London Review Books Birditis

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

here





bird lives

[Quarky]

What think you, calum?

[muzzer]

I have the Grouch, sorry, Crouch to read from Christmas, but I will have to be in the right mood. I find Parker a difficult figure in some ways. He was done immense disservice by the recording equipment of the day, even before one accounts for his variable state of health. And then of course he soars and you feel ashamed of any criticism whatsoever. I will say this. The Charlie Parker Omnibook is for me the best tutor for the sax, and if you can manage to play just the heads of some of those tunes at the speed he did then you are a better man than I.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

What think you, calum?

i confess to not reading the reviews just yet .... will get back

but in general any opinions on Parker are secondary and always swept away by his playing as Muzzer says

just listen to Just Friends .... swoon innit

[Ian Thumwood]

I have the Grouch, sorry, Crouch to read from Christmas, but I will have to be in the right mood. I find Parker a difficult figure in some ways. He was done immense disservice by the recording equipment of the day, even before one accounts for his variable state of health. And then of course he soars and you feel ashamed of any criticism whatsoever. I will say this. The Charlie Parker Omnibook is for me the best tutor for the sax, and if you can manage to play just the heads of some of those tunes at the speed he did then you are a better man than I.

Muzzer

It's strange that although Be-bop is 70 years old and jazz has become increasingly more sophisticated since Parker's heyday I would tend to develop your comment and propose that few jazz composers have produced music that has been as technically challenging to play as Parker's. I've got a number of play-a-longs with his tunes and they are generally very difficult to play as speed with the bass and drums motoring along beneath you. There is an Aebersold play-a-long which pitches Parker's themes over a Latin groove and I can't play this at all because the phrases sit at odds with the rhythm. It's extremely difficult. Where the likes of Dexter Gordon or Lennie Tristano have followed the same compositional route, then playing these be-bop themes on the piano seems to render your finger in to bananas.

I find Parker's model as a composer to be similar to Bach when the latter was writing fugues. You can sense in both cases a real sense of musical structure with exploration of arpeggios and themes being varied and twisted. It seems obvious to me that both Bach and Parker created their music through the process of improvisation in many instances. I don't feel that you can out Parker in the same category as Ellington, Nichols or Shorter with composition and he was no match for any of the people writing jazz today. Despite this, I think there as a brilliant musical brain behind these ideas which makes many of these themes compelling. Parker's ability to create inventive melodies on simple twelve bar blues is unsurpassed in small group jazz in my opinion.

The Giddens' book with photography is fantastic. I've had a copy of this for years and the book is worth acquiring for the images alone. I don't think jazz ever looked as good as it did in the late forties.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The late 50s to mid 60s looked pretty hip to me! It all went south in the 70s...hair to spare, flares and scoop vests....yes you Jaco...et al.

BN.

And Stan Getz in his pink blazer and bubble hair (pink also! )

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the reviewer of the three books on Bird is Ian Penman

by the end of the piece he is suggesting that the immediacy of Ross Russell and Miles Davis [in his autobiography] come closestto the reality of Parker ... as with all such things how could we possibly know that?

my take is Giddens for musical analysis, Crouch for the context of music and society and Haddix for covering the ground

many junkies come to 'bad end' by accident or by failing to realise an intent to commit slow suicide; alas i am all too familiar with the inexplicable inner compulsion to get doped in any of several ways - happily all now in my past, some longer ago than others - at the time the compulsions seemed to me inescapable, paramount and carefree [one was after all out of it]

some junkies do not come to an end quickly, they live lives of remarkable contribution or unremarkable domesticity [we very rarely hear about them]

Bird had a compulsion to play as strong as his junk habit [try the complete Parker Tristano recordings, some from hotel rooms] and no genius could escape that compulsion...

the difficulty with compulsions of these kinds is that they serve both to anneal the wounds of loss and seal off the possibilities of connection with others ... if he had lived i suspect Bird would have been more like the life of Chet Baker than Jackie McLean but who can say; the point is that no relationship survives the compulsions of a junkie and/or a genius ... it seems to me a life of unutterable solitude and sadness as well as incandescent art

Penman's review in fact has prompted me to pursue Crouch's essays in Considering Genius rather than his book on Bird [a fine example of compulsive obsession it would appear] Crouch is an encyclopedia in motion and an acute listener for all his other attributes [real or impugned]

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I was looking at a video of Bill Evans from the seventies and I never realised his hands were so swollen. Liver damage etc. etc. And those were the tools of his trade/art. Frightening.

BN.

Theres an interesting UT clip of Gary Bartz talking about smack and its "role". Blakey doesnt come out too well as an enabler.