Re: [LAU] ASCAP Assails Free-Culture, Digital-Rights Groups

Joep L. Blom wrote:
> david wrote:
>> drew Roberts wrote:
>>> On Thursday 01 July 2010 17:51:18 Joep L. Blom wrote:
>>>> drew Roberts wrote:
>>>>> Someone else having some thoughts on jazz and copyright:
>>>>>
>>>>> Are Bad Copyright Laws Killing Jazz And Harming Jazz Musicians?
>>>>> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100615/0255059823.shtml
>>>>>
>>>>>> Joep
>>>>> all the best,
>>>>>
>>>>> drew
>>>> Drew,
>>>> Thanks for your reaction but I disagree with the author of the
>>>> reference
>>>> you gave me.
>>>
>>> I don't know enough about jazz to agree with you or the author, it is
>>> just something I cam across the other day andthen when you posted, I
>>> went back and searched for it to let you see it.
>>
>> And here I thought jazz was dying because most of it is boring and
>> ingrown, and the vast majority of players have become
>> indistinguishable from each other? ;-)
>>
>> Note the winking smiley. I like traditional New Orleans jazz. I like
>> some jazz performers, but think that most could be replaced with no
>> one noticing.
>>
> David!
> Don't tempt me. Either you have never heard a good jazz performance or
> you simply don't like it (that's possible).

I've heard good jazz performances. And as I mentioned above, I like some
jazz performers.

> But boring!! You know what
> is boring or, better monotonous and repetitive, the endless lookalike
> pulp which is called pop-music that's presented as the main music and
> nothing else exist thanks to the big companies and their slaves (i.e.
> the radio and television companies).

Or (to me) the endless soundalike lookalike stuff that passes for way
too much jazz these days? Sorry, to my ears, the days of jazz performers
that actually sound like themselves seems to have passed. Too many
players now seem to be trying only to sound like someone else.

(BTW, I find that very disappointing in any musician or artist,
regardless of style of music or art. Be yourself, not someone else!)

> Moreover, boring is a quality in the mind of the person and has nothing
> to do with the music (or literature, or dance to give other fields).

I would say that "boring" is something that is perceived by the mind of
a person. It is, after all, just an opinion. I doubt that there's any
"objective" measure that defines "boring".

> I have heard a lot of nonsense about jazz but not that performers could
> be exchanges without notice.

Not nonsense, just my opinion.

> Yes, pop-singers OK, but that is a
> completely different league.

Yes, singers are a special case compared to instrumentalists. No two
human voices are alike to the degree that instruments are.

Again (particularly about pop singers), while I may think well of a
singer who can successfully sound like someone else, I'm still
disappointed that they don't put the same effort into sounding like
themselves.

There's a Christian band I know of called Apologetx. They are skilled
enough to sound note-for-note like practically any other band in
existence, and specialize in redoing other band's secular songs with
Christian lyrics. They play skillfully, but someday I'd actually like
them to write and play their own music instead! I'd like to know what
their own sound is!

> The beauty of jazz is that you can play the same tunes every night but
> each time it is completely different

Really? Hmm, haven't noticed that. (Well, I've heard a number of jazz
performances where NO ONE was playing the "tune", if there actually was
one.)

(And it has nothing to do with presence or absence of improvisation.
During my own piano studies, I studied improvisation, enjoy it and value
it highly. So you'd think I'd like the improvisational aspect of jazz, yes?

> and playing the same tune with
> different personnel makes a great difference. Last Friday and Saturday I
> played with my Big band but we had some difference in personnel.
> Although we played the same tunes the sound was completely different.

If you say so.

> The only problem with jazz is that it is no easy music (just as
> classical music, especially from the 20th century).

Some of which I do enjoy.

> You have to be
> prepared to follow the sometimes very convoluted harmonic and melodic
> ways that are played (listen e.g. to John Coltrane and the great
> difference with Coleman Hawkins, or Errol Garner and Art Tatum).

Those are past-days jazz greats, not their modern descendants. I like
Coltrane and Tatum, don't know the other two.

> I could go on but I stop.

I think that any kind of music that has wrapped itself up so much in its
own internals and demands that others change to accommodate it is just a
self-absorbed niche. That's OK if that's what one is interested in. But
if one is trying to make money from music, I think one is intentionally
limiting one's financial success, and really has no right to complain
that people aren't buying enough music to support one in the way one
would like to be accustomed to.

IOW, if you want money for your music, offer music that people with
money are willing to give you money for. Don't complain that they're
"ignorant" or "don't know better" or that the music they like and PAY
FOR is "boring" (it isn't to them) or they're being held prisoner by
big-media music distributors.

I'm also not a fan of visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc) that
require you to read a multipage statement about the item to get any
communication from it. What my artist daughter calls "spot on the wall"
art, some of which is by famous artists, hangs on walls in world-famous
museums, and (in America, typically) is USUALLY supported by Arts Grants
or one sort or another. (Music of any sort doesn't suffer from that
problem, perhaps because sound has inherently more power and effect than
a brush stroke on canvas. Assuming one isn't deaf, of course.)

I like visual art, too, but find Andy Warhol's art boring. At Pompidou
Center in Paris one year, I saw a Japanese painter who "painted" by
slashing his bare feet with razor blades, then hanging in a bosen's
chair over the canvas spread on the floor and painting on the canvas
with with his own blood. Found that more a sign of mental illness than
art. (Must be something wrong with me, I'm sure, couldn't possibly be
anything wrong with the artists.)

> I hope I made your error in judgement clear.

I've been through it with jazz folk before - been insulted, called
names, etc. Been told by some jazz players that the ONLY REAL MUSIC IS
JAZZ (usually their particular idea of what JAZZ is, played the way they
do it), that if you're not playing jazz, YOU'RE NOT A MUSICIAN! Heard
that most recently three years ago, from a man, BTW, who is a very
skilled, well-trained, experienced and deeply-disturbed (in the clinical
psychological sense) musician. Perhaps jazz is his way to deal with the
severe childhood abuse he suffered that left him so disturbed?

Although he has so much rage inside that I could picture him as a
first-generation punk rocker, before punk went commercial. ;-)

No "error" - just different opinion. I have all sorts of music in my
personal collection, including jazz, lest you think I'm an "it's gotta
be popular music" person. My parents have jazz records in their
collection dating back a good long ways, like early Louie Armstrong
recordings. Someday they'll probably end up in my collection.

(I will admit that I have ONE song each from Britney Spears and Madonna.
My only complaint about Michael Jackson's death is that he didn't take
them with him.)

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
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