/our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up”. But, what the hell. Second the Future of the Left love, as they are the offshoot of Mclusky. But I have a soft spot for both Ligeti and Lady Gaga, so what do I know? I also happen to think The Divine Comedy is amazing, and Pulp’s “This is Hardcore” to be one of the all time great albums. Of the more recent crop, Lily Allen and Florence and the Machine are quite a delight. And yeah, Schoenberg can freak me, and “Baby’s In Black” is one of the Beatles all-time jams. This thread is great. Thanks, Glenn.
Holy shit! I just discovered that Peter Peter Brötzmann put out a record called… “Shadows: Live in Wels.” As in Jeffrey, but with one less “l.” What does it mean?
That’s great, Glenn. Whereas my son, at 5, asks me if Nancy Sinatra on the cover of “Boots” is a superhero because she’s wearing red boots and appearing as if floating in mid-air. Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” split my sky open-wide, at 13. An example of how the avant garde and middle class can come together, I suppose. Absurdism you can dance to.
Chris O.: Cameron has absolutely been inspired 1) his own better past work; and 2) Roger Dean Yes album covers from the 1970s. I don’t know if he’s acknowledged it, but that’s where the look of “Avatar” comes from. Examples here: http://j.mp/5B7veB
But doesn’t that make it intertexutal rather than unimaginitive, Jim? I kid. I actually deleted the sentence from that post “Or does Cameron not feel that anything released in the last decade is on par with where he believes he can take cinema”. I had fun with “Avatar”, but there were moments where a part of me wanted to instead see a Nova/Nature episode guiding us through Pandora.
And your post and pics can also bring us back to the aforementioned Castle of the Pyrenees. Weird: http://tinyurl.com/4x284
And to clarify, Jim, the Chris O commenting on your blog (“Why does a 10-year-old have a cell phone?”) is not me. Though it’s a valid question.
This IS a fun thread—and Jim, your comparisons between “Avatar“ ‘s landscapes and Roger Dean Yes covers are great; in fact the phrase “mountains come out of the sky and they stand there” actually popped into my mind during the movie—but I gotta call it a night. Compiling playlist for Christmas brunch party tomorrow (not terribly idiosyncratic; Charlie Parker’s “White Christmas,” yes, James White and the Blacks’ “Christmas With Satan,” no) and then helping the Lovely Wife with final straightening out. Then bed. A demain!
As someone who spent a long time being perplexed by the musical taste of my college friends, I can relate to a general sense of disdain for most of contemporary pop/rock music. I was really resistant for a while, but I’ve come to enjoy a significant enough portion of the “indie” scene to not write it off.
But, it DOES feel like there is this general aimlessness to a lot of the contemporary scene. It’s frustrating, but so are a lot of other things…
But not Avatar! I’m currently in the slightly awkward position of basically appreciating every critique I’ve read, but yet somehow convinced that they are irrelevant. I’ll go on record now for saying that it’s actually the anti-FX porn film. And the fact that its coming from Cameron makes it all the more essential.
Thanks for the recommendations, Glenn! I shall begin my own personal Free Jazz Odyssey asap.
I hope you all enjoy my new direction.
Glenn, on a totally unrelated note: is it strangely poetic that yours and Swanberg’s pieces on your respective favorite films of the decade at Salon are right next to each other? And that you chose Rivette and he chose “Jackass”?
These are things that leave me feeling good before going to bed.
Brotzmann rules OK. >WHEW! Thank G‑d I was able to take on stand on the controversy… :} It’s true, the 21st c. doesn’t seem too felicitous for the avantjazz continuüm, esp. (as clearly evidenced in this thread) as increasingly the consensus insists that one must despise it sound-unheard, but Good Lord if this wasn’t a stunning decade for this music, as well, & this past Friday’s not-overwhelmingly-attended Sabir Mateen/Ras Moshe gig at the Douglass St. Collective space shows the decade ain’t done yet. For people may be looking for a way in to this somewhat hermetic music scene even sympathetic ears may be scared off from, I’d recommend approaching artists playing this music label-centrically, something that helped me enormously when I started listening to trad jazz in college and began to realize all the albums on Blue Note were invariably many manifestations of the shit. So, check out Thirty Ear (notably the Matt Shipp-curated Blue series, e.g. his Nu Bop, which is kinda hard to call “random” in the vigorous presence of such phat beats…), Aum Fidelity, Eremite, Clean Feed, Pi, Tzadik, &c. That covers Peter B., and some several hundred other greats of the form(s)… P.S. Yeah. Arcade Fire. Who cares?
Free jazz has been around nearly as long as rock ’n’ roll, so I feel safe in predicting that free music’s future is secure, maybe more solid than rock, which keeps hyphenating itself in attempts to be ‘contemporary’ or ‘hip’, and becomes less and less interesting to me as a result. I rank the greatest live show I ever attended as the Brotzmann Chicago Tentet in Washington DC. The performance was ferocious and sublime. That said, I also saw Arcade Fire open for Lou Barlow before FUNERAL came out, and I like that record a lot. But I NEED Brotzmann/Drake/Kessler LIVE @ THE EMPTY BOTTLE on Okkadisk. That disc’s a total monster.
Obviously, I was joking earlier buuuut.…you *do* fit the hipster description in terms of loving obscure bands, movies that are impossible to see etc. Plus, don’t you live in Brooklyn?! Free jazz…puhleeze 😉
Admittedly, I can’t stand these skinny jeaned, greezy haired, PBR drinking, Parliament smoking Brooklyn-ites so I’m actually on your side there.
Carry on…
Yes, Jeff Wells needs to stop being enabled. He’s a bigot and a moron. Does he have any insight that hasn’t flipped with the wind? I just feel sorry for a man so blinded by self-loathing and misanthropy.
As for “rock is dead” – in some ways yeah, in some ways, nah. Jack White rules.
As far as hipsters go, when I moved to LA I was handed a porkpie hat, a copy of “Neutral Milk Hotel” and pointed to Silverlake. I rejected all three and life has been just fine.
I’ve noted in my music-lovin’ life that there are rock/indie fans who often associate depth with noise, whereas I’m more European in my tastes. Over there, Morrissey and Leonard Cohen can praise a‑ha’s “Scoundrel Days,” one of the greatest synth-pop records of the 80’s that you’ve never heard. In America, there’s too much “three chords and a truth” blue-collar fantasias from music critics.
Hey, I like my “overwrought, off-key, charmless, arty Canadian crap” thank you very much! If you Americans don’t like Arcade Fire, we’ve got Sloan, Weakerthans, New Pornographers, Metric, Broken Social Scene, and a host of others that may appease you. My feelings on jazz are best summed up by The Kids in the Hall’s Bruce McCulloch: http://www.kithfan.org/work/transcripts/two/jazz.html
But please don’t blame Canada.
Come on Glenn, everyone knows Free Jazz is dead. Only minimal synth, harsh noise, and italo-disco revival lives these days.
Right on, Marsh – oh, yeah, and Sloan! And, of course, with similar chauvinist pride and glance towards a previsous century, Rush.
It would be funnier if people who reference someone else’s comic skit for their (one can only imagine) thoroughly informed, knowing dismissal of “jazz” weren’t so similarly determined to trawl through their own dustbin of history. Someday, Broken Social Scene will be as au courant as Gene Krupa. And, you know, us Brotzmann fans just CAN’T stop talking about Gene Krupa…
It WAS silly of me to forget the Italo-disco revival!
James, did you know Gene Krupa was the bonafide, un-ironic idol of New York Dolls’ drummer Jerry Nolan? And let’s face it, as overused in movies as “Sing, Sing, Sing” tends to be, it WAS something of a breakthrough/turning point in the, ahem, development of a form.
I’m still bummed out about the recent passing of Louie Bellson, who was kind enough to answer my questions about him and the Goodman band in “The Gang’s All Here” a while back…the article from The Auteurs’ is here:
http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/195
Glenn – I did not know that. I’ll have to listen more closely to the hi-hat on “Personality Crisis”. Good looking on the Bellson quotes. Myself, I’m still getting over George Russell…
And, since we have been discussing jazz of a more avant bent on this here film blog and all, were you aware of Muhal Richard Abrams’ “appearance” in Medium Cool? Me neither, but clearly ’68 in Chicago didn’t belong to Abbie & Daley’s stormtroopers exclusively. I found this out in an interview with the peerless George Lewis, author of the recent, well-received AACM history A Power Stronger Than Itself, on All ABout Jazz’s website. A teaser or three:
“LP: Did the music of the AACM reflect the struggle of African or Black Americans during the time of the civil rights movement?
GL: The simple answer is “of course,” and the problem with that is that no one ever goes past the simple answer. I suggest that if someone really wants an answer to that question, they watch the DVD of the movie Medium Cool by Haskell Wexler.…The DVD included commentary by Wexler and his associates, and they’re talking about a scene in which Studs Terkel had promised them that they would be introduced to Real Black Militants…when I got to that part of the movie I found that the “Real Black Militants” turned out to be Muhal Richard Abrams, Jeff Donaldson, one of the founders of the Africobra art movement; John Jackson, who was a trumpeter with the AACM, and several other people who were associated with the more progressive African-American art scenes of the mid-1960’s…It was interesting to me that Wexler and the others had no idea who these people were, even today. So for them, these were Real Black Militants from the community who had these amazing powers of performance. And the reality was that these were people who had been performing and acting in the visual and performance world longer than the filmmakers themselves.”
True story, one of many reglaed by the ever-insightful Mr. Lewis: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=33855&pg=2