[Dixielandjazz] Re: Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 8, Issue 3

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/3/03 10:26:17 AM Pacific Daylight Time, DWSI at aol.com 
writes:

> 
> Bert, if I may disagree, I think this is what is wrong with Dixieland today. 
> 
> We're not adding songs of our own, interpretations of our own, in short, our 
> 
> own music and variations. Why do we have to play ONLY the good museum 
> pieces? 
> Can't we mix it up and invent along the way?
> 
> Dan (piano fingers) Spink
> 

Sure we can Dan,

And, those that don't are the ones who are unemployed perpetually, and crying 
the loudest.

Many of the so called OKOMers on this list are not ever going to change, they 
had frontal lobotomies thirty or forty years ago and refuse to even look out 
the window at the world as it is today. Many of them certainly have no vision 
as to what the future might even remotely become, with the probable exception 
of one thing, "there won't be any OKOM."  Many of these same folks have never 
been creative musically, but rather spent their entire careers just imitating 
the long gone greats and trying to play note for note exactly the same music.

  But yes there will be and unfortunately the people who will be enjoying it 
then are not these folks because they will be gone.  The basic problem is that 
these folks are rapidly being forced to face their own mortality realities 
and are relating it to the death of Dixieland and OKOM and life as they once 
enjoyed it.

They will be partly correct about this however because it will no longer be 
OKOM but TKOM (Their Kind of Music) it is our duty to make sure they get some 
continued exposure to what we like to call OKOM so that it becomes TKOM too.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins