[NewMusic] Booking / 'Usual Suspects'

[Damon Smith]

On the other hand the more of us who participate in the "Promiscuous"  
idea the more it develops the sound of whole scene and our ability to  
work together in different situations.

On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Matthew Goodheart wrote:

> On Aug 21, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Phillip Greenlief wrote:
>
>> I know I often compare our scene to jazz, but no one complained when
>> Bird was playing 52nd street nearly every night of the week -
>
> This may seem to imply I'm against the "promiscuous" scene, and I'm
> not by any means. The difference between the what you are talking
> about here (or Monk and Coltrane at the 5-Spot)- is that it was
> essentially the same band, playing mostly the same material, each
> time. What happened was that it allowed them to refine what they were
> doing based on the interactions of that particular group. It's a very
> different dynamic that a large number of "one offs" with different
> people each time. The "promiscuous" scene promotes a different
> modality of development- a more individualistic one (which fits with
> the more libertarian philosophy of many of it's practitioners, and
> the times themselves, really). It tends to concentrate more on "what
> do I bring to this particular group of individuals," rather than
> being a member of an ensemble where the playing of each member is as
> intimately familiar one's own.
>
> I've only recently started looking at this thread, so maybe this was
> mentioned earlier: a couple of times a decade or so ago there was
> this "52nd Street" model, and I think it worked quite nicely with
> those who had that sort of musical interaction as it's goal. One was
> the month of gigs with Marco's American Jungle Orchestra at Venue 9,
> the other was the type of booking: Don Alan would do at  Radio
> Valencia in the early 90's: he would book your group for a whole
> month, specifically so you could develop in that particular way. It
> really allowed me to refine things with some of my early groups, and
> have a platform to develop new material.  I feel like I took some big
> leaps because of it.   I understand why he went to the other format
> later, but it was so nice that way at the beginning.  "Jazzed," a now
> defunct cafe in San Rafael, was really supportive in the same way,  
> too.
>
> mg
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>

Damon Smith

http://www.balancepointacoustics.com
http://myspace.com/smithdamon
New solo project:
http://www.myspace.com/damonsmithsolo