The "truth" and recorded music

[Ian Thumwood]

Not sure if anyone else has picked up a debate which has been getting a lot of coverage on the Internet over the last fortnight that concerns the singer Kate Bush's decision to re-mix songs from two albums originally issued over twenty years ago. Although I think , at her best, she is a talented song-writer with her ears attuned to other areas of music outside pop, the debate regarding "The Director's cut" has raised some interesting questions about tinkering with original recordings. The comments have been intriguing insofar that KB is a musician who generates almost hagiographical acclaim yet some fans have accused her of sacrilege. At least one of the results, with jazz drummer Steve Gadd dummed in seems, to my ears, to be a success:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzqF_gBpS84

What is interesting is that most jazz fans would consider if criminal to meddle with albums considered to be classics. However, I think , in many instances, this is something of a conceipt insofar the amount of editing and mixing means that what appears on a record / CD often bears little resemblance to what was played in real life. This is as true of Louis Armstrong's work with the allstars , Ellington's Newport festival record and, no doubt, nearly all classical studio performances. I was once told that one celebrated pianist actually recorded some pieces as chunks of bars one at a time but I have never had this verified. (I believe it was allegedly Horovitz.) With a label like ECM, the element of "post-production" must be immense. Because jazz is supposed to be instantaneous , fans of this music are certainly more intolerant. It is quite ironic when , in KB's case, the "original" was very much fabricated in the first instance! However, I don't think that jazz fans would be any less tolerant if an artist endeavoured to re-assemble / remix an earlier album even if the removal of some of the aural "goo" Manfred Eicher applied to some of his ECM records in the 1980's would improve an album like Marc Johnson's "Bass Desires" considerably.

[Rumbaba]

Kate has always controlled what she does, this is not someone else messing with her 'vision'. She is a true 'artist' IMO and whatever she does with her own stuff is fine with me.

[MrGongGong]

Because jazz is supposed to be instantaneous , fans of this music are certainly more intolerant. It is quite ironic when , in KB's case, the "original" was very much fabricated in the first instance! .

Jazz can be instantaneous but that's not usually what it is , unless you do the late night Cafe Oto thing

what music isn't "fabricated" ?

its all made up you know

[hackneyvi]

I wonder if jazz tends to be a music with fewer pretences about its debts? Jazz seems to retain a tradition of covering other performers' tunes that rock has largely lost. The rock musician is able to pretend, therefore, that they are doing something original. Some of the rock/pop audience have lost the ability to accept variety in its chosen music. It only ever hears the songs of its favourite performers played by those performers only and in only one (studio) way.

In the period prior to the mighty Beatles' mid-60s records, they and everyone else around them were at least partly a 'covers band'. Then they begin to produce music that can only be performed in one, studio version - the wonderful Strawberry Fields being an example. They can also earn a living from pure studio recordings.

Didn't rock at this time replace jazz as a mass music and therefore ensure that jazz was never able to go down the studio route? If jazz musicians aren't able to earn a living by recordings alone - I assume that few are - they retain the need to perform live which someone like Kate Bush doesn't. That means the jazz musician remains exposed, even vulnerable as musicians by the need to retain the competence to perform their music publically. Their reputation, up to a point, is therefore only as good as their last gig.

Rock has alot more chances to 'get it right' out of sight of the audience; jazz far fewer. I'd assume that the concert-going jazz audience craves difference and from exposure to performers at different times, in different combinations, in different acoustics, with different material, they may have a preference about how something is played but wouldn't consider there was only one way of playing any tune?

So, to jazz there may be versions of something that are considered 'definitive' but always, like classical music, in relation to other performances. And the need to perform live means that great or greater performances will always occur.

[Lateralthinking1]

Kate Bush - "The Director's Cut"

Interesting topic. I too am going to comment more on the Kate than the jazz aspects. I have been a fan for over 33 years. The moment was an interview on BBC Radio London by Malcolm Laycock of a then unknown singer. I just happened to tune in at the right time. A matter of months later, "Wuthering Heights" was at number one and the rest, as they say, is history. Other than Joni Mitchell, I doubt that there is a woman in the field of popular music who has been as singular in her approach to recordings. The albums have not always been even in standard. In fact, I don't think any of them has been. Virtually every one of them though has had at least one breathtaking track and many have had several. When Kate is spot on, hardly anyone can match her idiosyncrasy and beauty. Partially, it is the celtic strains which are so frequently lost to some in the mix. There might some day be a world music album in her when she moves from the tumble dryer. Mainly, it is probably the close association with literature in peoples' minds. While she is far from the greatest word smith of our age, there have been associations in her work from the debut disc onwards with the literal novel, the novel as in new, the literal as in literal, and blends of colour across these modes. Understandably, with a phenomenon so hewn, many might say tinker at your peril.

Some artists become known, and often loved, for their unpredictability live. Van Morrison slightly springs to mind here and the late Nina Simone certainly does. There is always with such musicians a sense of anticipation, excitement mixed with foreboding, the electricity that comes with that knife-edge. In the high expectations, there is genuine concern for the artist as a person, and the hope that one won't be badly disappointed. Longer gaps between appearances increase this tension. Swim, hopefully, otherwise sink. Kate, of course, doesn't "do" live. One of her slightly more irritating traits is that she has always been a bit Alan Parsons, not that he was abhorrent, but he was studio precious. While others would never get away with this easily, in her case it almost adds to the individuality. In some ways, it makes more sense for Mums to be at home or in the potting shed. There is a story there or an excuse. Let's call it a reason. Each album then becomes a sort of live event in itself. It is a stage in the absence of appearance at venue from someone who is most unusual and oddly normal. You still can't help but think that she isn't really in her slippers but performing to the whispering trees on a blustery mound somewhere. A more spirited kind of darkness perhaps than having to bare all to a wizened or increasingly juvenile reception.

For this reason, and others, I have been desperate to hear "The Director's Cut" and yet afraid of it. To date, I have listened to just three tracks - the reworking of "The Sensual World" that is "Flower of the Mountain", "The Red Shoes", and the above mentioned "Deeper Understanding". What has made the anticipation harder to handle is the thought initially that there would be a new batch of songs - there is a feeling of disappointment on realising that these are old ones - and the fact that, much against the odds, "Aerial" in 2005 turned out to be my album of the decade. "Sunset" and the magnificent "A Coral Room" aside, that strangely had little to do with the strength of the songs. I guess everyone will have personal interpretations. While that album is many things, including a note on the death of Kate's mother and the exhilaration of being a mother herself, it seemed to me that it was very focussed on time at a time when the world and his wife were. Technological development. The ordinary day-to-day proceeding against the perceived growing threat of terrorism. Everything moving forward other than the hint that actually all that we hold dear was shifting into reverse. What we were given was a painting by numbers which only seemed fully connected in the second half. That would be this woman's framework. Life stages if you will.

And after such a long wait for any new material, what we also had in a typically meandering way was an album - the only album ever? - of a mother's relationship with a son from his birth to adulthood. The adolescence isn't at all easy for her - it flies like a jet into nature as well as eliding with it. While this could hardly be called soul music, it grabs you in a way that only Kate could. It turns out with "The Director's Cut" that these have become the visions. From what I have heard so far, in 2011, she is dallying with time's passing in typically, innovative ways. The new version of "The Sensual World" - always a fantastic track - is not a million miles from the original and certainly it isn't better. I don't like the ham fisted reference to "16 years on". And yet this overtly sexual song, very slightly shocking to some, benefits from being told newly by a middle aged woman. It challenges again and, of course, more scope has now been provided by the opening of rights to the speech by Molly Bloom. Meanwhile "Deeper Understanding" seems to have been almost a premonition. The production is very much of the current time, as is the accompanying video, and the song has far more resonance in this era of Facebook. It is told by a woman for whom such things were not a part of a younger life. That makes a difference. There is an uneasy sense on listening to the cd of time almost being at an angle with individual people, something that many possibly feel right now but few have the will or capacity to express.

To conclude, and to begin to address the subject, ha, Marsalis, even a Dylan or N'Dour, may alter the tones, the shapes, the musical interaction. It seems to me that particularly the jazzers almost have a duty to rework. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have to allude to the wider landscape, although they may give it a glance, and there may also be reviews which seek to link the changes to their personal age. Cash, of course, was timely as well as country in the end with his Rick Rubin collaborations. An old man recording some very moving tracks by Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. Scott-Heron, without question, was very modern with his final release. Whether Kate eventually does a "Rubin" or a "Jamie xx" is debatable. It is not entirely out of the question and it would be logical. Should that happen, though, it would fit into a pattern that has been established far earlier. She is not easily separable from her art and that art is always a work in progress. The physical distance leads to the converse of broader contexts and time being directed back and forth. It would arguably be more obtuse to record something entirely objective and almost timeless, or indeed songs from the perspective of a girl, in very old age. Whatever, hopefully, there is more to come between now and then. No one in their right mind, though, would choose to bank on any of it.

Incidentally, I would add obliquely that I take a certain credit for the video of "Deeper Understanding". While I would not wish to suggest copyism, there are aspects of it that run close to certain artistic ideas that I came up with early this year and posted widely. At any rate, it strikes a chord and it would be nice to imagine a truth of that kind, however unlikely.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...hmmm In A Silent Way .... Tutu ...Mingus's Black Saint & The Sinner Lady and the reworking of the studio material for Panthalassa?

[burning dog]

I think it's crazy people objecting to Kate Bush doing this. It's Pop music, that's how it works. Theyre not chucking out the old one.

With Miles, Bill Laswell.. fine, DJ Cam,,, Oh Dear!

I actually love the start of this one, all the strangeness of the electric pianos distilled, but then it goes downhill quickly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owx_f2NKgvo

Jazz is rarely instantaneous, or only bits of it are, but its expected to be different every time, or the solos are at least.

[Russ]

Hi Lat - a lot of your posting rang true for me, and I too am approaching The Director's Cut with a similar trepidation, and I was initially disappointed that it would contain only reworkings, although the news was greatly alleviated that there would soon (that's 'soon' in KB timescale terms of course) be a new album of new material that she's working on, having put Director's Cut to bed. Her interviews with John Wilson (on Front Row) and Ken Bruce a few weeks' back were illuminating, KB emphasising that she's never really satisfied with any 'completed' track, notwithstanding her reputation for perfectionism in the studio. And the more I thought about it, the more logical the reworkings are. Most bands and artists who do 'live' often develop songs into different versions of their recorded originals. Since KB doesn't do live, I find it understandable she might be drawn to rework previous material. (Having dabbled in my past in music recording, I recognise an affinity to re-produce material anew.) I think the problem over The Director's Cut is primarily us fans. We're so used to there being only 'one version' of those iconic tracks, they've become for us the definitive versions, up till now. Of the new version tracks, Moments of Pleasure (featured on the Ken Bruce show, and one of my alltime KB faves) is interesting, losing the lovely piano motif of the original, but the new version is even more melancholy, and I think I'm going to like it every bit as the original.

Russ