Mask Orchestra tour

[Serial_Apologist]

I've been asked to relay the forthcoming 3-day tour by Colin Towns's Mask Orchestra - a spectacular successor imho to Mike Gibbs's many big bands and including some of the same personnale, including Henry Lowther, Peter King, Alan Skidmore etc etc:

Thurs 15th - RNCM Manchester

Fri 16th - Turner Sims Southampton (Ian?)

Sat 17th - LSO St Lukes, London (which I hope to make)

Sorry this being so late - My right thumb's been troubling me. Here's the promo link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BscELaZpz9k

[Ian Thumwood]

Last week was pretty hectic me so that I didn't get around to going to the Colin Towns gig. I've seen his band on numerous occasions.

Oddly, I don't think he really compares with Mike Gibbs although I was quite impressed with him from the off - especially as he financed his own work and label. I love the album he did with Norma Winstone which is a classic. That said, I don't feel that his music works all the time and there is a tendency to overwrite. More than Mike Gibbs, Towns comes out of a theatre tradition and the previous careers in rock and film composition are as much of an influence as jazz. My big problem is that he does prefer to cover more rock orientated material which often doesn't come up to scratch. The John Lennon disc is a case in point but forays into The Beatles have produced gems like the deconstruction of "I am the walrus." The Beatles are problematic for me as they always seem absurdly over-rated from a musical point of view. Lennon and McCartney have produced some stellar songs but they have produced a lot of dross too. McCartney's post-Beatle's career is difficult to take seriously whatsoever and therefore I think Town's covers of works by better songwriters (such as on the Winstone album where he plays songs by Joni Mitchell, Rnady Newman, etc, etc) the music comes to life. I am fascinated by the idea of contemporary singer / songwriters yet Lennon & McCartney's work is not always the first whenever I think about those writers whose work truly works as jazz. Other projects have taken on board Zappa and Weill which are interesting as they are both originals. I wonder if you had heard John Hollenbeck's work in a similar field with a big band. The "Songs we like a lot" album was terrific and covered a really wide range of material but I see the follow up disc has been slaughtered on one of the Jazztimes site as being a bit of a mess. This is a shame as there are some good tunes on that one too. The first disc was pretty sensational.

The recent Mike Gibbs disc was Bill Frisell was quite salutary as I was struck that Gibbs no longer sounds quite as ahead of the curve as he once did. I am a massive MG fan yet the likes of Maria Schnieder have, in my opinion, taken the baton from Gibbs.

What was the Colin Towns gig like on Saturday?

[Serial_Apologist]

What was the Colin Towns gig like on Saturday?

I'm afraid I didn't go in the end, Ian. Been a bit knackered lately. I agree to some extent with what you're saying about Mr Towns, but not about the Beatles, whose individuals were best when they were together imv. Maybe one needed to live through that period of 1966-8 to really appreciate how the best of the non-jazz stuff really did illuminate that little age of beads, blue shades, broad rimmed hats and magenta panty hose. My own view at the time (ca 1970) was that once the Maharishi and the LSD were out of the way, which had cut through to a lot of imagination and potential, the ethos of being working class (never mind the money) came home to roost again and for fear of association with pretentiousness they went back to being the rockers they had been in Berlin, rather than mockers, but without the hassle of screaming audiences. Rock might have had potential had society changed, but was always too prone to commercialisation and only a very few of the Proggers beloved on another thread not so far from here did anything interesting musically, eg Softs, Matching Mole, Hatfield & The North, Gilgamesh, and the numerous often one-off spin-offs of Canterbury, mainly due to the jazz influence and amenability to improvisation trumping the magic mushrooms in arcadia romanticism, though it was fun for a while before I heard Escalator Over The Hill, and still having the second to the fifth King Crimson albums to play reminds me that some of their ideas went into what the young jazz players here have been attempting by way of complex time signatures and backwards tape loops for which there are now apps for replicating live. I was sorry to miss The Music Of Pete Saberton at the Vortex yesterday, though - Alcyona Mick's been around for a few years, and she's is a pianist worth keeping an eye on.

[Serial_Apologist]

Here's Alcyona - for anyone not acquainted with her playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12cx1yJ53lE

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I did live through part of the period 1966-68 but I am still struggling to see just why The Beatles are so lauded. It isn't as if they were terrible but I just don't think their music merits as much attention as it received. I am not a fan of pop music although there are artists whose work I admire (Kate Bush, Bjork, Earth, Wind & Fire, Prince, etc) but even when you taken the best that this music has to offer, The Beatles still fall a long way short in my opinion. A lot of their "musical" success was no doubt due to George Martin and I feel than neither of the four musicians in the band had much to offer. It doesn't stand up in comparison with most Motown material which is not only better played and arranged but also written to a less naïve fashion. I suppose the appeal is that you would have had to have lived through the period to truly appreciate The Beatles yet you could say this for Abba in the 1970s or Duran Duran in the 1980s- both of whom are pretty rank. Even in the 1960s'm I feel that The Kinks were probably more capable and that is even before you get to artists like Jimi Hendrix who is practically revered as a jazz musician these days!

I can see the arguments for and against pop music and do appreciate that the better material does have it's worth. However, I am always reminded about the great and genuine musical genius Steve Lacy who dismissed the need to play pop songs when there was so much great jazz material that was under-performed. In some ways I totally concur with this so that when the likes of Bill Frisell or Colin Town rave about The Beatles I am inclined to put it down to a generation thing. For me, The Beatles have enjoyed too much exposure and hearing a particularly jazz musician perform their music is really interesting. (Don Byron's "I'll follow the sun" is a good example and much, much better than the original.)

Pop tends to sound better when :-

(i) The musicians playing the music are genuine musicians and know what they are doing.

(ii) The song writing is of a good standard.

(iii) The music is close to jazz or at least the use of harmony is switched on.

(iv) It involves an element of improvisation.

(v) More likely to be successful is performed by Afro-American musicians or even Africans (Angelique Kidjo / Fela Kuti.)


I concede to your point about the Canterbury scene but, again, this was jazz influenced. It would not count as pop music today.

Pop music seems to have become more sophisticated since the Beatles in some respects but even worse in many more! I have heard successful covers of pop material by the likes of Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Luciana Souza , etc but it takes a lot of effort for instrumental jazz treatments to properly work. In the great pantheon of things musical, I don' think The Beatles quite rates as highly as someone like Blind Lemon Jefferson to pluck a random name out of the air.