[Dixielandjazz] Condon's Temple of Mediocrity

[Stephen G Barbone]

> Marek Boym <marekboym at gmail.com> wrote (polite snip)
>
>
>> Barbone wrote about a Condon detractor:" If these guys were
>> mediocrity, then just about all of us playing OKOM today are trash.
>
>
> Nobody said that, not even the person who called Eddie Conson's "the
> temple of mediocrity"  Bur nobody is on form all the time.  Sometime
> in the mid-'60's I borrowed an Eddie Condon (side A) and Bobby Hackett
> (side 2) LP, issued by the VoA, from the ISIS library.  It was awful!
> Each side was mor boring than the other, each time I played it.  And,
> by then, I had quite a few Condon records, many with Hackett.  The
> record was a great disservice to the musicians involved (a stellar
> line-up on both sides).  Such things happen to musicians who work
> every ninght, often seven nights a week.

OK, I just thought that if some jerk called Condon's joint on 3rd  
Street a
Temple of mediocrity" it naturally followed that he also meant that  
the guys who played there were mediocre. What else could he have meant?

Having spent a lot of nights at Condon's 3rd Street in my youth it  
seemed to me that neither the musicians, nor the venue, could in any  
stretch of the imagination be called mediocre, or a temple of  
mediocrity.

Yes, of course musicians have off nights. And sometimes record  
companies release records that truly suck in their effort to squeeze  
more profits out of sales to unsuspecting fans. Leonard Feather was a  
great example of someone who often found these awful records to use in  
his blindfold tests, in an effort to get adverse reactions from those  
who were blindfolded. Thus he created controversy in an effort to  
feather his own nest. (pun intended).

I can assure you as a guy who was there at the time, that Condon's was  
arguably the swingingest joint in New York City as far as Dixieland  
was concerned.
Neither I nor my musician friends who both listened and played there  
were ever disappointed in the music.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband