skip Heller wrote:
actually, I'm right there with you as to a lot of the stuff that's lasted through the ages (trout mask has never done it for me the way certain other beefheart has, and my feelings about ornette coleman are well-documented in these parts).
You're always well-documented in these parts, Skip. :-) I was thinking about Ornette Coleman today when you said this:
Before you dismiss anything made by an artist as thorough and scrupulous as Dave, you'd better listen a bunch more. I didn't hear as much in the music as I needed until about the fourth listen, and now I'm hearing all these wonderful surprises everytime I put it on. It's a pretty compelling record if you know how to listen to it.
I could (and basically did) say the same thing about Ornette. But it's all about the ears, isn't it? But then you wrote this:
Efren's dismissal of Dave's new work as "clumsy", "unnatural" "so worn" and words like "he does" and "this is" undercut any implication that he's speaking about his own personal taste, and instead is making a pronouncement as if to Dave's current abilities as an artist.
Efren said "I find". The rest you simply read into his comments. They were clearly personal and subjective--a bit of anguish about being let down. As for this:
On the other hand, if you know how to make a better record than FREAK IN, I'm dying to hear it.
I'm still waiting for you to do a better one than "Free Jazz", Skip. :-) And to make this a full day of disagreements, I'm going to beg to differ with you both on the impressionistic film critic Pauline Kael (there are a zillion better ones than her) and the NYRB, whose anti-intellectual neo-chutzpah has been well noted. (I do however agree with you as always about politics and that asshole who stole the White House. And to be frank, petty debates about music in the face of the human disaster that's going to take place in Iraq is obscene. If only the Iraqis had such luxury right about now).