The Great Equation Explained

What are you looking at?

Right on: Franzen on The Man Who Loved Children

Chess on a Roller Coaster

My first encounter with Keith Jarrett was many years ago, when my then girlfriend (or so I imagined her to be) presented me with a copy of The Köln Concert, new at the time. I listened to it several times and couldn't get much out of it but convinced myself I loved it when it was really the girl. The feeling was not reciprocated however, so we went our separate ways and I haven't listened to the record since. I was a callow youth in those days, though, and I'd like to believe my ears have grown considerably since.

A few -- no, many -- years later, I heard a terrific version of "Chelsea Morning" on the radio while driving around Nashville. I waited impatiently to hear who it was. It was Jarrett's trio, on Whisper Not, which I promptly bought and loved. Still, my previous experience with Jarrett stopped me from running out and buying more even of his trio stuff. I've often wanted to pull the trigger but those two-disc ECM recordings aren't cheap and they're hard to find on sale.

So I leaped at the chance to sample the latter day Jarrett in a solo context at no cost to me, when Jazz Corner announced that it was giving away ten copies of his newest, The Carnegie Hall Concert. I figured that now I would probably get him much better than I did at 16, especially after the favorable if limited exposure to the trio stuff.

But alas, on first listen to the first disc, I found myself reacting very negatively and on second and third listens more so. The word "elephantine" sprang to mind, but I find Tom Storer at Jazz Corner has put it better than I could when he says:

"Almost entirely lacking is the rhythmic dimension of jazz, and with it the dancing improvisation that in my mind is the music's raison d'être. And I don't mean just swing—when the "free" players jettisoned chord changes and a steady beat almost half a century ago they retained as an organizing principle something one might call rhythmic sincerity. Jarrett, despite his many virtues, does not have that energy, that looseness, or that characteristic sly, knowing quality when he plays solo; at the very least, it's not evident here."

I second that, at least as to the first disc. Also, I found the melodic and harmonic aspects trite, to the extent I can reach that conclusion as a rank amateur. At least there was no "sound of surprise" for me. The second cut in particular had me grinding my teeth. At least the disc is only 35 or so minutes long.

The second disc however, is another story. Rhythmically it's much more supple and melodically it's more inventive, though I'm still not hearing too much harmonically. Still, much more enjoyable, especially (but not only) the five composed encores. Also, am I nuts, or is cut #2 on the second disc Jarrett's variations on "No Woman No Cry"?

Anyway, two stars (of five) for the first disc, four for the second. If there were a way to buy only the second disc, I'd recommend it. I will listen to that again, but not to the first.

PS - If I didn't know that that sound was Jarrett humming/groaning to himself, I could swear that he was playing the kazoo.

PPS - The applause was "music" to Jarrett's ears, maybe, but not to mine. Thirty seconds per song would have been plenty.

Three day weekend home alone with family all out of town.

Movies watched:

Rashomon
The Set-Up
The Leopard Man
Le Samourai
Killer's Kiss
Stagecoach

With the exception of the first and last, nothing my wife and daughters would want to see. All well worthwhile but The Set-Up was the biggest revelation.

The first time for all of them. Yes, I had never seen Rashomon or Stagecoach before. Sue me. I understand that John Woo was supposed to remake Le Samourai but the deal fell through. It would have been a good property for him. The only Melville I'd seen was Bob Le Flambeur, which the old Dupont Circle Theater showed in the wrong aspect ratio many years ago. Bob looked like Milton the Monster with the top of his head cut off.

It's not hard to see 6 movies in a weekend when half of them are less than 70 minutes long, 2 more are less than 90 minutes and the other one is 1:45.

Is it really true that Rashomon was the first movie to shoot directly into the sun? Didn't they shoot the sun in Greed, at least?



Restaurants eaten at:

Saravana Palace (Indian vegetarian)
China Star (serious scorching Szechuan)
Soo Rah (Korean)
Viet Bistro (three guesses)

First time for all but China Star, and all places that the family wouldn't go for en masse, though I might could get one or two daughters interested in Saravana Palace and they would go to Viet Bistro, but perhaps without enthusiasm.

Usually when they go away I have big plans and then fart my time away. This time I did what I set out to do and the farting came later.

I've been using fluorescent "swirly bulbs" in hard-to-reach spots for a while now. They do last longer than regular bulbs, though the claims of 6-10 year life spans are exaggerated in my experience. But the figures on energy savings are startling enough that they are making me think of switching to them wholesale. See
this article for details.

Think globally, act locally and all that stuff. I know most of you jamokes hate Walmart, so buy them at your local mom-and-pop (or, in my experience, pop-and-grandpop) hardware stores intead.

Well, I see the Dylan album has just gone to #1, which makes me either a cultural bellwether or an exemplar of the old saw that when your shoe-shine boy starts to give you stock tips, it's time to get out of the market.

Current reading: James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime. Filled with sex and obsession. Salter writes more concretely about sex than just about anyone I know. By "concretely," I mean he sees it plainly and presents it to us, like a great painter, in what seems to be (but of course is not) a completely unmediated fashion.

Also, Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, in the recent Penguin edition, with different translators for each volume of Remembrance/In Search of.... It's living up to my first reading, twelve or so years ago. I won't bother with my incoherent thoughts other than to say that this is definitely a book to reread, since knowing what is to come later imparts a great deal of meaning to what comes before. Of course, this too is filled with sex and obsession, though the former is described more glancingly by Proust than by Salter.

Recently, Alasdair Gray, 1982 Janine and Alan Warner, Morvern Callar -- two Scottish novels read in Scotland. Liked, but didn't love, both.

Listening: Bob Dylan, Modern Times. This is the first of his records I've bought since Street Legal, just to give you an idea of how out of touch I've been. I like it pretty well. I've been following with great amusement a debate on jazzcorner.com over whether his patent influences have crossed the line into plagiarism, though I think the real issue here is his taking writer's credit for such numbers as "Rolling and Tumbling." I'm cynical enough that I don't much care. Presumably, the origins of a lot of blues are lost in the fog of time anyway. I wouldn't get exercised if he wrote new lyrics to "The Great Speckled Bird"/"I Am Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes"/"The Wild Side of Life"/"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels" either. I've also been listening to downloads of some installments of his radio show on XM. Highlight so far, among many, is a song he played in the "Mother" theme hour called "Mama Get the Hammer (There's a Fly on the Baby's Head)!" by Bobby Peterson, of whom I had never heard.

Recently, Dave Holland's new one, Critical Mass. His recent quintet releases (as well as the big band forays) are of such uniformly high quality that it's almost boring. I'd like to hear something out of the sextet that he formed several months ago. I don't remember who all is in it except for the excellent Mulgrew Miller and (I believe) Antonio Hart.

And Dr. John's debut record, Gris-Gris. I would venture to suggest that this was a key influence on Tom Waits's last several recordings.

Viewing: A really superb "play" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival called A Letter That Never Reached Russia, adapted from three or four Nabokov short stories. The four young women (I'm probably old enough to call them "girls") who acted in it were ideally Nabokovian if you know what I mean (and you don't because you have a dirty mind), and the direction and the adaptation brilliant at capturing Nabokov's recurring themes of loss and longing. Jerked a few tears from me, and I'm no crybaby.

Click to enlarge.

This is my blog.

This is my blog. See my blog. Blog, Shade, blog!