[Dixielandjazz] AGAINST BILGE

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Steve used the word BILGE 

I am sure there's a lot to be learned from it, 
and it's worth being studied under its full name:
bilge water. Fascinating if it concerns you, 

and the same applies to music, some is good and some bad,and some so utterly foreign to me or you or whoever 
there's little point listening to it except it might have something you'd missed before.

Humphrey Lyttelton raises the point clearly when he askswhy have some great jazzmen been immune to claims made on behalf of others.He takes the analogy with research scientists, 
like for instance somebody who studies water

I gather that Bruce Turner found little or no interest in Charlie Parker's music.and that he went as far as to specify deficiencies in general terms. 
I'd not go so far as that, just as I never went as far as Bruce on saxophone.If it does nothing to or for you, the advice "Don't explain" does not apply.How could you explain? You'd be talking not about, say, Parker, but about maybe you?
But I only ever listen to Parker to check for any appeal hitherto missing. 

For some reason I don't get that much from much Miles Davis --though oddly enough I remain much taken with the improvisation 
which opens the CD of Jack Johnson music --before Miles stops and John McLaughlin proceeds to do nothing at some length(presumably supplying background music as required) ideas for ...a sound-track editor who will ditch most of them? 
I've no idea what turns me off in so much Davis, or Parker 
It's of no great relevance to anybody, unless they want to find something WRONGwith me or Miles or Charlie? 

Their music is not my field, with some exceptions. 


It's not talking to me, not communicating, and that may have its causes,but it's nobody's fault. 
Someday I might kick somebody who comes out with "it's all a matter of personal taste."My boot would taste their keester. And relish the occasion,since "it's all a matter of personal taste" is only a bad excuse 
(there are better reasons for not resorting to violence) .
That old hack saw just insults people who take music seriously 
(as other than and better than wallpaper) 
I suppose if it was right that everybody should like the same musiceverybody should make the same music.
And there was poor John Eliot Gardner on TV talking about Beethoven's Fifth Symphonyand how its meaning was rather betrayed by a certain celebrated performance.The performance was conducted by an anti-Nazi stuck in Germany in 1944 or so.Probably it meant more that way to people who knew what it was about. 
At the time, the original feelings Gardner refers to would have been fake. 

I gather the young Germans who later founded Blue Note records would have been horrified 
by the idea of Coleman Hawkins gazing across the border from Holland pining for a chance tovisit Leipzig and honour Bach (who also does nothing for a lot of folk)
Robert R. Calder .




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